The life cycle of a coach…

The life cycle of a coach.

If you are a disciplinarian coach, (what I call a “bad cop” coach), you get hired by a team who has players who are consistently underperforming, don’t show a strong committment to the game, float, phone things in, or generally just don’t look like they care much about playing the game. As a “tough” coach, you put in tough practices, yell a lot, skate them until they puke, and generally drill marshall them to their potential. Initially, players tend to respond to this, because they know they were slacking off.

Eventually, though, players get tired of being yelled at, and being treated like children who can’t run their own lives (even though under their previous coach, they proved they couldn’t). the coach starts making them crazy. they start tuning him out. Play gets erratic, team ethics fade, and players start looking uncaring, distracted, and generally grumpy and pissed. nobody smiles any more, or laughs. players arrive at the last second for practice and leave as quickly as possible after, because being there is No Fun At All.

Eventually, the team stops winning. The coach tries to fix it, and can’t. Eventually, the GM fixes it by firing the coach, which is generally a player’s coach, since right now, the players hate everyone, starting with themselves, the coach, the gm, and the ice guys. they also hate the game and play like it.

The player’s coach (aka “the good cop”) laughs a lot, tells stupid jokes, puts shaving cream in guy’s skates just before practice (and punishes them for being late), and generally acts like a clown. his job it to get players to stop hating the game again, while still teaching them how to play it to win.

For a while, it works. Players appreciate “a friend” as opposed to that last SOB they were playing for. They respond, play well, smile a lot, show up early, practice late, hang around the locker room, and turn into a team. Eventually, however, they start getting comfortable and complacent. A guy will miss a practice. He’ll cut 10 minutes off his bike time. He’ll stay out a little late. He and his linemates will sneak out after curfew to a strip club and get into a fight.

Eventually, everyone gets too happy, too soft, complacent. they start underperforming, discipline goes down. Everyone looks like they’re spending too much time partying and too little time practicing. The team stops winning, because it’s game has lost all discipline.

And the GM looks around and realizes it’s time to make a change, so he pulls out the rolodex, and starts looking up names filed under “bad cop”……

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