Top Tips for Evaluating Hockey Players

Share this article

What are the most efficient strategies for evaluating hockey players at tryouts? Every year, minor hockey associations undertake what is considered a fairly challenging evaluation process. This can be tension-filled and laborious, along with hours of data entry after the evaluation is complete.

In this article, we’re going to talk about how to efficiently conduct hockey player evaluations, some of the biggest challenges coaches often face, and what you can do to streamline and improve your evaluation process today.

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 Evaluation Issues?

Evaluations can be complex and come with many hurdles. We have discovered a large amount 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 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 player’s progression over time.

The Link Between Software and Player Evaluation

Player evaluations are indispensable in sports, and today’s technology has transformed how we approach them. Firstly, utilizing ice hockey apps, such as SkillShark, can simplify the player evaluation process, making team selection more efficient.

Secondly, coaches can track their players’ skill progression over a series of evaluations and integrate the proper drills into practices that will enhance players’ abilities.

Lastly, individual feedback provided to athletes through hockey coaching software can serve as the foundation for players to concentrate on their individual development. This holistic approach benefits the team and empowers each player to grow and thrive.

How Can Coaches Evaluate Hockey Players?

When evaluating hockey players, ensure you design an evaluation template that will test the right skills, such as skating, shooting, game sense, and passing. Secondly, take proper measures to eliminate evaluator bias and ensure that the skills being assessed are clear to your evaluators for accurate scoring. Some coaches even create a hockey practice plan for their athletes within the software.

8 tips for conducting hockey evaluations:

1. Ensure skills being assessed are clear to evaluators. For example “agility” could mean different things to different people.
2. Use a mobile evaluation app as opposed to pen and paper. This ensures easy and accurate evaluations of athletes.
3. Have a solid check-in process. Using the right team management software and evaluation software together can help ensure the process is smooth and organized.
4. Make sure you understand how many stations will be required.
5. Know how much time each evaluator will need to measure athletes at each station.
6. Use evaluation software to help eliminate the evaluator bias. Evaluation software, such as SkillShark, will help eliminate evaluator bias by using normalized data.
7. Ensure you architect an evaluation that will test the right skills.
8. Use the player data that you collect. The data from your evaluations will provide invaluable insights, that can be used to strategize at every practice and game.

Hockey Tryout Evaluation Template

A hockey tryout evaluation template is one of the most important pieces to get right during an evaluation. You will generally have two main categories, positional and goalie, to identify your players. Under each category, decide exactly what skills will be measured (this is fully customizable by your organization). Shown below are passing, skating, character, vision and shooting skills.

Above is a pre-built template taken from SkillShark. Coaches can easily edit this template to evaluate any skill and metric most important to them when evaluating hockey players. Within each skill, coaches can determine exactly what metrics will be measured.

Steps to Ensure a Smooth Evaluation Process

As coaches, we know the importance of planning out everything we do, and a good hockey evaluation or hockey practice plan is no different. The key things every organization should know well in advance of an evaluation are:

A. How do I assign numbers to each player?

Pre-assign numbers (i.e., 1-100) and have players come prepared with that number pinned to a shirt or written on their leg. Using hockey tape to create numbers usually does not work well as the tape falls off leaving no way to identify them. Before the evaluation, make sure you have uni-sized numbered bibs and pre-assign them to your players.

Hand out a unique-sized bib/number upon arrival at the event. This requires a registration station where someone records the number/color of the bib provided and records it on the website.


B. How many evaluators should I have at each station?

If measuring objective data (i.e., puck handling, skating times, etc.) you may only need one evaluator, but if you are measuring subjective data on athletes, you will want to have 2-3 evaluators on that station.

C. How much time will the evaluators require to accurately measure the performance of
each athlete?

Knowing how long players need to spend at each station is important to ensure scores are not missed, and that both kids and evaluators have enough time to ensure accuracy.


D. With the method that I plan to run each drill, will the evaluators have enough time to
record a score, and then see the next athlete fully?

People running the drills should communicate with the evaluators to get the right cadence. However, using SkillShark’s evaluation software, evaluators can quickly enter scores using their mobile devices or tablets, giving them enough time to enter data accurately.


E. Is there a reliable network connection at the location of the event?

SkillShark works in both online and offline mode. If you’re concerned about the network, simply download and open the app ahead of time. This will sync your evaluation before you leave the house and have evaluators do the same. You will then be able to easily gather and sync data to the SkillShark website when you get home.