The difference between Wayne Gretzky and less productive wannabe’s was clearly his unparalleled rink sense.   This was demonstrated every game of his life in two ways: his ability to anticipate the next play before it even started and his creative decision making.

While it is commonly known that the greatest of all time has certain well-defined abilities, it seems incongruous that coaching philosophy hasn’t been shaped more by this knowledge. The prevailing trend is to ignore the process by which rink sense is learned — not even bothering to study the question.  Instead, we are content to believe that a player either has rink sense or doesn’t, and not much can be done about it.

Thankfully, scientists have stepped into this void. Recently Jennifer Kahn wrote in Wired Magazine about Dr. Peter Vint, a research biomechanist with the U.S. Olympic Committee, who is studying precisely how anticipation or rink sense is acquired (www.wired.com/science/discoveries/magazine/15-06/ff_mindgames).

Using some pretty creative research techniques (you may want to read about), Dr. Vint tested world-class tennis players and novice amateurs to determine how early in an opponent’s service motion they could anticipate the direction and spin of the serve.   Not surprisingly, they found that the best professionals knew one-third of a second before the racquet made contact with the ball, where the novices did not know until after contact.

More importantly, they found that instruction regarding anticipation did not help — and if the professionals were consciously trying to anticipate the direction and spin, they could not.  However, if they were distracted by trying to anticipate the speed, they were better able to anticipate direction.

In other words, anticipation works best when we are not thinking about what we’d like to anticipate.

Further research by Dr. Vint and other groups has shown that  in a sport like hockey – which is all about read and reaction – unstructured scrimmage or play activities are the best way to improve the ability to anticipate.

So now we’ve come full cycle.   The scientists have confirmed what we’ve known all along.   A young Wayne Gretzky acquired those special instincts by playing unstructured hockey games in his back yard.   In fact, all great players have told us that unstructured pond hockey scrimmages were their best learning experiences.   Yet coaching bibles have steered us toward structured drill-oriented practices.

Of course there is a lot to be learned through structured drills, because skating and other skills require rote repetition — by the hour — year after year.   But the most important skill — rink sense — must also be practiced by the hour.

Scrimmages are just as important as skill-oriented drills.   Scrimmages in small areas or on full ice — sometimes planned by the coach to incorporate specific teaching points, sometimes totally unstructured — are critical for the development of read-react skills. 

Instead, coaching has moved toward teaching structured systems, creating robots who might be in all the right places at the right time, but are totally brain dead when they get there.   This is not to say that developing systems is not a good start toward getting individuals to play together as a team.

But too much practice time spent on systems — too much structure — is likely to diminish the chances for players to acquire Gretzky-like rink sense.   The best coaches find a balance.

Bud Grant, former Minnesota Viking coach knew that too much structure — even in football, a sport that is by nature highly structured — might stifle the creativity needed to produce winners.  His definition of a great teacher (coach) was one who created the environment for students to learn, then allowed them to experience it on their own.

Grant’s greatest student might have been Fran Tarkenton, the last of the creative play-calling quarterbacks in the NFL.   Tarkenton actually drew up some pass routes on the dirt in the huddle — then scrambled around the backfield eluding defensive linemen while he found the open receiver downfield. 

This read-and-react ability was developed in exactly the same way Gretzky developed his – unstructured creativity.