Beginners: Organizing a Novice team?

[nickh1]

I just joined a beginner league a couple weeks ago. We are all relative newcomers, with a couple of older players returning after some time away from the sport, but our skill level ranges from total bender to a solid d-leaguer or two. We are disorganized, and have no concept of teamwork, mostly because we met about 5 minutes before our first game. It's hard to play well with others, when you have never played with them before.

In addition, there is no organization from a logistics standpoint. Nobody has taken the initiative to gather contact info, and reach out to everyone before each game, so we don't know who is playing until we are about to take the ice.

As one of the worst players on the team, I don't feel like I have the experience to lead the team. I don't know enough about my teammates to know who would be a good leader, but I guess my question is, in a beginner/novice league, should we even have a captain? I think we would benefit from having some way of knowing who's playing each game beforehand, so we aren't asking players from another team that played before us (coming off the ice 10 minutes before we go on) to sub for us. Last game, we didn't have two full lines. As a result, we all rotated positions, just so we weren't forcing any one player to stay on the ice the whole game. As a beginner, it's frustrating to play a position based solely on what an offcoming player shouts at you while approaching the bench, because I never have a chance to really learn any one position, so I'm universally terrible in all positions.

What can I do to help organize the team? Should I even bother? I'm not complaining, I'm having a blast, regardless of how terrible we play (we were shutout in our first game, it was embarrassing). I'm learning a great deal, and have received a great deal of advice from the more seasoned players, which has proven immensely helpful. I just think there may be some opportunity to take initiative, and contribute a bit more to making our first season together slightly more successful.

Any input is greatly appreciated!

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[Fremitus Borealis]

In my experience, most people naturally just want to show up and play and don't give a **** about the organizational stuff... or at least, don't want to be the one responsible for it. So, the fact that you're asking this on here probably means you're the one that should step up.

I'd start by getting everyone's emails if you don't already have them. Then ask for input on which position each guy would like to play. You can make Google spreadsheets for all this so everyone can see it all in one place. Once things are a little more organized, you can impose some sort of system about notification before games... something like, if you don't say you're coming by like noon the day of, you can't play. Just so you're not sitting in the locker room guessing whether you'll have enough guys to even play.

This will also pay off when you start getting jerseys and stuff because trust me, you don't want to half ass it once money's involved.

 

[Goonzilla]

Does it matter so much in a beginner or novice team?

I haven't been on one, but I've seen, talked and skated with a few including at pick up and open ice sessions and the like. They do seem like they just want to get better; and skating and handling ability is the key to being able to go and play with better players.

I would think or at least hope that everyone wants to improve and move up levels; and people are going to improve at different rates. I wouldn't think your team is going to be playing together for a long time, so how important is the other stuff? It should just be a temporary staging point; you can pick up tactics and positional play later on. Have fun and skate, skate, skate and work on your skills so you can eventually get on a higher team.

If you've set up without a leader/captain/coach/manager or whatever, it might be pretty hard to sort one out now; and self appointed leaders are often not the best people for the job.

If you can fit another player, I would go and try and find a good player who is happy to play with your team; but not some clown who wants to score 12 goals a game, rather someone who can pass on some advice, is happy not to score, but who is happy to create opportunities for everyone else.

 

[nickh1]

Does it matter so much in a beginner or novice team?

I haven't been on one, but I've seen, talked and skated with a few including at pick up and open ice sessions and the like. They do seem like they just want to get better; and skating and handling ability is the key to being able to go and play with better players.

I would think or at least hope that everyone wants to improve and move up levels; and people are going to improve at different rates. I wouldn't think your team is going to be playing together for a long time, so how important is the other stuff? It should just be a temporary staging point; you can pick up tactics and positional play later on. Have fun and skate, skate, skate and work on your skills so you can eventually get on a higher team.

If you've set up without a leader/captain/coach/manager or whatever, it might be pretty hard to sort one out now; and self appointed leaders are often not the best people for the job.

If you can fit another player, I would go and try and find a good player who is happy to play with your team; but not some clown who wants to score 12 goals a game, rather someone who can pass on some advice, is happy not to score, but who is happy to create opportunities for everyone else.

I'm not looking to organize as in coach/teach the other players, I'm talking some kind of organization so that we know who's coming, and who isn't. We don't even have jerseys that match, that's how terrible the league was organized. we all signed up as "free agents" and were placed on this team, we met each other literally 2 weeks ago. None of us organized this team, we were thrown together and told to figure it out.

I'm not trying to be appointed as a leader. I don't want to be the leader. I just want us to have some semblance of an idea of who's skating for us before we get to the rink, and it would be nice to be able to say "The guys in yellow are on our team." rather than "The guy in white is ours, that guy in red is ours, the guys in yellow are ours, and the guy in black with the yellow number is ours." If I can accomplish those 2 things, I am happy. It really sucks to show up and realize that the goalie that was "assigned" to our team will not be able to make it to more than a couple games this season, and not have any knowledge beforehand that we will be playing with an empty net. At least with some organization, we can send a text/email, get a response of "I can't make it tonight", and call around to find a sub goalie.

I talked with a couple other players today, who thought it would be a good idea to set up a mailing list and group text to keep track of who's going to be on the bench. I'm going to price out some different jersey options as well, and see if we can get everyone at least wearing the same color in the next few weeks.

The more experienced players stepped up tonight, and we actually had enough players to run 3 full lines, and the lines were organized. I played the same position every shift, and between shifts, since we had a full bench, I had time to breathe and get advice from the more experienced guys.

We lost. . . Badly. . . but I enjoyed the more organized approach this week, and look forward to seeing how we do next week, against a team that is a closer match to ours, based on skill level alone.


Also, in response to the statement that we won't be skating together for long, I agree, some of us will continue busting our backsides to get better, and might make it to a D league in a season or two. I'm absolutely fine with that. I'm not there yet, but judging by how some of the other teams we've played have been, there's plenty of room to grow here. This league is more laid-back, and is a great environment for beginners (such as myself) to learn positioning, get some ice time, and see my progress in action. It feels great when I start incorporating new skills into my skating while playing, without thinking about it. I'm getting more confident in my puck handling abilities, and my skating is getting much better than it was when I started out. That's all I want, is to get better at this. All of the other beginners I've seen are of the same mindset. We practice on our own time, working on skating, shooting, stickhandling, and some of us are going to clinics and practices to work on positioning, passing, and team drills. This season is still young, we only played our 2nd game this week, and at this point, I'm perfectly content with losing, as long as I continue to learn, improve, and have fun.

 

[CornKicker]

ask all your guys to download and use benchapp. its great for hockey with a simple yes or no. on your end it take 20mins to put the ice times into the app.

 

[leftwinger37]

ask all your guys to download and use benchapp. its great for hockey with a simple yes or no. on your end it take 20mins to put the ice times into the app.

+1 for BenchApp. I use it for the pickup skate that I run during the summer and it has worked really well to keep everyone on the same page.

As far as having a manager, it's definitely hard to not have someone filling that role, but it's also not a lot of fun to be that guy... Especially when you're walking into a disorganized situation like you have described. Maybe rotate manager's duties for the remainder of the season until everyone has a handle on what is going on and then see if anyone is willing to voluntarily take on the role going forward. In my opinion, that would be better than just sticking yourself or someone else with that job. Some people have a knack for it, but most do not.

 

[nickh1]

ask all your guys to download and use benchapp. its great for hockey with a simple yes or no. on your end it take 20mins to put the ice times into the app.

+1 for BenchApp. I use it for the pickup skate that I run during the summer and it has worked really well to keep everyone on the same page.

As far as having a manager, it's definitely hard to not have someone filling that role, but it's also not a lot of fun to be that guy... Especially when you're walking into a disorganized situation like you have described. Maybe rotate manager's duties for the remainder of the season until everyone has a handle on what is going on and then see if anyone is willing to voluntarily take on the role going forward. In my opinion, that would be better than just sticking yourself or someone else with that job. Some people have a knack for it, but most do not.

I have already downloaded the app, and set up our team last week. Just need to get everyone's contact info so I can send the invitations to everyone to download it. Actually been in contact with the creator, he's giving me quotes for jerseys, two birds/one stone scenario.

Another issue we are having, our goalie is unable to make it to games, as notice was not given by the league early enough, and he now has a schedule conflict. I don't know how to handle that one, as there's a major shortage of goalies in the league, the last round of games, we only had one goalie on the ice between the four teams that played. I'm not really interested in learning to play goal, and I don't think anyone else on the team is either, not to mention the cost of gear, so we are looking for another goalie to fill in for the one we were assigned originally.

I just think issues like this could be resolved largely by a bit of organization, and if I have to step up to organize the team, then hand off responsibilities every week, I'm fine with that.

You guys have made some great suggestions, and I appreciate it. Hopefully we can get something worked out soon. Having never played in a league before, this is all new to me, and honestly, it's taking away from the game a bit. I'm not saying I'm not having the time of my life, because I am, but this would go a long way to make the whole experience more enjoyable for everyone.

 

[RandV]

Another tool you can check out, though I couldn't say if it's active in your area or not, is: https://hockey-community.com/

It's kind of like a Craigslist for hockey, so it depends on participation in your area. In Vancouver it's an easy way to find a goalie/skaters, find a team to play on, or some organized drop in hockey.

 

[nickh1]

Another tool you can check out, though I couldn't say if it's active in your area or not, is: https://hockey-community.com/

It's kind of like a Craigslist for hockey, so it depends on participation in your area. In Vancouver it's an easy way to find a goalie/skaters, find a team to play on, or some organized drop in hockey.

There is NOBODY on HC in my area. I have the app already, and check in every once in a while, but there's never any activity nearby. Surprising, really, considering I'm in Michigan. . . Not saying hockey is huge here, but there are 3 rinks within 45 minutes of me, and all have rather active adult hockey leagues. I don't know what's going on in the youth leagues, but I'm guessing they are active as well.

I'm playing at least one game a week, and I was asked to play a couple more games as a sub tonight, so we'll see how that goes.