[Incogneto]

Originally Posted by mikeecho

I spent some time with Dr. Peter Jensen who is a well known sports psychologist and worked with a lot of the Canadian Olympic hockey teams over the last several decades. He described how the Canadian women went through hundreds of scenarios prior to going to Sochi. Every player had a specific non playing role to the team in very specific situations. Eg. Team goes down by a goal late in gold medal game. Tendency of team is to get deflated and go quiet. They play bad when they’re quiet on the bench. Too tight, worried they’ll make another mistake and let down their teammates. Immediately, everyone starting with the coach to the trainer to the 4th line player who won’t be playing another shift to the 1st line goal scorer starts to engage pre determined roles to ensure they reset quickly in a positive direction instead of going quiet and becoming deflated. Lots of specific chatter. One person yells out how much time is left, one person barks out key game plan notes (shoot low blocker on this goalie), etc... Coach plays a big role in reinforcing belief in players vocally and with pats on the back to generate positive energy. The list of what the team would need to do in the 20 seconds after a goal in a specific situation was unbelieveable.

I had this in the back of my head all season when the team would let in a goal, go quiet and look deflated (I get that you don’t see everything that’s happening on the bench while watching on tv)... which on many occasions saw them give up another goal in quick succession.

Initially I didn’t really care too much about the iPad thing, but over time, it struck me that as much as GG probably considers it a prudent coaching maneuver to gain insight into the play, he’s staring at the trees and missing the forest.

Anyone know if the Flames have a sports psychologist on staff?