Pucks Deep
Mitch Major - Director of Coach & Player Development - coach@majorskills.com
*Mitch will post weekly content to this section for the 25-26 season as this is part of our skill development program for players and parents.
Pucks Deep #1:
1. Quote of the week this week from the back of the Wooden book:
“The smallest good deed is better than any best intention.”
- As teammates, let’s look for opportunities to take care of each other. No planning needed… just be in the moment and ready to help your teammate. These moments make both parties feel good, and when we feel good, we are more prepared for whatever lies ahead.
Parent role: please post in the house and discuss what this might look like during the week, at home and at the rink. How can we be intentionally looking for these opportunities?
2. Off-ice dynamic skills will be taught to each player at Monday Skills. I am working on a platform where each player can see these drills at home and work on them 3-5 times a week on their own. More to come soon.
Parent role: encourage player to set up a place to work on these and then practice these drills for 10 minutes, 3-5 times a week.
3. The book referenced below not only changed my coaching for the better but also my parenting style. I highly recommend taking the time to read the brief summary of the book and implementing the “parent tips” to help your child become a confident human being not just in hockey but in all aspects of life. “The gift of adversity” is real!
Parent role: In red below
As I watch my boys navigate through the USHL and college hockey, I noticed it becomes more mental than physical. These are skills that we can start building now. It can make it a really great journey. If you ever want to talk about this with me, reach out anytime. I love talking about this topic.
Here’s a parent-friendly summary of The Confident Mind by Dr. Nate Zinsser, with practical insights to help your children grow confidence. These points are all rooted in his coaching and research on high performers—from athletes to military leaders.
1. Confidence Is Learnable
Definition: Zinsser defines confidence as “a sense of certainty about your ability, which allows you to bypass conscious thought and execute unconsciously.” In other words, confidence lets you act naturally and automatically, without overthinking.Burn The Fat BlogHeroic.us
A skill, not a trait: Confidence isn’t just inborn—it’s something anyone can develop through practice.Burn The Fat BlogSoBriefHeroic.us
Parent tip: Encourage your child to treat confidence as a muscle—one that grows with effort, not just good genes.
2. Build a “Confidence Bank Account”
Think of confidence as a mental bank account—past successes and positive experiences are deposits; self-doubt and negative thoughts are withdrawals.Heroic.usSoBrief
Parents can help by helping kids recall their successes—even the small ones.
Parent tip: Have your child create a “Top Ten Successes” list—moments they’re proud of—and display it somewhere visible (e.g., on the fridge or bedroom wall).Burn The Fat Blog
3. Reflect Daily with E-S-P
This habit focuses attention on incremental gains and builds confidence gradually.SoBrief
Parent tip: Make this a bedtime ritual—ask your child each night about one thing they tried hard at, one success they had, and one small improvement they noticed.
4. Use Affirmations and Constructive Self-Talk
Affirmations should be first-person, present-tense statements (“I am learning quickly,” “I face challenges with courage”).SoBrief
Use techniques like:
Teach children to challenge negative thoughts—acknowledge them, say “Stop,” and replace with a positive affirmation.SoBrief
Parent tip: Work with your child to craft a few affirmations tailored to their challenges or goals. You might even say them together in the morning.
5. Envision Success and Mental Rehearsal
Visualizing success—seeing, hearing, and feeling it—helps prepare the mind for real performance.SoBrief
Zinsser also encourages “Flat-Tire” drills: imagining something going wrong, then practicing in the mind how you’ll respond confidently.SoBrief
Parent tip: Before a test or performance, have your child close their eyes and walk through success in their mind. Also, imagine stumbling and recovering gracefully—that builds resilience.
6. Develop Pre-Performance Routines
Create simple, consistent routines to help kids enter their “arena” (stage, class, game) with focus and calm. This might be a few deep breaths, a confidence flicker (a favorite gesture or phrase), or reviewing their mental bank of successes.SoBriefzen-tools.net
Parent tip: Help your child design a mini-ritual. For example: pause—take three breaths—recall a good moment—and go.
7. Shifting Mindset: Embracing Mistakes (“Shooter’s Mentality”)
Zinsser introduces the idea that misses make hits more likely—mistakes are part of improving, not cause for confidence loss.SoBrief
Reinforce that confidence isn’t about being perfect—it’s about how you respond after stumbling.
Parent tip: When your child makes a mistake (in school, sports, etc.), guide the conversation toward what they can learn rather than criticizing. “Okay, that didn’t go as planned—what’s one thing you’d do differently next time?”
8. Confidence and Competence Go Hand-in-Hand
Parent tip: Foster both—help your child develop their skills, and also talk about how their practice has prepared them.
Summary Table: How Parents Can Use These Insights
Principle | Meaning | Parent Application |
Confidence is a skill | It can be built over time | Praise effort, normalize growth |
Mental bank account | Refill with positives | Success board, story reminders |
E-S-P routine | Daily reflection | Nightly conversations |
Affirmations | Shape internal mindset | Craft and practice affirmations |
Visualization | Prepare the mind | Guided imagery before big moments |
Pre-performance routines | Create calm and focus | Breathing and recall rituals |
Mistakes = Learning | See failure as feedback | Support reflective growth mindset |
Confidence + Competence | Both needed | Provide skills + supportive mindset |
A Final Thought
Zinsser’s approach teaches that a confident mind grows through intention, practice, and self-awareness. For children, this means:
Recognizing and celebrating successes big and small.
Learning to talk to themselves with kindness and possibility.
Building routines that offer calm before challenges.
Seeing mistakes as stepping stones, not roadblocks.
By weaving these into everyday parenting—bedtime talks, school prep rituals, post-game reflections—you’re helping your child build lasting confidence.
Pucks Deep #2:
1. Quote of the Week:
“Much can be accomplished by teamwork when no is concerned about who gets the credit.”
Talking points with your player: The strength of humility will keep you grounded and focused on the right things. Let your actions do the talking. Don’t talk about your personal successes around the team, like how many goals or assists you have. Save that for home:)
2. Off-Ice Skills:
We will be sticking to the same off-ice routine this week. Very soon you and your player will have access to seeing the drills via video. Please keep texting videos - I enjoy giving feedback.
Add-on: Ask your player to find a place to bounce a ball off wall and work on two-touch forehand front passing… do this a lot!
3. I hope you were able to implement at least one of the tips from The Confident Mind. Personally, I just dropped off the second of three children last week. One more to go this week and then an empty house for the first time! I think I am handling it better than my wife. Possibly she knows she is now stuck with just me! I gave Henry a journal and used a tip I learned from this book.
4. Goal setting - I would encourage you to purchase a journal for your player and write an encouraging note in the front and give it to him/her. The journal will be a great way to write goals down and also useful for some of the ideas I sent last week. My son Charlie still has his from years ago. He likes to look back at it and see how far he has come. It’s a good reminder as to how much he has actually grown from this process - an ancillary effect that I did not realize until just recently.
5. Nutrition Education - Next week we will start to dive deeper into nutrition. While players are working hard on their hockey skills, nutrition will play a huge role in getting better and better. We will be bringing in a sports nutritionist to help make sure each team is on track. She is currently creating a presentation that I will send out to you all, but before we do that, she would love to know if there are any specific questions that she should be covering. If you have any, please reply back to me and I will send the questions over to her.
6. Coming soon! Saint’s All Academic Team - We are working on an application form for the Saint’s All Academic Team. Excited to roll this out in the near future. Good effort and being the best version of yourself in school will only help each player reach their goals. “How you do anything is how you do everything”… we will strive to value this philosophy.
Pucks Deep #3:
1. Quote of the week:
“Goals achieved with little effort are seldom worthwhile or lasting.” -John Wooden
Talking points: Anything in life that is worthwhile comes from consistent effort. Failure will be a part of this and that’s okay. The reason many do not reach their goals is due to the fact that real goals are hard to achieve without great effort. It’s all about effort! I would argue, consistent effort.
2. Hudl and video use: I am working with the team liaisons to make sure every player is signed on to their team. If you have not done so or have any questions, please reach out to your team liaison. I’ve given them administrative rights and they can take a look at it for you.
We are also working on getting iPads to videotape the games. More to come on this, but we will need a parent group to take turns videotaping games. I am also working on uploading videos for the dynamic off-ice skills onto Hudl. Those should be up and running soon.
3. All Academic Team - I am looking for one parent volunteer per team to be on the all academic team committee. As an educator myself, I would like to be a part of this committee to help put together a proper application form for players if they would like to possibly be on this all academic team. You can reply to me on this email or text me if you’re interested in helping.
4. 8 levels of development:
Our Saints program has a very unique way to keep track of the development of each player and to make sure our practices are hitting the full player and not just certain aspects of a complete player. This of course is a long process and we will be able to track their progress from year to year.
Coming later in September, we will evaluate players and give them a progress report as to where they are with the eight levels. More to come on this also. We will dive deeper into these as we move forward…
8 Levels of Development:
Goalies:
1-puck tracking
2-lateral movement
3-edge work
4-angles
5-depth awareness
6-reading plays
7-compete
8-mental toughness
Forwards and Defense:
1. F1, F2
2. Battle
3. Puck protection/possession
4. Time and Space
5. Windows of opportunity
6. Decision making (skate/pass/shoot)
7. Converting opportunities
8. Mental toughness
Pucks Deep #4:
Quote of the week:
“Earn the right to be proud and confident.”
-John Wooden
Talking points with your player: Confidence and being proud of who you are starts and ends with effort. The harder you work the more confident you will become because you know you have put the time in… you earned it. The key word in this quote… “Earn”.
1. Practice Schedules: there has been some recent changes to practice schedules for the upcoming week. Please check the website.
2. Hudl: the team liaisons have been working hard to get Hudl up and running. Game video is starting to go up on Hudl and each team is working on the best way to do that. Coaches will soon start to use the videos on Hudl as a teaching tool.
3. Dynamic Skills: I have added four dynamic skills videos to Hudl. Please have your player watch them and replicate as much as possible. They should be working on these 3 to 5 times a week. Much of these drills in the videos will be utilized during our off-ice dynamic skills sessions. We will continue to add more and more videos as we build a foundation of skills. Goaltending drills will be available soon also.
A note on the shooting progressions… These are challenging, and depending on the age of the player, they could be even more challenging. It won’t hurt to try them on top of any other shooting drills your player is already doing.
4. Nutrition update - we are looking to roll out our nutrition tips next week.
5. All Academic Team - our All Academic Team committee is working on an application process along with a rubric so that we can fairly evaluate players at all different levels of their academic journey. It’s not an easy task, but they’re doing a great job.
6. Wooden reading for the week… along with the readings that were in our culture rules, I would like the players to continue to utilize the Wooden book. I’ll be recommending a certain passage each week. Please read with them and discuss how it pertains to their life journey.
This Week: The Laws of Learning(page 144)
7. Journaling and goals… I was able to talk to some parents this weekend about their player’s journaling as well as goal setting. If anybody is willing to take a picture of a page from the player’s journal and share it with me, I would love to be able to celebrate the journaling of our players.
Pucks Deep #5:Quote of the week: “Life’s not fair, deal with it.”
We are breaking from the Wooden book for the quote of the week this week. This is the first lesson that I teach each of my kids when they’re old enough to understand.
Life will not be fair. Or at least life won’t seem to be fair at times. How we deal with this adversity will define our future path. We talk a lot about the gift of adversity. It may not seem like a gift at first, but if we reflect on difficult times, even when they are not fair, we are able to grow, not just as hockey players but as human beings.
24-hour rule:
I spoke about this at most of the parent meetings, but would like to reiterate here in case I missed any of the meetings or did not clarify. The 24-hour rule is put in place to allow people the time to reflect on any questions or issues they might have. If at the end of that 24 hours a parent would like to still contact a coach or myself, we ask that you send a text message that you would like to speak to us. We will either set up a phone conversation or an in-person meeting. I have found through my 30 years of coaching, this is the most productive way to communicate properly, to solve problems, and build relationships.
To this end, if you have a problem you would like to address with the coach, once the 24-hour grace period is over, please reach out and ask if you could speak to him or set up a meeting. If it’s a situation that you do not feel comfortable talking to the coach about, your second option is to reach out to me.
If a message is sent within the first 24 hours, we will not respond. After the 24 hour period, a phone call or an in-person meeting will be set up. This process will be strictly adhered to.
Nutrition Update: Our tips for nutrition will be presented next week. We have hired a nutrition specialist who is putting together a personalized presentation for the Saints that will be sent to each of you. Thank you for your feedback prior to the creation of this presentation.
Training weekends…
We just finished a training weekend for some of the age groups. I’ve had a lot of positive feedback on these. Each team had three sessions in one day. That’s a lot of ice time for one day! We will continue to build on these training camps moving forward.
Wooden reading for the week:
Page 74: “ Characteristics of a team player”
This will be another great topic for the players to journal on. To this end, thank you to Michael LaRocca for letting me share some of his journaling from the “Pucks Deep” prompts that we’ve been giving…Great stuff…
Pucks Deep #6:
Pre & Post Fueling Sheet Athletes
Quote of the week:
“Stay off the rollercoaster of emotions.”
Players and teams that can stay off this roller coaster are able to be much more consistent. With every high there will be a low. On the bench we utilize the saying, “Relax, release, reload”. Discuss with your player the benefits of not getting too high and not getting too low during practice and competition.
Wooden Reading:
Page 88: “Being Too Competitive” … this goes along with our quote of the week. Would love to see the players read this and journal on it.
BK Development Coaches:
Our Bishop Kearney development coaches are starting to get out to games and practices. We are blessed to have so many layers to our development model, and this is just one more opportunity for the players to learn from different coaches. Each team will have the benefit of a BK development coach at least once a month at a practice and a game.
Nutrition Tips are here!
I know everyone has their own personal take on what is healthy and what is not. These are just some guidelines in case you are looking for some direction. I know with my kids it’s a constant battle to educate them on nutrition and the benefits it has to helping them stay healthy and also reach their potential. There is also a PDF attached for quick reference. Nutritionist Cristina Caldwell (MS, CISSN) is also available if you would like to follow up with her with any questions. It is a little over an hour presentation. Please use it as a resource as you move throughout the season, and maybe even watch parts of it with your player if you think it would help. Nutrition education starting at a young age will have a ripple effect. Let’s start the process now.
Her email: Cristina@outfrontmultisport.com
Rochester Saints Nutrition Presentation and PDF:
Spring/Summer hockey:
Amazingly people are already getting information on spring and summer hockey options. From my experience with my own kids, my recommendation is this for the off season…
1. Find a weekly skills session where your player can skate and have some fun.
2. Continue the off-ice dynamic skills training
3. Spring/summer tournaments:
Optional… maybe do 1 or 2 for fun. If somebody tells you that you need it for exposure, they are full of it! Your child is in a program where our support staff and our model promotes players to the next level when they are ready. Remember… Every player’s path will look different.
4. Do other things! Burnout is real.
5. All kids are different. Talk to them about how much they would like to do and why they want to do it. Taking ownership of decisions
helps them to make decisions later in life. FYI… When my kids took a break from the rink, they always looked better when they came back from it!
With all of this stated, I am always available to talk about the journey. It’s probably the topic that I field the most questions on over the past few years. Please call anytime.
Hudl:
I’ve had some people ask me what the players should be doing with Hudl…
1. Watch shifts back… players can journal on success they have had in games. Maybe they noticed something they could’ve done better and they make a note on how they would like to do it next time. We want to continue with the positive mindset so we always turn a “negative” into an opportunity for growth.
2. If the coach makes any notations on the video, please watch those.
3. The dynamic skills videos are on Hudl and they should be watching those also.
Let’s keep pulling the rope together! Reach out anytime with questions.
Pucks Deep #7
1. Quote of the week:
“Success is a lot more meaningful when there is a great journey attached to it.”
Talking points: The process this time of the season is more important than the product. Discuss with your child the importance of focusing on hard work and routine every day. These skills will make them very successful in whatever they do. Process before product.
2. Wooden Reading: Page 101… “Persistence is Stronger than Failure”
Talking points: If somebody told you it will take 15 times to fail before you succeed, how would you handle those failures? Abraham Lincoln did just that. Failure is part of the journey. It is where we get better and where our persistence throughout the process will pay off. I would argue that one of the greatest presidents in our history was great because of his failures.
3. Parent Education:
Parents… USA Hockey does a nice job with some tips for parents. Please read through this.
https://www.usahockey.com/news_article/show/296673-coach-parent-relationship-a-responsible-approach
4. Progress Reports:Next week each of our coaches will be completing the first of three progress reports for every player this season. Each player will have a short one-on-one meeting with their coach. This is a great opportunity for coaches to provide personalized feedback, highlight each player’s strengths, and discuss areas for growth in a supportive environment.
Benefits of this approach include:
Helping players set personal goals and understand how to improve.
Encouraging open communication between players and coaches.
Boosting confidence by recognizing effort and progress.
Reinforcing a growth mindset.
We believe this process will support each child’s development both on and off the ice, and we look forward to seeing them continue to grow throughout this journey.
Pucks Deep #8
1. Quote of the week:
“The gift of adversity.”
Talking points: Success cannot teach you what failure can. If we look at adversity as a gift, we are able to take a difficult time, learn from it, grow from it, and eventually become stronger because of it. The absence of adversity creates complacency. Show your child this clip. Next time a difficult time is happening, you can just say “good “and we have just reframed the way we looked at a difficult time. I show this at the beginning of the season to my teams and I love it when a difficult time hits and one of the players simply says “good”…
https://youtu.be/IdTMDpizis8
2. Wooden Reading: Page 80, “Losing and Winning”
Talking Points: Losing is not all encompassing. Learn and move on. How do we do that? Discuss ways to learn from it and then forget about it and move on.
3. All Academic Team Application
Our academic application form will be out soon. When my sons went through the process of choosing a school, the same message was sent by the teams that were looking at them. Keep your grades above a 90% and your pool of schools you can choose from dramatically increase. We hope that this process will help student athletes understand the importance of not only doing well in school but being a good citizen and a well rounded human being.
4. Keep working on those off ice dynamic skills. The consistency of that routine will show up on the ice. It works best if you stay consistent.
Be a Saint!
