Most coaches are going to want see you play and are also going to want to see some video. Here are some tips for making your video stand out from the hundreds of other videos that coaches will see.

It’s easy to capture video footage these days. Any mobile phone, iPad or camera should be able to capture what you need. There are lots of free video editing tools that you can use to assemble your video (iMovie works really well.) Start collecting your video clips now!

How To Make A Great Hockey Highlight Video

1. Make it obvious in your video that you LOVE hockey! Coaches want players who live, eat, sleep and breathe hockey.
2. Keep it short. Limit your video to three or four minutes in length with 10-20 short clips. Unless you’re Connor McDavid or Sydney Crosby, you won’t have a highlight reel that can fill any more time. Beyond a few minutes, coaches won’t watch it anyway.
3. Include your name, email, team, jersey number, position/shot, and graduation year at the start of the video. If you’re comfortable on camera, include a brief introduction to show off your personality.
4. Put your best clips at the start.
5. Go full speed at all times. Show your talent off at its fastest possible speed.
6. Coaches want to see your athleticism and technical ability. Show a variety of skills: skating/edgework, stickhandling, shooting, positioning, hand-eye coordination. Pick 3 to 5 drills and show 2 or 3 reps of each. Be creative with locations. Set up some cones and a net on a backyard rink or your driveway. Get your parents or coaches to take video at practice. Make sure that these clips are showing off your talent and work ethic.
7. Make it easy for coaches to find you! Use arrows, circles and other call outs to ensure that coaches can easily identify you in game video clips. You should always make sure that your jersey number and name are visible when you are playing. Don’t tuck in your jersey or let your hair cover your name and number.
8. Make your video fun! Coaches see a lot of these videos. Anything you can do to make it watchable will help your chances.
9. Add music! Keep it interesting and upbeat for the coaches. Think stadium rock or rap. Avoid slow ballads.
10. Include multiple angles when filming.
11. Add an “isolation” clip of one of your shifts from a game. This is a good way to show your all-out game effort. Get a friend or parent to record a few of your shifts with you in the middle of the frame for the entire shift. Record from the second you come on the ice to the end of your shift. You’ll want to be moving full speed for the entire shift including fast into the play and hard back to the bench. Every shift becomes an opportunity to show off your tireless effort. This is also a good way to review your play and get an idea of how you really look when you’re on the ice.
12. When you are ready, post your video to YouTube. You would then email the link to coaches. This works much better than trying to send video attachments that will get lost or filtered by spam filters. You’ll want to include your name, number and graduation year in the title of your video (Something like: Veronica Smith #17 Hockey Recruiting Video Class of 2023)
13. BEFORE YOU SEND IT… Have several people including your coaches review your video. Try to watch your video from the perspective of a coach. Does this look like a player that I absolutely have to get for my team?
14. Advanced Tip #1: Use a URL shortener that will allow you to customize your link AND reuse the link as your video improves. Let’s say you create the first version of your video. You upload it to YouTube and send the link to a few coaches. Then in your next game you score two highlight reel goals that are captured in full cinematic glory. You’ll want to edit your video to include the new clips. However, when you upload the new video to YouTube, it will give you a new and different link (you can’t update a video and keep the same link in YouTube). Now you’d have to resend the new link to all the coaches. And they still might watch the old one and ignore the newest version. Rebrandly.com is a link shortener and redirection tool that allows you to create a custom link for your video (like https://rebrandly.com/VictoriaSmith17). You would then send this link to coaches. Each time you update your video, you’d go into Rebrandly and re-use the same custom link and point it to your new YouTube URL. You may have to delete the old Rebrandly link before you can re-use it. Now, coaches will always see your most up to date video. Rebrandly has a free version that you can use but you’ll have to create an account to edit your links.
15. Advanced Tip #2: Post your Athletic Profile and Recruiting Video to a single page website. Ask Coach Steve about hosting your profile and video on AvsHockey.com.

Sample Recruiting Video

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