Our team will be guided by four principles that EVERYONE is expected to follow.

1. Make It FUN!

• Hockey is a game and it is meant to be fun.
• Everyone involved with the team is responsible for contribute to making it fun.

2. Positive Attitude

A positive and encouraging attitude is expected by EVERYONE on our team (including players, coaches, staff and parents) at ALL times.

This includes:

• Being courteous, respectful and inclusive
• Showing good sportsmanship
• Being supportive and encouraging your teammates. We all will share our successes and failures.

Staying on a Positive Thought Channel

It isn’t always easy to stay positive. Often we have negative thoughts that creep into our mind. Negative thoughts lead to negative feelings and vice versa. Positive thoughts lead to positive feelings.

Over the season, we will talk a lot more about mental preparation and how we can manage our thinking and feelings to help improve our performance. The principle is that your mind is like a television set. It is important to understand that you control the remote. If you don’t like what you are watching, you can change the channel. Consciously change the channel to positively. Learn to park your emotions. If you don’t like what you are thinking or feeling, you can consciously change your thoughts. Changing your thoughts will change your feelings.

To perform optimally, we want to stay on a positive (and winning) thought channel.

3. Relentless Compete

We want to cultivate the mindset that WE WILL NEVER BE OUTWORKED.

To make it SPECIAL to be on our team, we'll make it HARD to be on our team.

Working Hard means that you…

• Give your best effort at all times, particularly when it isn’t easy to do. It is vital to our team success that everyone bring a high energy level to our practices and games and work as hard as they can.
• Challenge yourself both mentally and physically.
• Prepare diligently for all games and practices.
• Have a commitment to improving every day. Remember that your character is what you do when you think that no one is watching.

As a coach, I work hard for you. I expect you to work hard for me.

4. Support Your Teammates

You do not have to be good friends with everyone on your team; However, it is expected that you be a good teammate with everyone. 

• Safety - We all have each other's backs!
• Belonging - Everyone deserves to be here as much as anyone else.
• You can depend on your teammates because your teammates can depend on you!

The Unstoppable Combination

“When you combine a positive attitude with hard work you get an unstoppable combination. It’s also a lot of FUN!” — Coach Steve

Today’s Assignment:

1. Complete today’s workout on the TeamBuildr app. Be sure to mark each exercise complete as you finish it. Depending on your schedule (other sports, work, etc.) it is okay to complete the exercises on another day or even substitute an alternate workout provided that the difficultly level is similar. Please make note of any substitutions or switches as part of the daily check in item in the TeamBuildr app. Today might be a good day to catch up on any workouts you’ve missed.
2. Discuss our team’s guiding principles with your Senpai-Kohai partner. I’d prefer that you do this by TALKING with them, however if you both have a tough schedule today, messaging is okay.
3. Together with your partner, come up with something we could do as a team to “Make It Fun”. The KOHAI should post your answer to the team WhatsApp group. Be sure to include both your names in the post.

Sample Answers to Today’s Assignment

1. Creating a fun pre-game ritual and build a good dressing room atmosphere.
2. Go on a team trip or camp somewhere not too far so we could get to know each other and do fun activities together.
3. Start mini team competitions to promote working hard while having fun.
4. Go sightseeing or do other excursions at tournaments (or as part of our training) together as a team.
5. Have mini competitions during practices. For example, whoever scores the most goals during practice will give everyone else a “punishment” of skating or push ups. You could also divide everyone in groups. This will make practice fun and competitive to help us get better.
6. Have players come up with our own drills and skills we want to see in practice. A different player could run each practice (or provide a drill each practice).
7. Do a cooldown after practices or games, giving each of the players time to stretch and relax with each other.
8. Have friendly competitions against each other to promote working hard, collaborating, encouraging and showing good sportsmanship.
9. Add a fitness game at the end of warm ups to make it fun. That way we can communicate with our teammates and gain energy going into the game. The game would also help to build team chemistry by working together. These can be individual or team building warmup activities. For example, bringing a volleyball, and communicating by calling “mine” or playing simon says with small stretches and exercises “simon says touch your toes” or “simon says do 5 squats”.
10. Play a good pre-game pump up song before going on the ice so that we’re pumped up and have our game faces on!!!!!!! (Coaches note: I like classic rock.)