Thoughts on the American Development Model (ADM)

[mdamson 0]

Just wanting to get some input on what you think of the American Development Model (ADM) that USA Hockey is pushing. Part of this program is the elimination of the Peewee Nationals by 2013. The only other post I could find on the subject was an earlier one that discussed the formation of an elite AAA midget league. Feel free to comment on other aspects of the program as well.

[frankie56 0]

Just wanting to get some input on what you think of the American Development Model (ADM) that USA Hockey is pushing. Part of this program is the elimination of the Peewee Nationals by 2013. The only other post I could find on the subject was an earlier one that discussed the formation of an elite AAA midget league. Feel free to comment on other aspects of the program as well.

Youth hockey was reaching a dead end, too expensive, too much school lost, too much travel, too long a season, too exclusive. Something had to be done to improve participation and retention.

Will the ADM do this? I don't know.

[Chadd 916]

Having more kids get exposed to the sport makes more sense than training the living hell out of a small number and hoping that a good percentage of them make it to the NHL.

[gxc999 7]

Having more kids get exposed to the sport makes more sense than training the living hell out of a small number and hoping that a good percentage of them make it to the NHL.

Agreed. Plus, who the hell cares who the national champion is outside of the coaches? Is being a pee-wee champ going to be the highlight of their life 25 years later? If so, that's one sad effing life.

[Chadd 916]

Agreed. Plus, who the hell cares who the national champion is outside of the coaches? Is being a pee-wee champ going to be the highlight of their life 25 years later? If so, that's one sad effing life.

Ironic, as this week is the Little League World Series.

[chk hrd 164]

while they are at it they should stop Mite and Squirt "AA" tournaments since USA hockey doesn't even recognize AA levels at that age. I think the idea of trying to form "elite" younger teams is not a good thing. It does nothing good for youth hockey.

[DarkStar50 679]

The little I know about the ADM revolves around the idea that mites need to play half ice hockey in order to gain more experience in actually playing hockey with the PUCK, instead of one mite going end to end while 5 other kids chased him. There will be an emphasis on playing the game at that age for fun and learning skills. While travel hockey team organizations know that this will only benefit the organization in the long run, in the short term they are looking at how this effects the travel hockey organization's bottom line. The travel teams need kids and their money to buy ice time for these teams. Parents need gratification that their kids are on winning teams to justify the parents' investment in time and money. So, for a long time, who has been left out on this? The kids!!! The ADM is a spin- off from Swedish hockey organizations. There is no travel hockey in Sweden until Peewee age. The emphasis for mite/squirts in Sweden is to just play for fun, learn skating and puck handling skills and get a basic foundation of the game.

[gxc999 7]

I quit playing baseball as a kid because we had a coach who was a total a-hole and flipped out because we lost in the championship game. That's the real problem, the parents and coaches care more about winning and it prevents the kids from maintaining interest. Good riddance to the idea of championship games at a national level for kids at such a young age.

[jcp2 2]

I quit playing baseball as a kid because we had a coach who was a total a-hole and flipped out because we lost in the championship game. That's the real problem, the parents and coaches care more about winning and it prevents the kids from maintaining interest. Good riddance to the idea of championship games at a national level for kids at such a young age.

This reminds me of my recent coach pitch baseball season where a couple of the coaches that we played were going for no-hitters.

[frankie56 0]

My read on the ADM is that they are taking their NTDP model and expanding to a regional model for elite bantam and midget players. Only 'high performance clubs' will get the ADM blessing and only after they indicate they will kowtow to USA Hockey oversight. USAH was to hire regional managers to ensure the ADM is being implemented the way they want. This will result in USAH having more control over the training and development of the elite players, and be able to track their progress closely.

[DarkStar50 679]

frankie, this is the ADM program. It is aimed for the younger kids, not Bantam/Midget elite players.

http://www.admkids.com/

[Law Goalie 147]

This is one area where Hockey Canada is really lagging behind. Their LTADM isn't bad, but it is surprisingly incomplete, and has absolutely zero influence on the game at any level. It's a very complacent system.

[frankie56 0]

frankie, this is the ADM program. It is aimed for the younger kids, not Bantam/Midget elite players.

http://www.admkids.com/

Yes, that's the USAH PR website.

Here you can find a complete description of the ADM from USAH. I read the ultimate goal of the ADM is to improve the development of the elite player, starting with the young players.

http://www.eteamz.com/cpyha/files/ADM.LTAD_Paper_01.26.09.pdf

And here is the USAH communication on the "high performance club" concept. This is a very interesting read!

http://www.usahockey.com/uploadedFiles/USAHockey/ADM/Menu_High_Performance_Clubs/HPC%20Overview%20_HT_.pdf

I will say that it all seems to be a work in progress as I have seen a few different versions of the ADM and High Performance Club proposals.

The "Hockey for Life" program is intended for the non-elite player.

[Fisticuffs 0]

From my understanding, the ADM is designed to decrease the cost of participation, while enhancing skill development, and making the game more enjoyable for young kids. The decrease in cost comes from better utilizing rink time. At the atom level, playing a full ice game doesn't make sense. 2/3s of the rink is empty for long stretches while the kids chase the puck around the zone, so 3 games across the ice utilizes the rink much better, and allows the kids to handle the puck more.

[SolarWind 23]

I'm in Canada, but definitely seeing the same (if not worse) symptoms here! There're some 'elite AAA' hockey clubs for 7-8 year old where they are on the ice 6-7 times a week pretty much year around!

So to me the proposal sounds like a GREAT idea! It'll be interesting to see how smooth the implementation is going to be & the amount of push back it's going to receive from some meat-heads (both parents & coaches & 'elite' clubs) out there since for some of them it'll mean substantially different business model (and subsequently substantially less $?)

slightly off topic, but related - so how DO you make hockey fun for younger kids (initiation levels)?

[iceNsteel 0]

Speaking only from my personal experiences with youth hockey the Squirt level tends to be were you see hockey associations starting to form travel rep teams. It winds up excluding a lot of kids, and many of those relegated to house league simply quit and do other sports. Or that's the point when hockey starts to become unreasonably expensive and kids have to drop out because their parents just can't afford it. On that ground I will definitely applaud USAH's effort to make the game more affordable.

While I think it's good that USAH wants to put the skids on "elite" teams of 10 year olds, I'm not much more comfortable with the idea that at the rip old age of 12 we're going to label kids "high performance" and "hockey for life" athletes. It just smacks me of coaches labeling 12 year olds "checkers" and that's that. It would have been me if I hadn't had a really good coach at the bantam level that was able to figure out I could do more than grind. The labeling system seems little more than a nice way of saying "competitive team" and "house league" for life. It does sound like they want to leave the door open for kids that develop later to jump the HFL track and move up to a HPC. In reality how well that would actually work is anyone's guess. If I were a betting man I'd wager that HFL track athletes end up with the same stigma that house league players have now. I'd also have to wonder if we wouldn't have the same problem we have now with player retention, just moving it a few years later in the age of player drop out. I can't imagine having a hockey for life track label stuck on your kid is going to strongly encourage parents or players to stick with it. Especially if the kid shows more talent in another sport. Or just saying screw hockey, I'll start playing football in junior high.

End of the day, I suppose even flawed order is better than the relative chaos that exists in youth hockey today. So it's a start.

[Jarick 5]

I'm about halfway through Dryden's "The Game" right now and he had a good bit talking about Lafleur. He noted that Lafleur always skated around on his own and would sneak into the rink as a teenager to play for a few hours before it opened. Then he went on to note how from the turn of the (20th) century to the 1970's, as soccer became more and more a hobby/activity than just a fun recreational sport, the average daily "practice" time of kids went from about three hours to only eight minutes!

The whole thing made me really consider just having my kid play shinny rather than trying to get him into organized sports until he really wants to be in them.

It reminded me of how my parents made me play piano and I never practiced compared to how I taught myself to play drums and would play 2+ hours a day. And once I asked to start taking lessons, it made me that much better.

[BarDownGinos 3]

USAH wants to put an end to "elite" teams at the youngest levels, but they want to siphon off the very best at the upper levels and group them all in their own league, essentially saying "Unless you play for these clubs you have no future in this sport". You want to actually develop players? One, get rid of the NTDP, it's a $5M drain that could be spent across the country instead of on 40 players and 20 somethign staff. Spread those kids out across the USHL and they'll still end up being pretty good players. How did the NTDP do in the USHL last season anyways? Two, your best coaches need to be at the bottom of the pyramid not just the top. While I applaud the fathers who sign up to coach most of them can't teach the kids much other than what they've learned for themselves in the USAH manual the day before. You need coaches who can teach and show players the correct fundamentals and can build their skill set. You want to keep younger kids in the game? Have younger kids (Bantam/Midget, HS, JR, College players) be coaches, even if they just show up for practice. The kids will have more fun gauranteed. The dynamic is different, they can relate better than an adult can. I apolgize for the scattered, disjointedness of my response but I could not type fast enough to put all my thoughts about the state of USAH down.

[Chadd 916]

How did the NTDP do in the USHL last season anyways?

If it's really a developmental program, winning isn't the most important thing.

[BarDownGinos 3]

If it's really a developmental program, winning isn't the most important thing.

Yeah, the NATIONAL TEAM development program. These kids are supposed to be the "Best of the Best" with more resources available than any other team, yet they finish 5th worst in the league.

[Chadd 916]

So if that is the case, why compete in the USHL, an elite level junior league? Why not compete at Midget AAA?

Better competition makes better players? Believe me, I'm not defending USA Hockey. Just saying that winning and individual player development frequently don't go hand in hand.

Yeah, the NATIONAL TEAM development program. These kids are supposed to be the "Best of the Best" with more resources available than any other team, yet they finish 5th worst in the league.

How do their players do at the NHL level, relative to the players on the teams they compete against? That is the best way to determine if the program is effective.

[Chadd 916]

Let's see a TRUE list of players that played at NTDP and not players who happened to play for USAH at the World Juniors.

I agree completely. The NTDP players should have a demonstrably better pro career than the average junior player for the program to be effective.

[DarkStar50 679]

There are say 40 NDTP players each year(17s & 18s) while the number of "average junior players" is well over 200 minimum, considering OHL, WHL, and QMJHL. How can we compare 40 vs 200+?

[DarkStar50 679]

There is an assumption about the NDTP players in this thread that is incorrect. These players are not the best players in the USA for their birth year on this team. A player from our travel organization made the 17s last spring and played all season with NDTP. When I heard he made the team, I was a bit surprised being very familiar with his skill set and size. Digging a little deeper, I learned he made the team because yes, there were better players his age ahead of him that easily could have made the team. However, these better players exercised more options open to them, like going to CHL hockey. So maybe finishing 5th is where the team did belong based on the talent of the team. Every NDTP player is not necessarily going to make the NHL. There are players from Team Canada World Jr Championship teams that never make the NHL, too.

[iceNsteel 0]

There is an assumption about the NDTP players in this thread that is incorrect. These players are not the best players in the USA for their birth year on this team. A player from our travel organization made the 17s last spring and played all season with NDTP. When I heard he made the team, I was a bit surprised being very familiar with his skill set and size. Digging a little deeper, I learned he made the team because yes, there were better players his age ahead of him that easily could have made the team. However, these better players exercised more options open to them, like going to CHL hockey. So maybe finishing 5th is where the team did belong based on the talent of the team. Every NDTP player is not necessarily going to make the NHL. There are players from Team Canada World Jr Championship teams that never make the NHL, too.

But that would only serve to further reinforce the notion that the NTDP is a waste of money. Spending 5 million bucks on 40 players that don't even represent the top prospects is not a wise use of funding. I would agree that given a choice between playing in one of the CHL leagues or the NTDP most prospects will go to a CHL league team. I'd much rather see USAH invest the money in NCAA hockey. Of course, if it were up to me I'd prefer to see juniors taken out of the American system, use a U18 midget model, with a focus on sending prospect to play college hockey. That's the model of player development that most Americans understand, and I think it would help popularize hockey. If there's one thing Americans love it's college sports.