Tryouts, camps, clinics, showcases. Regardless of when you are evaluating hockey players, the task can be seen as strenuous due to its time constraints, managing a large number of athletes, and even the administrative pressures. But with a streamlined process in place, you can reduce the stress & save time across all hockey evaluations.
In this guide, we share tips for how you can evaluate hockey players quickly, accurately, and most importantly, with confidence. With these measures in place, you can focus on what really matters: identifying top talent to build and maintain a strong team.
What Are the Problems With Evaluating Hockey Players?
As a coach, the 3 biggest areas that I saw in evaluating hockey players are:
Athletes almost never received any formal feedback on their performance after an evaluation.
Coaches spend countless hours doing data entry into spreadsheets and then have to try to make sense of the data.
Parents often feel dissatisfied regarding their kids’ placement decisions. However, coaches rarely provide parents with information to give them a better understanding of the criteria used to make the decision.
What Is the Best Way to Deal With Common Hockey Evaluation Issues?
Evaluations can be complex and come with many hurdles. We have discovered that a large number of these complexities can be solved by eliminating the use of paper and spreadsheets during evaluations. Not only do pen-and-paper evaluations waste hours of time, but at the end of it all, very little is done with the data, and very little feedback is provided to athletes.
For the past 10 years, we have developed a hockey player evaluation app to take away the pains that many coaches experience during evaluations. It’s amazing to think that coaches can now view instant rankings, compare players, and even track their players’ progression over time.
8 tips for conducting hockey evaluations
Ensure the skills being assessed are clear to evaluators. For example, “agility” could mean different things to different people.
Use a mobile evaluation app as opposed to pen and paper. This ensures easy and accurate evaluations of athletes.
Have a solid check-in process to make sure all registered athletes and walk-ons are accounted for.
Determine how many drill stations will be required.
Know how much time each evaluator will need to measure athletes at each station.
Use the player data that you collect to compare & rank players and draft teams (for tryouts only).
What are The Steps for Evaluating Hockey Players?
1. Communicate drills clearly
Transparent communication is a good practice for any coach. If you don’t communicate with players properly, you risk them putting extra effort into the wrong skills or simply not understanding the drills they’re being assessed on.
For example, let’s say you have drills that are focused on agility and speed when moving the puck. In this case, you will need to explain quick puck control instead of showing off fancy footwork.
2. Establish the proper hockey evaluation criteria
Before an evaluation begins, choose the relevant skills you want to evaluate your hockey players on. Ensure you are evaluating players across a mix of technical, tactical, physical, and even team skills:
Tactical skills- Positioning, anticipation, and game awareness.
Technical skills- shooting, stickhandling, passing, and skating.
Physical skills- strength, agility, and coordination.
Team skills- communication, work ethic, and coachability.
As mentioned above, ensure the skills being assessed are clear to all your evaluators. Host a debrief session ahead of hockey tryouts and run through each skill. Explain what a perfect ’10’ means. I.e., In skating, a perfect score of 10 would be a player who has powerful push-offs, a controlled glide, strong edgework, and smooth transitions. Taking the time to explain the scoring system and what to look for ensures each evaluator provides accurate & unbiased scores.
3. Select teams fairly (for tryouts only*)
Selecting teams is generally a challenging process that comes with a huge amount of bias and takes up hours. Picture this: After an evaluation, you have to sort through a stack of handwritten papers, transfer that data into Excel, and then format it into reports. Otherwise, how else will you accurately analyze performance data?
With SkillShark, coaches can make quick and unbiased decisions when forming hockey teams. Here’s how it works:
Access SkillShark’s auto-generated reports immediately after hockey evaluations. *Data from evaluators is stored on the back-end and formatted into reports ready for viewing.
Select which report you would like to view. See a high-level overview of your players’ rankings (view how they rank overall or within a specific skill), or select players to compare where their strengths vs weaknesses lie.
Use report data to make quick, effective team placement decisions.
View a high-level overview of players’ skills after a hockey evaluation
Wrapping Up
When it comes to your hockey evaluations, think SkillShark. An all-in-one app to score your athletes at any evaluation, access real-time player data, and provide customized feedback. What does this all mean for you? An easy, objective, and quick evaluation process that leaves you with strong team placement decisions.
Explore how SkillShark has transformed careers and organizations through real-life success stories. Join our community and streamline your hockey evaluations today.
The process of athlete evaluations used to take us 2-3 hours. Now, it is completed in under 20 minutes with SkillShark.
Tyler Stahl
Notre Dame Academy
We have streamlined everything, and immediately know who our top picks are for the upcoming season.
Kris Versteeg
Youth Hockey Coach
Player reports allow us to celebrate the successes of our athletes while providing them guidance towards their next steps.
Andrew Muir
Head Coach – Water Polo Canada
SkillShark software makes it easy for our coaching staff and guest coaches to record data and share it instantly.
Scott Searle
Softball Canada Coaching Committee Member
I wouldn’t even be able to calculate the time SkillShark has saved us.
James Mays
Technical Director, PA Minor Hockey
We really like how parents had their kids results as soon as they stepped off the ice.
Chris Chelios
Hockey Director, Chicago
FAQ — Evaluating Hockey Players
What are the common challenges coaches face when evaluating hockey players?
Coaches often encounter several challenges during the evaluation process, including:
• Lack of formal feedback for athletes after evaluations.
• Time-consuming data entry into spreadsheets.
• Parent dissatisfaction with placement decisions and a lack of information on player development needs.
How can hockey software streamline the evaluation process?
Modern technology, like the SkillShark App simplifies player evaluations by providing instant performance report cards to young athletes. Parents can also gain insights into their child’s development needs.
What criteria should hockey players be evaluated on during tryouts?
hockey players should be evaluated on criteria such as physicality, technical skills, hockey sense, knowledge, adaptability, attitude, and teamwork.
What are some key tips to ensure a smooth hockey evaluation?
Here are some tips for conducting effective hockey player evaluations:
• Incorporate game-like situations into evaluations.
• Collect data during the evaluation rather than relying on memory.
• Use a mobile evaluation app instead of pen and paper for accurate assessments.
• Ensure that skills being assessed are clearly defined.
• Establish a smooth check-in process for evaluators, players, and volunteers.
• Plan the number of stations required and the time needed for each station.
• Use evaluation software to eliminate evaluator bias.
• Design evaluations that test the right skills.
• Utilize player data collected during evaluations for practice and game strategies.
How does SkillShark help coaches save time during player evaluations?
SkillShark streamlines the player evaluation process by allowing coaches to upload players, create teams, access pre-filled evaluation templates, and view instant evaluation results in report format.
How can SkillShark assist in hockey evaluations?
SkillShark offers tools and features that can enhance the evaluation process in hockey tryouts. It provides coaches with an efficient and transparent way to evaluate players and offer feedback. Coaches can evaluate players on any hockey-related skill, from passing delivery, forward skating, edge work, shot velocity, and more.
How can coaches better prepare for hockey evaluations?
Create an evaluation template well ahead of the tryouts. Hockey players should be evaluated on their skating, puck skills, shooting, work ethic, and dexterity.
Neil Anderson
As an engineer from the UofS, I’ve spent 30 years focused on optimizing industrial processes like mines or manufacturing facilities… combine that with my love of playing or coaching competitive softball the majority of my life, that’s where I saw the need for SkillShark.
I took over the U18 Softball program in 2016 and saw the evaluation process was archaic and the way gathered data that was being used to decide team placement could be vastly improved.