Tribute Sheldon Keefe Discussion Part 2
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How the Maple Leafs could be improving in a different way during pause - Sportsnet.ca
How do you work on your game during a pandemic?
One of Sheldon Keefe’s strengths as a coach is his ability to spread focus between what the team is doing (meaning the bigger structure they’re presenting as a group), and what individuals are doing within that (in terms of effort and performance). There’s been an evolution in hockey coaching over the years, from primarily motivating individual people to a bigger focus on strategy, but he doesn’t really prioritize one over the other.
Focus too much on one while ignoring the other and you’ll inevitably start to fall behind in some meaningful way.
A new twist to that dynamic is the idea of not just motivating your individuals, but tangibly improving them in-season. Motivated players are good, a team playing the right system in unison is great, but adding individual gains from within all that is the type of thing that can put a team over the top.
That in-season development was crucial to the Marlies successfully developing handfuls of players for the Leafs during Keefe’s years in the minors, and my understanding is he sees no reason to deviate from that program of personal improvement with the big club. This is a key philosophical overlap with Leafs GM Kyle Dubas, and part of the reason they work so well in tandem.
What I saw in the AHL was Keefe put time into identifying areas where players could improve (as all coaches do), but also in trying to exploit strengths players already had. Contrary to common thinking, it’s not always about working on weaknesses.
....................
One of the guys the Leafs would like to get more out of is Alexander Kerfoot. It’s not that he hasn’t been good, per se. He’s had some very good stretches. But you get the sense they know there’s more within him they haven’t yet succeeded in pulling out, part of which is no doubt due to the circumstances they’ve placed him in. He’s had three head coaches in a year (Bednar, Babcock, Keefe), he’s played on three different lines, he’s played different positions… it’s been a lot to ask a guy to deal with on top of playing in a Toronto market where you’ll face a lot of scrutiny. Even with all that he’s been fine. But again, I’m sure they think they can get more from him.
So when he came on Hockey Central this past week, I asked him about Keefe, and any individual tweaks he may have been tasked with working on. Sure enough, there was a focus:
“He’s very good at skill development and being specific about what he sees in players,” Kerfoot said. “One thing that he’s focused on with me is body positioning. I think that for smaller guys it’s probably more important than it is for bigger guys. But you see a lot of small guys who are really good at it and are able to win a ton of battles. He’s just kinda focused on that with me, where I don’t need to fully engage physically at times. If I have body position it will allow me to win more battles, and from an offensive standpoint, allow me to gain separation and make plays, whereas sometimes you don’t need to initiate contact, you just need to be in the right spot, and allow your positioning to make room for you.”
Emphasis mine, simply because I recognize those as key concepts Keefe (and skills coach Darryl Belfry) would believe to be important in creating offence, a task widely accepted as the toughest thing to do in the game today.
Each player surely has some video to watch during this lull on an area they can improve (Kyle Clifford confirmed as much on the show Wednesday). Maybe it’s something they haven’t thought of before, something they haven’t had broken down for them properly in the past, or something they’ve never had the time to focus on. It’ll be interesting to see if any players are able to watch enough video to better understand an area of their game that could be improved, and actually come out of this pause better off than they went into it. Most guys won’t, but even if one or two take that stride, this won’t be considered lost time.
How do you work on your game during a pandemic?
One of Sheldon Keefe’s strengths as a coach is his ability to spread focus between what the team is doing (meaning the bigger structure they’re presenting as a group), and what individuals are doing within that (in terms of effort and performance). There’s been an evolution in hockey coaching over the years, from primarily motivating individual people to a bigger focus on strategy, but he doesn’t really prioritize one over the other.
Focus too much on one while ignoring the other and you’ll inevitably start to fall behind in some meaningful way.
A new twist to that dynamic is the idea of not just motivating your individuals, but tangibly improving them in-season. Motivated players are good, a team playing the right system in unison is great, but adding individual gains from within all that is the type of thing that can put a team over the top.
That in-season development was crucial to the Marlies successfully developing handfuls of players for the Leafs during Keefe’s years in the minors, and my understanding is he sees no reason to deviate from that program of personal improvement with the big club. This is a key philosophical overlap with Leafs GM Kyle Dubas, and part of the reason they work so well in tandem.
What I saw in the AHL was Keefe put time into identifying areas where players could improve (as all coaches do), but also in trying to exploit strengths players already had. Contrary to common thinking, it’s not always about working on weaknesses.
....................
One of the guys the Leafs would like to get more out of is Alexander Kerfoot. It’s not that he hasn’t been good, per se. He’s had some very good stretches. But you get the sense they know there’s more within him they haven’t yet succeeded in pulling out, part of which is no doubt due to the circumstances they’ve placed him in. He’s had three head coaches in a year (Bednar, Babcock, Keefe), he’s played on three different lines, he’s played different positions… it’s been a lot to ask a guy to deal with on top of playing in a Toronto market where you’ll face a lot of scrutiny. Even with all that he’s been fine. But again, I’m sure they think they can get more from him.
So when he came on Hockey Central this past week, I asked him about Keefe, and any individual tweaks he may have been tasked with working on. Sure enough, there was a focus:
“He’s very good at skill development and being specific about what he sees in players,” Kerfoot said. “One thing that he’s focused on with me is body positioning. I think that for smaller guys it’s probably more important than it is for bigger guys. But you see a lot of small guys who are really good at it and are able to win a ton of battles. He’s just kinda focused on that with me, where I don’t need to fully engage physically at times. If I have body position it will allow me to win more battles, and from an offensive standpoint, allow me to gain separation and make plays, whereas sometimes you don’t need to initiate contact, you just need to be in the right spot, and allow your positioning to make room for you.”
Emphasis mine, simply because I recognize those as key concepts Keefe (and skills coach Darryl Belfry) would believe to be important in creating offence, a task widely accepted as the toughest thing to do in the game today.
Each player surely has some video to watch during this lull on an area they can improve (Kyle Clifford confirmed as much on the show Wednesday). Maybe it’s something they haven’t thought of before, something they haven’t had broken down for them properly in the past, or something they’ve never had the time to focus on. It’ll be interesting to see if any players are able to watch enough video to better understand an area of their game that could be improved, and actually come out of this pause better off than they went into it. Most guys won’t, but even if one or two take that stride, this won’t be considered lost time.
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