In this episode of 'The Next Next,' host Jason Jacobs explores the intricacies of athlete development with Matt Whitney of IPH Hockey. Matt discusses his transition from player to coach and the evolution of his philosophies on player development. They delve into the state of hockey, covering topics such as skill training, the impact of technology, and the balance between individual skills and team play. Jason and Matt also talk about the role of parents in youth sports, the importance of maintaining fun and engagement, and the future of IPH Hockey. The episode offers valuable insights for parents, coaches, and anyone involved in youth sports and player development.
The Intricacies of Player Development with Matt Whitney of IPH Hockey
In this episode of 'The Next Next,' host Jason Jacobs interviews Matt Whitney from IPH Hockey, a skills organization in Connecticut. They delve into Matt's journey from playing youth hockey to becoming a player development coach. The discussion covers IPH's inclusive approach to training, the balance between fun and skill development, and the influence of technology and social media on the sport. Jason and Matt also talk about the changing landscape of hockey, the importance of confidence-building, and maintaining a balance between individual skills and team play. The episode ends with insights on the future direction of IPH Hockey and Matt's personal reflections on coaching.
00:00 Introduction to The Next Next
00:29 Guest Introduction: Matt Whitney of IPH Hockey
01:02 Matt's Journey in Hockey
01:42 The Evolution of Player Development
02:48 Starting IPH Hockey
05:22 Philosophy and Training Approach
09:03 Balancing Fun and Skill Development
12:56 Parental Involvement and ROI
16:59 State of Hockey Development
19:35 Valuable Resources for Coaches and Parents
19:52 The Importance of Watching Hockey and Learning from Staff
20:57 Balancing Creativity and Consistency in Coaching
21:33 Training and Development of Coaches
22:47 Technology in Hockey: The Good and the Bad
26:17 The Role of Video and Data in Player Development
32:00 Future of IPH and Personal Reflections
34:09 Closing Remarks and Podcast Information
Jason Jacobs: [00:00:00] Welcome to The Next Next. I'm the host, Jason Jacobs. This show sorts through the nuances of athlete development through the lenses of a dad who's trying to sort through those nuances. For my own kids, but also as an entrepreneur who's building my next company in the category, a digital platform that offers high-end player development at a more affordable price per kid and family, using technology to automate a bunch of what's happening under the hood.
Today's guest is Matt Whitney with IPH Hockey. IPH. Hockey is a skills organization in Connecticut that offers. Private lessons, small group lessons, skills camps, both at their own mini rink, but also across the state. Now I got to Matt through Pete, Gintoli at Tabor Academy, the assistant coach there who told me that he worked under Matt at IPH, and Matt taught him a lot about how to be the high-end player development person that [00:01:00] Pete turned into today. We have a great discussion in this episode about Matt's journey in the sport playing at Franklin Pierce. And then at St. Mike's we talk about his transition to player development, where he started, how his views have evolved over time. We talk about his philosophies, how they try to keep it fun and how they're inclusive.
They train some very high end players and they train. Some younger players earlier in their journeys and everything in between. And we talk about what's consistent across those age groups and skill levels and also how they personalize the approach and, and do it different, based on players' individual needs.
We have a pretty far reaching discussion about. The state of the sport, what's going well, what's not going well, what Matt's seen in terms of what works best from a player development standpoint and where Matt thinks the sport is going. I enjoyed this one and I hope you do as well.
matt Whitney, welcome to the show.
Matt Whitney: Thanks so much for having me. I [00:02:00] appreciate it.
Jason Jacobs: Thanks for coming. You, you hope, hopefully you live up to the hype. I had Peach and Toley on the show, and we had an awesome discussion assistant coach over at cer, and he said that that, that you trained him in in how to be a skills guy and he.
Credit to you and can't speak more highly of you.
Matt Whitney: Very generous with Pete.
Jason Jacobs: yeah, so psyched to psyched to learn more about the the man and the myth.
Matt Whitney: Yeah, right on. No, we're, I'm excited to be here Now Pete's, Pete's a really good man, and, he's given me way more credit than I need, but thanks Pete. Pete came to us pretty well polished as it was. It's, it's, it's that whole thing of good players make good coaches, right?
But we, we definitely have a bit of a, like a philosophy on things. But, pizza sponge, that guy student of the game, that guy.
Jason Jacobs: I definitely wanna get into the philosophy. Maybe before we go there, just talk a bit about your journey as a player and when, and how and why you transitioned into into being a coach.
Matt Whitney: Yeah, sure. My, my my journey's nothing too [00:03:00] crazy. Started off playing youth hockey and then I was fortunate enough to make the whole tier one thing when it was, time back many, many years ago. I
Jason Jacobs: up in Connecticut, is that right?
Matt Whitney: I grew up in Connecticut. Yep. I was a Connecticut guy, so I did the whole thing down here.
And I was fortunate to go to prep school. My, my parents worked very hard to get me there. And then I played junior and played in college and that's it. That's, then here we are. That's, that's kind of it. I was lucky enough that when I was playing in college. Doing like lessons and that sort of thing was always a really good kind of side hustle, if you will.
So I was doing lessons in my, late teens, early twenties, and
Jason Jacobs: was summers.
Matt Whitney: summers. Yeah. You'd come home in the summer and you'd grind it out as much as you could for about eight weeks, 10 weeks, and then, save up and get back to school. It was, it was great. We we essentially started our business back then a little bit, if you think about it. 'cause we were laying the framework for what we have now and we're, we're very lucky to have what we have now.
Jason Jacobs: [00:04:00] And and, and when you, when you were growing up,
Matt Whitney: Yeah.
Jason Jacobs: I guess at, at what point did you decide to get serious about the game and what did as a player and what did the landscape look like for you coming up in terms of like people like, like yourself with your IPH had on were there a lot of skills shops around?
Did you do a lot of development outside of the, outside of the team based stuff? What the landscape look like then and how does that compare to, to what today?
Matt Whitney: Yeah, so I was, I was probably a peewee or so when it was time to quote unquote get serious when I made the jump from just town youth hockey over to the, the tier one triple A thing. And the reality is it could not be more different now than it was back then. The amount of. Skill coaches that we have now nothing compared to the way it was back then.
I think, I, I don't think I did my first, private lesson that I actually participated until I was probably 18 or 19 years old. Now our players have so much more [00:05:00] access to, to skills and training. It's, it's, it's fantastic. It all can also be very muddy and murky and hard to navigate.
But yeah, no, it's, it's completely different, not just the skill piece, just the amount of teams, the amount of option for kids nowadays, or, it's nothing like it was 30, almost 30 years ago when I was growing up. Very different.
Jason Jacobs: And, and so tell me about the progression of IPH. You mentioned that, that it, it got started when you were when you were still in school, but yeah, like I, maybe, what are the key chapters in that journey looking backwards and where does it sit today in terms of what you're up to, how you do it?
Matt Whitney: yeah. So I, I I was, I was fortunate to, to start this company with one of my, my best friends. Mike Carter, he he, he, he and I both did lessons and just merged together, if you will, years ago. And we're really, really lucky that we got to we, we, we started off.
We got lucky because hockey went the way we were going, if [00:06:00] that makes sense. Like it wasn't really an industry when we started, there weren't, yeah. Instagram was just getting going. There was no, that didn't, it wasn't really a thing. So we, we started and, and our infancy is just the two of us going.
And we we brought some, some folks on that were local people that we knew. To work with us in the summers and that sort of thing. And it was a big summer training type stuff. So when we weren't playing we, we'd be training and we melded our own training into some lessons and that sort of thing.
And it fortunately turned into what it is today. It's like I said before, we, we were very lucky that hockey went the way it did. If it went into the nineties, everybody just got big and started hitting a little bit more, and a little, I don't wanna say tougher, but tougher in some ways.
We, we wouldn't have what we have today. There's no doubt we wouldn't be able to have the staff that we have. And, all the, the, the rink we were, we would, there's no chance 'cause hockey went in the, the right direction for us. Let's put it that way.
Jason Jacobs: I, I feel like skills training when I was in college was like. Run four laps around the track and and do some bench press and [00:07:00] creatine.
Matt Whitney: Yeah, it's, it's way more fun now, isn't it? It's way more fun now. No, I, it was the same for you, but like the, the on ice like wasn't really as much of a focus when we were younger, it was more about the gym stuff and we're, we're big believers in that still. Sounds like we're talking about both sides of our mouth, because all we do, we only do ice stuff.
We partner up with some fantastic gyms in the area and they do a great job. But we still tell our players like the, the, the gym, the off ice is really where you need to make your gains in the summer. But the reality is now I need to make some gains on the ice too. So back when it was, I don't know, let's say it was.
90 10, right? 90, 90% in the gym, 10% in the ice, maybe 30 years ago. Now it's it's way closer to a 50 50. Now whether or not that's a good thing or not, we're still figuring that piece out, but there's way more on ice components that your summer training now than it used to.
Jason Jacobs: And what what are [00:08:00] your focus areas as of as a firm? Is there a a typical type of player that you work with, a typical type of age that you work with? Portfolio approach? Maybe just talk a bit about who you serve.
Matt Whitney: Everybody. That's the that's the bottom line here with what we do is we work with everybody. We're really lucky that we, we pride ourselves on that. We'll have a, a player that, as a division one, either a commit or they're on a, playing division one right now. And then 45 minutes later you're gonna have a a 6-year-old that has a straight stick and can't skate backwards or stop on their left foot.
So we, we really have tried to pride our brand on, being accessible to all players. 'cause, hockey's hard, hockey's, it's expensive and it's, we wanna be inclusive to anyone that wants to get better. And we always feel like if we help grow the game, it's, it's better for for everybody.
Jason Jacobs: And, and what type of formats I, I know we talked a little bit about this offline, but is it mostly. Group stuff. Do you do privates? Are there certain philosophies that you ascribe to [00:09:00] as it relates to the way that you run your, your sessions?
Matt Whitney: Yeah, the philosophy is really simple and it's gonna sound very I dunno if it's lame, but it's just have fun and love getting better. And if you don't enjoy your session with us, right? We always say your kids should come off smiling and sweaty. So if you did both things, then we helped contribute to the game.
We help that kid get better that day. Not to go off on a tangent on it, but the reality is, life's pretty hard sometimes. We all know, and we want the 45 minutes that the players have with us to be like their little escape, right? So we, we joke around a lot, maybe too much once in a while, but there's a, our, our brand is, it's, it's, you enjoy it.
And we also feel like mean, God, if you don't enjoy what you're doing, you don't wanna dread doing it so you, you get better when you're enjoying yourself. So we push kids really, really hard. We're always getting them outta their comfort zone, doing things that they're not they're not good at or they're good at, but can be better at.
One of the first things we generally ask a player when they come [00:10:00] see us, you, whether they're eight or whether they're 18. Tell me something that you're good at and tell me something that you're not good at, and then we try to go from there. But it's an interesting thing. You, kids get frustrated.
We always say to them, look, if you were good at all this, you wouldn't, you wouldn't need to come see us, right? The whole point of you being here is to do things that you're not good at. And that can be a difficult thing, right?
Jason Jacobs: What are some examples of some ways that you found are effective at keeping it fun? And maybe the opposite question too. What are some examples of what not to do?
Matt Whitney: Yeah, so keeping it fun is, I would say constant PG style chirping. The more we joke around, we have fun with the kids and be self-deprecating on our end, like that's really it, right? Just think about it like if you are working with an adult and you're a kid. And that adult isn't smiling and isn't energetic and isn't making, your experience fun are, are you, you're not [00:11:00] gonna enjoy that.
So the, the first thing is trying to, we, we tell our new instructors, I. Keep it pg, but find a, find a way to make that kid smile in the first three minutes, whether it's you throw your glove at 'em 'cause they mess up or something like that, or whatever, make some kind of joke, or that's what their favorite food is.
It, and the truth is it's usually completely non hockey related. It's usually something out of the norm. And then once you break down that little barrier, you can connect with almost anybody, right? As soon as you have a little bit of comfort in a, conference level and then you know, the, in terms of what, what doesn't work, right?
We, we find that it, it doesn't work if. And I gotta be very careful how I word this 'cause I don't want people to think that we're just we're just there to joke around for 45 minutes 'cause it's expensive. But if, if you're, you're, if you're so serious in what you do right, that you can't, how do I word this the right way?
But you can't either listen [00:12:00] to feedback from a player or a parent, or. If you can't connect with that player or a parent, because as a coach, then that I don't, that never works. I'm not sure if that's something you've heard or not, Jason, but we we're big believers in learning from the from the kids that we train and we ask, especially our older players say, does this work?
And oftentimes they'll say, Nope, not gonna work. And we say, all right why? Tell me Because you see the game differently. Than I do. You see the game from somebody that's trying to knock you down and take the puck away from you. We see it only from the outside looking in. So I'm not sure if they answered your question or not.
Hopefully it did a little bit, but that's really what we see doesn't work. When, when you get your, when you let your ego get in the way of of coaching, we find like that's probably, that's probably the biggest thing that keeps folk from either continuing to work for us with us or new hires, if you will.
Jason Jacobs: Uhhuh. And one of the things that I've seen is just so different today relative to when [00:13:00] we were growing up is is just the, the parental involvement and and as. As it becomes club and as the geography's more distributed and as your teammates don't live near you and the parent needs to do a bunch of driving and it's getting more expensive and it's getting more competitive and, and and so I think the investment in terms of dollars and in terms of time has gone up, which then makes the parents say, what am I getting in return? Almost looking at the kid like a product. Which means more pressure and less fun. And I think the flip side of that is is like. Instilling habits and helping the kid to, work towards achieving mastery and keeping them out of trouble and giving them confidence when they're good at something.
And I think there's a bunch of benefits come that come from, kind of the, the, the structure as well. But how do you, how do you think about that tension and, and what are, what have you seen that falls into kind of the healthier, unhealthy category for parents that are trying to navigate
Matt Whitney: Yeah. So we have this discussion all the time. Fir the, first of all, we, we, half-heartedly say. [00:14:00] In some respects to an extent, and I'm gonna very, asterisk extent hockey parents have earned their crazy a little bit, right? So you're gonna give up every single weekend that you have, right?
For the x amount of years you're gonna give up how much money? 'cause it's in, you're, you're spending a lot of money on this sport, nevermind just a regular season. But the outside of it it's a ton, right? So then we say, I've got, I've got kids. The reality is you would do. Anything you can for your kids, right?
So you do that, but you also give up a little part of you, in some ways. And that's what we choose to do as a mom and a dad, but at the same time, it's going to, it's going to eat India a little bit, so to speak, right? It's gonna, it's gonna give, you're gonna think about, man, I could've been home this weekend instead of going to Rochester and played in that showcase where we had whatever.
TH six kids on the bench in total. My kids are gassed. I'm gassed. Could have gone to the beach, right? There's no chance you're not gonna have that conversation. So what we talk about is the ROI you get from it. And the where we see the biggest problem is [00:15:00] families that want the ROI in a quick and 100% hockey related return on investment.
Okay. The reality is, and this goes back to a little bit our vibe and again, how we joke around and our biggest thing, what we, we talk about a lot is confidence building. And you're only, you're only gonna be successful at things if you're confident, right? For the most part. And if you can instill that, if your ROI is, wow, my, my kid is a.
Better human being for all this extra work they're putting in for all this extra time, they're better in the classroom because they know how hard they have to work on the ice, and they understand that they don't get the ice reward if they don't get, the classroom work done. We, we were talking yesterday about this with with a, with a friend of ours, the team aspect.
So you get put into a. Small group in your classroom, let's say at, you're in, sixth, seventh grade, and you're a really [00:16:00] good teammate in your group because you're a really good teammate on the ice, because you learn how to work with other people, and that translates into high school and that moves on to the real world, right?
We always say H hockey is a great microcosm for life. It's just this small little, compartment of what it is. We're not all gonna like our teammates, right? We're, it's not gonna happen. We're also not gonna all of our coworkers, but at the end of the day, we have to work together so that we can achieve those same goals.
And we, we think that's the ROI. And it's, it's less about, just saying Johnny did that, seven private lessons in the last three weeks and he, he, he didn't score six goals this weekend when why you I'm quitting a grand. Where am I? Where am I getting it back?
Maybe you're getting it back that Johnny worked really, really hard and he understand that maybe he didn't get six goals, but his shot got better because he put into an put an effort in, and then maybe you learn that, maybe the seven lessons wasn't. It wasn't worth it. Maybe the ROI would've been you taking two of those days off and you went out and played mini golf.
Jason Jacobs: [00:17:00] There, there's there's some people that say that, that the US has it wrong in terms of 80% games and 20% skills. And if you look at places. In other parts of the world, it's, it's flipped and it's, it's much more time on individual development. But then there's another narrative that says that the, that the kids are getting so overkilled individually and they're, hockey sense isn't keeping up.
They're not watching enough hockey, they're just seeing the Instagram clips of kids doing the Michigan and stuff. And, and they're not learning how to play as a team, especially because they're probably switching teams every season or or every other season. How, how do you think about the state of development and, and what the right balance is?
And the answer might be it depends. I'm just curious how you think about it.
Matt Whitney: Yeah, no, I mean the, the reality is I'm, I'm gonna quote a friend of mine here who owns a great skills company, Chris Riano let the kids play. I, I think [00:18:00] we're, we, we have, and we are, we're guilty of it, right? So what we do is skills. I, I think there, there, there's a huge balance of creating better hockey players and then just creating robots, right?
That's really, really difficult. Kids have to make decisions. And there's only so many times you can say, okay, go around this cone to the left. What do you do when that cone starts to move at you when it's, 190 pounds and it's going faster than you are and wants to knock you down? How do you adjust to that? The only way is two ways really. There's not only way 'cause that's, we wanna be careful 'cause you're only limited by your creativity. First it's, gameplay. And then, two, it's, it's creating game-like scenarios in your training sessions that might register when the game, when the puck actually drops, right?
So you're trying to recreate certain environments, if that makes sense. Certain environments, certain scenarios that come up often. But the, the truth. Every, everyone is still different, right? All those scenarios are still a little bit different all the time. [00:19:00] There's no black and white, it's not it's not football and I don't want, I, I don't know enough about football, so I'm casting some aspersions probably here, but it's not like you just draw the, John Madden plays up.
Excos here. Oh, goes here, and this is what happens. Black and white, right? There's so many X factors with hockey that you have to be able to read it and make those choices. And I, and I really think. You learn a lot of that through free play type scenarios.
Jason Jacobs: When it comes to recreating those scenarios like you were describing where do you get your inspiration from? Is it just school of hard knocks? There's no substitute for experience and it's all trial and error. Are there books or are there courses? Are there. Are there mentors that have been particularly valuable?
Like if, if for the coaches listening or, or even the, the moms or dads for that matter that just wanna, wanna, wanna help their kids, what advice do you have?
Matt Whitney: There's two, right? There's two really big things that kick out to me anyways. One is watching hockey. And being a student of the game. And, the more you watch, the more you like immerse yourself in [00:20:00] it. Certain things happen over and over and over again, again, with the caveat that they're always a little bit different.
So I wanted to, being a student of the game and then, personally I'll talk about myself, but. It's our staff, honestly, like I learned everything. We've got about 14 plus instructors on our staff, and yesterday we had a group of, I think 13 or 14, really, really nice players prep school, college junior players, and we had four of us out there.
And, one, one coach is running the drill and the other one comes over and says, Hey, what do you think if we add this? Because this might happen here. And that might, that's just amazing. That's the home run for me, is I, I get to live in an environment that's constant professional development. Right?
So again, those are really my two answers. Watching, watching the game, getting immersed in it, and then, being around people like Peach and Toley who are also students of the game and just love it. And again, I'm spoiled that I get to be around a, a fantastic staff all day long.
Jason Jacobs: That made me think of a, a, a different question I haven't thought of [00:21:00] before, which is when you add staff, you, you talk about for the kids the whole robots versus free play and that they need to learn how to think for themselves. How do you balance that with your staff in terms of consistency of quality of the brand and, and giving the instructors the ability to, and the, the liberty to be creative and try
Matt Whitney: Yep. Yep. So it's a, it's a, it's a very difficult balance and we're incredibly lucky to have a fantastic staff. I've missed over the years, no doubt. Some, some folks just weren't, weren't a good fit. And, that's, that's on me to, make that call. But the, but the, the reality is we, we, we train our coaches.
When they come into us we train 'em, we, we bring 'em in as the extra coach, if you will. We have 'em shadow lessons. We'll even take a day or we just call 'em PD days and we'll bring in three or four kids at no charge for their lesson. And we'll just run sessions together and we'll say, Hey, this works, try this.
Don't try this, do that. [00:22:00] That didn't work because of this and the big thing is a lot of these coaches, which is very cool, they bring their own sense of the game to us. So we learn from them too. So there becomes a point where there is basically no, or to very little like direction from us at some point, it's go do your thing, we trust you. But there is definitely some training involved, no doubt.
Jason Jacobs: Do, and you have your own facility, correct?
Matt Whitney: We do, yeah, we own a, a studio rink. It's great. It's, it's, it's about the size of half of a, a zone. So if you, divide it an end zone in half. And then we we use rinks all over the state of Connecticut. We buy is at four or five other facilities. So we're, we're we're lucky to have a bunch of different places to work out of.
Jason Jacobs: Huh. As technology continues to infiltrate the sport, and all aspects of life for that matter what are some aspects of technology that you're excited about and what are some [00:23:00] aspects that that you could do without?
Matt Whitney: a yeah. That's a great question. So can I give the same answer for both, so to speak? I'll say the first thing I don't, I don't know if it's technology, but I'm gonna say social media. I dunno if I can throw that out there. We have we have this little expression here. We're, we're lucky our staff works so hard.
There's a lot of, in the summer, 10 to 14 hour days. And we get what's called we call it drill dry. Where it's, we're, we're just like, like anything too much ice cream, right? So we, we, we either talk about, okay, talk to the other staff, think about what we can do to get outta that little funk or go on, go on Instagram and check out what other people are doing and see if it's something that, okay, I like that.
I don't like this. I could apply that here. And sometimes it's just for inspiration, right? And I think that's really, really cool. The downside there's a couple downsides, but to social media is. We get obsessed with it a little bit, right? The, the worst thing we see [00:24:00] is for the kids. This, it's a little bit about development, but it's more about the mental development of it.
Johnny, Johnny Jones is playing on a, a really good prep school team, right? He's a really good player. He is got a, good future ahead of him, let's say, or her, and they're on social media and they see, Sammy Smith commit to X School. And you're saying, what, what do you mean I'm, I'm, I'm way better than that kid.
Why, why is that kid going there? And then they start to snowball from that, right? They're seeing other people in their age bracket commit to schools when they're not. It makes them stressed out. 'cause they're concerned about, where am I gonna go if all these slots are filling up?
Why, why am I not getting the phone call? And it becomes very, very danger. And this is a whole. Topic of, society maybe than anything else, but it was very dangerous and very easy to compare yourself to other people, not only in, the next town over, but in the two stalls next to you in the locker room.
And that can be really, really tough. And what, what some kids don't understand is that at that [00:25:00] highest level, and let's say division one, the, it's so finite that, maybe they are just looking for a lefty D man, and you're a righty. And that's, that was it. That's the only reason why they're, they're at that level that, for that particular team.
And I think that kids can get obsessed with social media in that regard. And it really gets in the way of them worrying about their own development. 'cause they try to pace themselves to others. And then the other side of it is, again, this is a good, bad, otherwise type of thing, but the, the fact that you only see the, the best things happen on Instagram, right? You don't necessarily see the the, the, the player that tries the 75 tow drags and then it goes the other direction. They get pickpocketed and the air team scores, right? So you never see the the negative side. You only see the glam, which is fun, right?
We all love seeing, people be successful, but the reality is something that works one out of 10 times, whatcha gonna do with the other nine. And the kids try to emulate people like the Conor McDavid of [00:26:00] the world who's just amazing, but we're not Conor McDavid, right? The, just the difference between a division three hockey player and division one hockey player.
Sometimes you train them very, very differently. So it's that balance of emulating people that you want to be like, and then also understanding that not everybody's like those players.
Jason Jacobs: And then similar question around a different side of technology, which is more on the player development side when it comes to. Using video when it comes to being data driven, when it comes to, it seems like things are going crazy in terms of tracking every little facet of possession and where the shots are coming from and and speed and what, whatever, there's probably 200 metrics, right? And and the, I guess the flip side is hey, loosen the grip and just go out there and play and be creative and have fun and like if you, if you get too mired in the data, it's just going to, you're gonna become paralyzed.
By it or you're gonna stiffen up and it's gonna ruin your game. How do you think about video and data as tools [00:27:00] for development?
Matt Whitney: Yeah, my, my answer would be, let's do both, right? Let's try to find a way to do both. I think that analytics are real, right? It's a math problem, so I think if, you know the, the stat says. What 50% of the goals come from this side of the ice on this particular goal? A right, it's probably accurate because it's a math problem, the reality is trying to find ways to use those analytics in the, we call it the gray areas of the game, right? Where it's not black and white, that's great that they're coming from that side of the ice. But if the if that team has decided to stack 2D man on one that same side all the time, whatcha gonna do?
You gotta find a way to work around it. So I think it's I think it's both, right? I think you have to be able to use the analytics to try to help your game as a, a student of it. And then as a team, I think you may have to, just, work, work around what is being thrown at you by the opponent, and then taking those analytics into account seeing where you can be successful.
Jason Jacobs: We talked [00:28:00] a a little bit about this offline, but I remember you saying that when you bring, you even said in this episode, when you bring a player in, you ask them. What they're good at and what they're not. And it's largely relying on their verbal input to inform what you work on. If you had access, and I think you said that that video would be helpful, but that there's just not any time.
If, if video was accessible to you in what form would it be useful and how would you utilize it and what are some of the barriers that are. Holding you back from getting it if you even want it. The answer might be, I don't, I don't want it and I don't need it. But yeah. How do, how do you, how do you think about that?
Matt Whitney: No, we don't shut the door on anything until it, hits us in the nose. That's the reality with us is we, we try to, explore every avenue that can help make us better as coaches and as trainers, if you will. I think that, we use video in our sessions all the time, so we have, we're doing a, a whole session right now where there's a 20 to 30 minute video session right after.
So we love it. [00:29:00] We're, we're not opposed to any of it.
Jason Jacobs: From the se from the
Matt Whitney: From the session. Yeah. And then we also have, clips of NHL players that they relate back to one another. Hey, this is what we worked on today and this is how it relates to this in the game. Here's what you did. Let's analyze your stride here for 20 or 30.
Not, as a group. But yeah, we love it. We love video. We think video's, very, very very helpful. And I think it's very good for kids to see what they do as opposed to just being told what they do. I think sometimes the visual goes a really long way for players. Yeah, we would definitely use it more, provided it fits in with aspects of our model, right?
So some of our private lessons, with, with the way that works, fortunately, thank goodness that we we stay busy with it. But if a, if a parent is able to, bring something to us, to the table and say, Hey, you got, here's, here's a minute and a half. Of what Johnny's having a hard time with.
Is there something you, is there a way you could tailor your lesson to this? That's fantastic. That's no problem. That's sometimes easier than us hearing. When [00:30:00] Johnny comes on the left hand side, his right leg points this way and left by point. And the parents are great and this is not a chirp on them, but sometimes they even have a hard time articulating what exactly they want to get across to us.
Jason Jacobs: Got it. And what about in terms of just point skills, like a shooting lesson or. Edge work or like that whole narrative that, the game is getting over individual skilled and, and, and, and under underdelivering relative to the individual ability. Are there types of individual skills that either aren't as helpful as people think or might actually be detrimental to, to, to a player's overall game in a team environment?
Matt Whitney: I, I don't know that the skills are detrimental, but it's probably the application, right? So I, I, gosh, I don't wanna be black and white about it, but I think you'd be wrong to say. Hey, if you're, if you get too any faster, you're gonna, it's not gonna be good for you, right? You can always [00:31:00] get faster. You can always shoot harder.
You can always do things a little bit more. You can always do a plus one on the attributes, right? Always add a little bit. Question is how do you apply that into your game and does it, does it change you as a player? Negatively, I guess is the way to put it. Which I think it probably can. I think if we do, let's say hard skills puck handling, right?
Let's say you, you go to town on your stick handling, you get way better at it, but now you're overusing it and you're not applying it in the particular areas that you need to. You could argue that that's a detriment, right? That kind of went the wrong way. If you're somebody that got so excited about your shot getting harder, but now you're taking everything from outside the dots and missing the net by 30 feet, that's not good either, right?
So there's probably a balance in there. I I, I don't think that getting better at the hard skills is a negative. I think that's probably always a positive. The question is how do you apply [00:32:00] it?
Jason Jacobs: What, what does the future have in store for IPH?
Matt Whitney: Hopefully wake up tomorrow and the ice is still frozen. That's always a big thing in our world when when you own the rink, that's, that's our little joke is how is that?
Jason Jacobs: it? Is it is Zamboni maintenance in your job description?
Matt Whitney: Oh gosh. Yeah. Are you kidding me? Oh my goodness. Yeah. No, absolutely.
Jason Jacobs: HVAC maintenance too,
Matt Whitney: Hvac, I, yeah, no, I, I learned way more in the last few years than I ever wanted to.
And again, thankfully we have such a great staff that is, they've taken it under their own, wings to learn a lot themselves. We do have some dedicated rink only people, anybody on our staff can drive our Zamboni at this point, so to speak. Just part, part of the deal. And yeah, there's a lot more.
To it, let's put it that way. I have a way better I guess appreciation or respect for when people complain about rinks ice or this or that and the other thing. There's a lot more to it, man. Let's put it that way. It's not it's not always super straightforward. Especially when it's 105 degrees out and things get a little steamy sometimes.
[00:33:00] But, but yeah, no, the, I I've learned a lot more about non hockey related stuff in the last two and a half, three years, absolutely. More than I wanted to know. Let's put it that way.
Jason Jacobs: And when you think about the future of IPH, what gets you most excited?
Matt Whitney: Yeah, just honestly, from the, from the selfish standpoint of me being able to do it still, me being able to connect with players and other coaches I feel very lucky that my life has been able to go in this direction. And I get to be around this great sport still every day.
In terms of of the company itself, from the, the business standpoint we, we'd obviously like to see. Continued stable, growth. And we, we'd like to give more coaches the opportunity we have. We have, we're very lucky that we're able to give coaches full-time positions here.
We're hopefully they can at least start to, feed their families and do that sort of thing, pay some bills off of it. And then if it ends up being a stepping stone to somewhere else, then that, that's also great. And we've, [00:34:00] we've personally I'm lucky that I've been able to feed my family off of it and, hopefully this is something that somebody else can do someday too.
Jason Jacobs: Great. Is there anything I didn't ask that you wish I did or any parting words for listeners?
Matt Whitney: No. I wanna thank you for having me on. First of all, I really, really appreciate it. I don't get this kind of opportunity very often, so it means a lot that you want to talk to me, Jason. I really appreciate it and it's, I think it's great what you're doing for hockey and for the game. I think the more we can expose people to, the way our, our sport operates, I think the, I think the better.
And I appreciate everything you're doing, so thank you
Jason Jacobs: Thanks Matt. I really enjoyed the discussion. Definitely looking forward to staying in touch and yeah, I'll keep you posted on my stuff. As it evolves, it's, it's a bit unnerving to be sorting through it publicly in this way. I feel a little bit like the emperor with no clothes, but you, you make the bed, you sleep in it.
And this is, this is the way I choose to build. One, one foot in front of the other.
Matt Whitney: That's exactly it, right? [00:35:00] That's you. You nailed it. Either all in or you're all out. And that's it.
Jason Jacobs: Yeah, and whether anyone's paying attention or not, the fact that I think that a lot of people are paying attention, holds me, that's, that's a little hack I found to keep me accountable,
Matt Whitney: Hey, perception's, reality, man. Perception's reality. If you
Jason Jacobs: huge following. I, people are dying to know where this goes,
Matt Whitney: That's awesome. That's awesome. But hey, sometimes wondering is enough, right? Sometimes just knowing that one person's interested is good enough to keep you going
Jason Jacobs: If I wasn't learning in public, we wouldn't have had this discussion because that's how I got to Pete. And then Pete's how I got to you and, and yeah. At any rate, best of luck and, , yeah, , go. IPH.
Matt Whitney: Speak to you soon. Bye now.
Jason Jacobs: Thank you for tuning in to the next, next. I hope you enjoyed it. If you did and you haven't already, you can subscribe from your favorite podcast player, whether it's Apple, Spotify, or any of the others. We also send a newsletter every week on the journey itself. The new content that [00:36:00] we publish, the questions that we're wrestling with, how the platform itself is coming along, that we're planning to build for player development, and where we could use some help.
And you can find that at the next next.substack.com. Thanks a lot and see you soon.