In this episode of Puck Academy, host Jason Jacobs interviews Ken Martel, Senior Director of Player and Coach Development at USA Hockey. They discuss the evolution of youth hockey in the US, the principles of the American Development Model (ADM), and the balance between maintaining tradition and driving forward new initiatives. Ken shares insights into his journey in hockey, the challenges of coaching and player development, and the importance of maintaining both fun and high-performance elements in youth sports. Additionally, they touch on the impact of technology in player development, the role of parents, and the importance of a multi-sport approach for young athletes.
In this episode of Puck Academy, host Jason Jacobs speaks with Ken Martel, Senior Director of Player and Coach Development at USA Hockey. Ken delves into his extensive career in shaping American hockey, including his pivotal role in designing the American Development Model (ADM). The conversation covers the charter of USA Hockey, the state of hockey at youth, college, and pro levels, and key initiatives for the future of the game. Ken discusses the importance of age-appropriate training, the balance between research and practical application, and challenges such as the rising costs and the push for early specialization.
The episode provides valuable insights for parents, coaches, and everyone involved in youth hockey on how to foster a better, more inclusive hockey environment.
00:00 Introduction to Puck Academy
00:16 Meet Ken Martel: A Hockey Development Pioneer
02:32 Ken's Journey in Hockey
04:18 The Charter of USA Hockey
06:22 Balancing Research and Development
20:51 Challenges in Youth Hockey
23:34 The American Development Model (ADM)
37:23 The Minnesota Model and Facility Programming
38:26 Balancing Sports and Personal Development
42:55 The Role of Parents in Youth Sports
46:02 Age Categories and Player Development
48:24 Challenges in College Hockey and Junior Leagues
01:06:20 The Impact of Technology on Player Development
01:12:07 Final Thoughts and Advice for Parents
[Jason Jacobs] (0:00 - 2:45)
Welcome to Puck Academy, a show about how hockey players grow on and off the ice. I'm Jason Jacobs, the host, and each week I talk with players, coaches, and experts shaping the future of player development. Today's guest is Ken Martell, Senior Director of Player and Coach Development at USA Hockey.
Ken is one of the most influential voices in American hockey development. He's spent more than 25 years shaping how players and coaches learn the game, and in many ways, how the game itself is taught across the U.S. At USA Hockey, he's charged with building a national framework for developing not just better athletes, but better experiences for everyone in the game. Before that, Ken helped design and lead the American Development Model, which fundamentally changed how we think about youth hockey, moving from early specialization toward long-term athlete development, age-appropriate training, and a deeper focus on skill and creativity.
He's also been on the bench for nine world championships, including two gold medal teams, and spent years coaching with the National Development Team program, working directly with some of the best young players in the country. In this conversation, we talk about the charter of USA Hockey, Ken's journey in the sport, the state of hockey in the U.S. at the youth level, and at the college and pro level, and we talk about the key initiatives that are getting Ken most excited about pointing the game in the right direction for the future. Okay, Ken Martell, welcome to the show.
Thank you. Well, I'm so psyched that you made the time to speak with me. I emailed you cold.
Several of the guests that I've had on have told me that you'd be a fantastic guest, though. Dr. McGregor has been on the show. Nathan Bowen has been on the show.
Paul Cannata, who's not a guest yet but keeps promising me that he will come on the show, sends his regards. And I'm a little scared, honestly, because, well, first of all, the show's been on the shelf for a couple months as I've kind of retrenched it, but also I'm sure you talk to a lot of wonks that are students of the game and, you know, do this for a living. Like, I'm just a dad, and I'm trying to figure things out.
I grew up playing the sport, and the sport's changed a lot, and my kid's pretty into it. And so I'm trying to navigate as I go. And this show's for me to learn and for others like me that are trying to sort through it.
So me and I'm sure other listeners will be grateful for you taking the time to, you know, answer questions and share your wisdom. Great. Great.
Well, for starters, I mean, maybe talk a bit, Ken, about your journey in the sport. How did you find the sport, and what's kind of the Cliff Notes version of your path in the sport?
[Ken Martel] (2:46 - 2:54)
I grew up in Southern California. My dad had a little background in the sport growing up. He was from Medford, Massachusetts.
[Jason Jacobs] (2:54 - 2:57)
Oh, nice. I'm calling you from Brookline here.
[Ken Martel] (2:58 - 4:17)
There you go. So, yeah, and he showed up in California. He was working and somehow found out there was hockey, youth hockey, in the area.
Took me to the local rink, and sort of next thing is history. But I played all my youth hockey in Southern California, then left my senior year in high school. Back in the day, sort of there was no 18U hockey.
Youth hockey kind of stopped at 16, became junior after that. So I moved back to the Midwest and played in the USHL, got my scholarship to Lake Superior State, played at Lake State for my four years, and then got into coaching right away. My coaching stops at the university level were St. Cloud State, Michigan Tech, and the United States Air Force Academy, and then was decided to join USA Hockey's National Team Development Program in their sort of second year of existence. I replaced Greg Cronin on their staff as he moved on to the New York Islanders. And I've been working for USA Hockey ever since, about 10 years with our national team program and doing things at that level and then sort of transitioned back to do coaching and coach development and player development and those things for the organization for probably the past 15 years or so.
[Jason Jacobs] (4:18 - 4:25)
And how would you describe the charter of USA Hockey? And how would you describe your current charter within the organization?
[Ken Martel] (4:27 - 5:36)
Well, USA Hockey is the designated national governing body of sport by the U.S. Olympic Committee, who gets their sort of right to exist through Congress and the Ted Stevens Sports Act and all that good stuff. So we're a member of the U.S. Olympic Committee, as well as the International Ice Hockey Federation. Those are our two sort of overseeing organizations that we participate under.
And then our charge is to run everything from, you know, youth sport all the way up through the Olympics. So we do national teams, but we're also one of the NGBs that does grassroots little kid hockey. And really, that's the bulk of what we do.
The shiny object off to the side is those national teams and all that. But really, we're a grassroots sort of volunteer-led organization with staff in Colorado Springs, some staff at our facility in Plymouth, Michigan, and then a few staff spread out around the country. And yeah, so our job is grassroots hockey, at least in my area.
[Jason Jacobs] (5:36 - 5:40)
What's your current charter in player and coach development?
[Ken Martel] (5:40 - 6:22)
I guess it's pretty obvious. Right now, yeah. So I oversee our player development staff.
We have a group of about seven regional managers that are around the country that get out and work with our clubs, as well as through our coaching education program. I help with content, content development. And then I do most of the research that is around sport and sport development for USA Hockey.
I'm involved with a fair number of projects, everything from working with National Hockey League programs to other federations to just internally in universities that are looking to do research around ice hockey.
[Jason Jacobs] (6:22 - 6:34)
And I guess this is more of a philosophical question, but how do you balance staying current as the sport evolves under your feet with helping drive the direction that the sport evolves?
[Ken Martel] (6:35 - 9:09)
That's an interesting one in that, so with my job and my position at USA Hockey, I do get to interact on a regular basis with all the other performance directors and people across our Olympic federations. I'm in touch with a lot of coaches that are within our own sport, other federations. We have a really good working relationship with a few other countries that we do things with.
And we have research projects going on, for example, with Sweden and Finland. Occasionally, we'll do some things with Canada. And so there's a network of people that are looking at different things.
And then we're fairly well connected, I think, in the academic world with different universities that do research. We have a project right now going on with the University of Toronto, for example, which does a lot of hockey-specific research in their Tannenbaum Institute for Sports Science. Joe Baker and his group.
We have people at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland that does some coaching development work. West Virginia University here, Michigan State University and their Center for Youth Sport Development. Karen Pfeiffer over there.
But we've got a fairly good connection with people across the youth sports landscape that we are on calls somewhat regularly with. So that's how we try and stay current on what's happening in sport, youth development, etc. And then it's our staff's job to try and figure out, well, what's noise and irrelevant for us and what might actually apply or what we might be able to do.
So then we look at how does this fit back in? How do we take what's happening at different levels and go back and apply it? Like even from our national team development program, which has spent about 26, 27 years, 28 years now, maybe, looking at how do we help teenage athletes be really, really good?
And while not all of that applies back to youth sport or youth development at the younger ages, some of it does. So how do we take what we learn there? I kind of equate it to maybe the Ford Motor Company having a race division.
And you go out and you tinker a little bit and see how to make the car go faster. And if there's something that you can bring back to the production, kind of let's do it. So a little of all that.
It's an interesting job.
[Jason Jacobs] (9:10 - 9:33)
So similarly, how do you balance the kind of research and R&D for the future with the tactical here and now over the next, say, 12-month calendar year? And then how do you prioritize on the research side? And then what does that actually look like tactically in terms of more of the short-term blocking and tackling that you guys do as an organization?
[Ken Martel] (9:34 - 11:07)
I would say predominantly what we're dealing with is on the near-term side. There's projects that we're involved in, but we're not doing the hands-on research. We're getting the academic community.
We're getting others to do that for us. So we usually start with a bit of a process. A question will arise, really, and we want that question to come out from ice level.
What's happening with kids and coaches and people that are at ground zero in our sport? And then when we find a question that we say, okay, well, this is pretty interesting. We have a group of people in the research side of things that we would go to, and we would say, all right, is there an answer that's currently out there that will help us sort of solve this problem?
And they'll go, and they'll look around, and they'll dig around and say, all right, well, yes, here's the information. And so they'll give it to us, or they'll say, no, that information doesn't exist. And do you want to look into it?
And we'll decide whether, yes, that's something we would like to pursue. And we kind of ask them, well, who might be the best people out there to follow up with that? And they would put us in touch with the right group.
And that's really the process. But we do spend most of our time really trying to improve our coaching program, trying to prove what we do day to day in the rinks with our staff. That's really predominantly the job.
So I just happen to be the conduit.
[Jason Jacobs] (11:07 - 11:15)
Any examples come to mind of an issue that kind of bubbled up that way and then ended up forming into a research project?
[Ken Martel] (11:16 - 12:49)
Yeah, I mean, right now we're looking at sort of net size for our kids, especially at the 10U. We've downsized, and it's pretty common for our programs not to use a full-size net at 8U. We have some intermediate nets that are used around the country.
But we look at 10U even, and you put those kids in a full-size net, and it actually changes the way they play. They don't move the same way as they probably will need to later on. So they're not working on the right technical movements, etc.
And then the players shoot at 10U. The net's so large, a lot of the kids just put their head down and throw the puck really, really high. So we said, all right, well, what is the right size net?
What's happening here? So we've got a group from three different universities that are actually looking at this right now and trying to determine, well, what's the impact for the goaltenders if we change the net size to something smaller? What is the right or should be the right size net for goalies at 10U?
And then how does it also impact the game? How do the players change? How do they adapt?
So that's something that's ongoing. But we were looking at just goaltenders, and we were getting some questions from the goaltending community and saying, this doesn't kind of look right. And she said, all right, well, let's go figure it out.
And that's an ongoing project right now.
[Jason Jacobs] (12:50 - 13:02)
And how much would you say of what you do is setting guidelines to be followed? I mean, mandate is too strong a word, but kind of a rule versus influencing without authority.
[Ken Martel] (13:03 - 15:14)
Yeah. So, I mean, that's the balance in an organization like us. Nationally, it's funny.
We don't have as many rules as people think from a national level. We have 34 state governing or multi-state governing bodies or affiliates. And they do put in rules that they think are best to fit their local areas.
So there is some complexity and deviation from what we have at the national level. But if something is going to be put in as a rule, there's a fairly lengthy process that has to happen. It has to go to our board.
Our board has to vote. And our board is made up of volunteers from around the country. People in the local ranks are the people that are nominated by their state and affiliate levels to come and vote on these projects.
A third of our board is made up of athlete representatives. Former players, players that within a reasonable amount of time have played on our national teams. So people that we would say are pretty knowledgeable about the game itself.
So those are, again, and then volunteers and others that vote. As staff, our job is to kind of execute along the lines of what our board and everybody else says. But we do have a fair, I think, our board's pretty good about allowing us to go and pursue things that when we see problems to try and go and help guide and fix those.
But it's never done in isolation. It's never, for example, Ken Martell's opinion that this is the right way to do. It's usually a very large collective of people.
And we were really fortunate that we have great relationships with our National Hockey League coaches, our NCAA coaches, people across various levels of the sport. And we try and gather a bit of a consensus before we go down the path with a lot of things. So there's a balance there, I guess, if that answers it.
[Jason Jacobs] (15:14 - 15:23)
Is Repurview equally spread across the more community-based nonprofit organizations and the privatized clubs?
[Ken Martel] (15:24 - 16:58)
So, I mean, the local programs that exist in our country get their sort of right to exist, I guess, their association code from our affiliates. So they're recognized by our affiliate organizations. And there's two predominant models across the country.
There's others, but one is the sort of volunteer youth organization that is a local board, and they rent ice from a local rink. And they try and run youth hockey in their local facility or across a couple, depending on where they're at. And then there's sort of their rink-run organizations, where it's the rink itself that has the association code that operates.
And both, you know, there's good and bad, so to speak, to every type of model. Both have their advantages and disadvantages. And we work with both.
Each one is maybe more or less prominent, depending on where you are in the country. Right? And, again, those are organizations that are sort of, they get their right to exist through our affiliates, not necessarily directly from us, even though they are then our, they're members of USA Hockey.
So it's an interesting hierarchy, so to speak.
[Jason Jacobs] (16:59 - 17:17)
And if you take a step back, looking at USA Hockey overall, what are the, in the state of the game, what are the aspects that you feel good about, and what are the ones that keep you up at night?
[Ken Martel] (17:18 - 23:34)
We've grown as an organization considerably. Actually, a significant portion of our growth came from about 1990 to maybe 2001, where we had huge expansion in minor pro hockey all across the country, in a lot of warm weather areas. And so a lot of ice surfaces and facilities were built in a lot of non-traditional areas through that timeframe.
So we saw tremendous growth. I can tell you that when I started working for USA Hockey in 1998, there were more players in the province of Ontario than there were in all of USA Hockey. So we've grown.
That's a really nice piece. We had a little bit of a decline in enrollment through the early 2000s, and there are lots of different reasons, economy and various conditions that were out there. And then we started our American Development Model Program in 2009, 2010.
We've grown considerably since then, which is really nice. And going around the country, one of my jobs used to be, I was player personnel director for our national teams, and I'd visit a lot of rinks. And in my spare time, I'm watching a lot of youth practices and what's going on in a lot of average programs across the country.
And what I can tell you is our coaching is better now than ever before. There's various degrees of this, but when I first started with USA Hockey, I'd go into youth rinks, and you'd rarely see a small area game or those type of live action. A lot of pre-scripted, pre-pattern sort of drills that we know are maybe less effective for learning and learning the sport.
That was pretty common. Now I can't go into a rink anywhere, at least with our better programs, and not see a significant portion of their training being done in a much better format. So, you know, these are really great improvements, and we see it right now.
We're the, that small part at the other, the shiny object at the other end right now is those national teams. It's pretty shiny. We're now the number one ranked country in the world in ice hockey under the IIHF rankings.
24, 2024, we had some really good success. This year in 2025, the best success we've ever had. We're the first country ever to sweep all three world championships at the senior level.
Para women and men in the same year. We're back to back under 20 world championships. We've got some under 18 wins, both boys and girls.
Again, things are going really, really good at that end. So, and that is a direct result of what happens day to day in ice rinks across the country. We just get those teams together for a couple of weeks for the most part.
So we're the beneficiary of what's showing up on our door. And that happens through all the things that have been going on. So those are the good things that we're seeing.
And we've got tremendous volunteers and people that work out there and some great coaches and those things. The things that keep us up at night are the expense in our sport. It is becoming very expensive to play.
We have a sport that the profession, and we're like a lot of other youth sports. I mean, again, as I said, I talked to my counterparts in swimming and volleyball and soccer and tennis. The youth sport industry is grinding up.
Yeah, there's some real challenges there around what's happening. And that professionalization has some good things. You know, certainly parents want things to be organized.
They want things to be done really, really well. The expectation, I think, on our volunteers has changed quite a bit. The expectation on our volunteer coaches.
I mean, sometimes it's becoming, I think, unreasonable. Sometimes from what people expect of someone that's got a full-time job elsewhere, that's coming in and donating their time to help with our children. So there are challenges across the board in that area.
And volunteerism is down across all sports. So, you know, how do we keep the sport less expensive? How do we help?
We want our children to have great experiences when they come out. As an organization like us, we know that it's one-tenth of one percent that end up at those higher levels. And the vast majority of people that play the sport, we want them to have the same experience we did.
We want them to fall in love with the game and be cradle-to-grave hockey players. We have over 70 national championships. There are people that play our sport and can play into their later years in life.
Like I do. And we want those people to come back and be coaches and administrators and referees and all these things. So, yeah, that's the goal.
But real challenges facing our sport right now just through the growth of the youth sports industry, which I said is both good and bad.
[Jason Jacobs] (23:34 - 23:57)
I'm no expert on the ADM. But from what I understand, please correct me if I'm wrong. It's more about inclusivity, growing the whole pie, no kids left behind, keeping it fun, avoiding over-specialization, too young.
So first, I want to calibrate. Is that all right, what I said so far?
[Ken Martel] (23:59 - 28:51)
That's a fair adjustment, but it's also about performance development. Our ADM started with our national team program that we have in Plymouth right now for our top 16 and 17-year-olds. And I was there early enough and maybe we made a few mistakes with how we were dealing with kids that age.
We hired a staff of very professional, very high-end coaches that were used to dealing with 20-year-olds and above, professional athletes. And then you come back down and, well, now we're dealing with 16-year-olds, 15-year-olds, 17-year-olds. Well, there's a difference.
And what do they need to accelerate their development? So we learned a lot of different things. We've certainly grown in how we operate and we continue to learn things.
But it's really about what's best for each kid at each age. What we do with 18-year-olds is very different from what we're doing with 8-year-olds. And so this started as looking at our high-performance program and saying, all right, well, how do we take what we're learning here and maybe replicate that or bring some of that information back with other teenagers?
And then when you started to dig in and look at what was happening, and this is sort of the race to the bottom in a lot of youth sports where people think, well, if it's good for the 16-, 18-year-old teams, then we should do it with our 14s. OK. And then, well, if it's good for the 14s, we should do it with the 12s.
And if it's good for the 12s, we've got to do it with the 10s. And now we're trying to do the same things and we get out of whack. So what are the things that 8-year-olds need versus our 18-year-olds?
And that's a bit of how we were looking at this. And so I can say that we've had some success. We still have a bit of pushback around the country and people that think, oh, no, this is the way I've done it.
And that's OK, I guess. But, you know, we are looking at it's not always about ice hockey. It can be about how it's delivered and how do children learn and grow and develop as athletes.
And that's why we're really proud of the fact that the United States Olympic Committee has adopted sort of the ADM for all of their sport governing bodies. And each sport is being asked to create their own sort of ADM development model aligned with certain principles that we know are really, really good for our athletes as they come along with the goal. I mean, that's the organization that's concerned about developing really good players and really good players and athletes that represent our country in all sports at those highest levels.
But what's really interesting is, for example, what's good for the next Austin Matthews or elite player in the NHL at those earliest ages is the same thing that's good for me. You know, the guy that plays in the beer and pizza league later on in life. You know, so it's not mutually exclusive.
So this is what we're trying to bring back. And, you know, the reason, like I said, that it's adopted across multiple sports is simply because, well, the technical and tactical in all our different sports are different. But how kids grow, learn and acquire sporting abilities is the same because they're human beings and we adapt similarly.
Not everybody the same, but similar. So we have a bunch of principles that we want to try and follow. And then I think our success has been that we haven't been so overly prescriptive.
We're not here to tell every coach what it is that they have to do with their with their players. I mean, every every team, you know, usually when I'm speaking to coaches, I ask, are there any teachers here? And a lot of them will say, yeah, you know, well, OK.
And you ask them, are any two classrooms ever the same? And the answer is no. Right.
So we always have to coach to the group that's in front of us. Right. And so your methods are going to change based on the individuals that you're working with.
But yet the underlying principles and how we operate. You know, to facilitate learning, those need to be, you know, to be that needs to be better. So.
That's my sort of overall pitch for what it is that we're doing.
[Jason Jacobs] (28:51 - 29:22)
So from what I can gather and my caveat to anything I say is correct me if I'm wrong, because I'm not nearly as close to it as you. But but that the data continually shows that specializing too early is detrimental. Yet it feels just as a as a family that there's continued pressure to specialize earlier and and and and earlier.
Why do you think that is, since that flies in the face of the data?
[Ken Martel] (29:23 - 34:19)
You know, we try and communicate the best we can, but it does tend to be the loudest parent or the loudest person on the ground in the local program that sort of has everybody's ear a little bit. The. Just a few years ago, the National Hockey League did it in the NHL and the National Hockey League Players Association did an internal study on membership.
The players that play at the highest level, 98 percent over 98 percent of the players in the NHL reported that they were multi-sport athletes till at least 14 and over 80 percent. So at least they're, you know. Sixteen.
But that message doesn't seem to hit hit home at at those youth levels. And. It's there's lots of different reasons, but fear of being left out, you know, it's.
And what you'll see is that the kid that plays year round at nine and ten. They are a little bit better come the fall and tryouts and whatever. But the kid that went and played baseball and soccer and did all those things in the offseason, if you don't have tryouts on a.
On a weekend and you actually spread that out over a month and a half, those kids, when they come back, they actually catch up and are almost just as good as the other ones. But we don't have the patience to do that. Or, you know, it's being driven by, you know, you need to come to my camp.
You need to come to play on my spring team. You need to come to do this. And it's that fear of being left out.
So, you know, I usually say follow the dollars. If someone's asking you that, you know, oh, you really need to come and pay more to come do this, then, you know, again, this is driving the cost up. It's it's doing a lot of things that are are not necessary in our sport.
But. You know, it's a free free market and a free world and people can do what they what they want. So, you know, and I see it a lot where it's the the parent of the kid that happens to be the best player early tends to have a lot of sway.
Well, what is your kid doing? Even though what I can tell you is it and I'll get calls and people say, well, you know, my kid's the best eight year old. And I usually in my back of my head, I'm thinking to myself, well, I'm sorry, because it is rare that the best eight year old, nine year old, 10 year old are the best 18 year old.
So there's a lot of research around that. In our sport, we really don't know who's going to be good until after everything shakes out in the wash through everybody goes through puberty. As a matter of fact, we're doing a lot of research right now on the biological maturity of our kids coming through.
And the early physical mature on time, physical mature, the ones that seem to have some advantages and get to stick or get opportunities. And late physical matures are not being included. And then there's some disadvantages even to being the early physical mature, because those kids start to rely on.
You know, their physical attributes. And they're solving they learn to solve problems like one way, size, strength, power, speed versus maybe thinking the game a little bit differently. And so when they get to puberty or they get they come out the other side and those advantages have been nullified.
They they struggle and fall by the wayside because they can't adapt. And so it's it's sort of that adolescent growth spurt is hampering development on both ends of the spectrum for us. So, you know, we're looking at some ways right now, all right, well, how might we how we give kids, you know, a little bit more information and tools so that they can adapt better is usually the ones that.
The players that stop evolving in our sport are the ones that stop adapt or don't have the ability to continue to adapt. And so, yeah, a lot of challenges through this that we're looking at, but that goes back to got some good researchers and good groups that are doing some things for us. And hopefully we'll have some some solutions or some things we can bring back, you know, to the average local program.
[Jason Jacobs] (34:20 - 34:59)
The average coach is tricky as a parent, because on the one hand, intuitively, I mean, you know that the sport should be fun. You know that long term life lessons are more important than like short term ROI. You know that early specialization is bad and intuitively at the same time.
I mean, you don't want your kid to be the one that gets cut at the at the end of the year. And I would suspect if we went through the NTDP roster, for example, I bet a bunch of those kids did the fancy thing, specialized early, you know, went to those camps.
[Ken Martel] (35:00 - 35:47)
Hockey was always, you know, for a lot of them, hockey is what they wanted to do for sure. However, when you spend the amount of resources we do on those particular groups of kids, we look very deeply at to what their backgrounds are like. And a very large percentage of them are we're multi-sport athletes coming along.
So it's not that they didn't go do do hockey in the offseason when no one's saying you can't go to the rink and have some fun with your friends. But they also did play other sports. It's not mutually exclusive.
And so, again, what people assume is not quite the same. And a lot of them were pretty good in some of the other sports.
[Jason Jacobs] (35:47 - 36:13)
I mean, if you look at those kids, do you I mean, clearly coming from a family of resource is not enough. But do you feel like it is it is necessary but not sufficient? Are almost all the kids that are playing at the high levels kids that could afford being showered with development in the early years?
Are you seeing kids continue to break through who who don't have access to all the fancy stuff along the way?
[Ken Martel] (36:13 - 37:23)
Well, you go to Minnesota, for example, where the sport is less expensive. A lot of their rinks are community municipal. Most of them are community municipal facilities.
I believe there's only two private rinks in the whole state. So ice costs are pretty low. And a lot of those facilities take their ice out in the in the in the offseason.
And a lot of kids are multisport athletes. I mean, this had a first round NHL pick who's back playing high school football this year. So it's it just happens to be you're seeing players.
It's sort of survivorship bias in certain areas of the country. Everyone's playing year round. So those are the only ones that tend to make it.
But if you go to the areas where they're not. Hey, there's players that are coming out and Minnesota happens to be one of our better. Sections of the country, when you look at per player numbers and how many kids they they pass on through.
[Jason Jacobs] (37:24 - 37:27)
Do you wish every region adopted the Minnesota model?
[Ken Martel] (37:28 - 41:31)
And that is impossible. Right. I mean, you have for profit facilities that look at if.
If those arenas do not exist, we do not have ice hockey. But I do think there are other ways to program your facility at different times of the year. Figure skating and us have a little bit of, in essence, complimentary seasons a bit.
So there are ways to do different things. And we're not saying, you know what, you want to go to the rink and play some shinny with your buddies once a week or something to every couple of weeks in the summer. That's OK.
We're not saying that's not a problem where you want to go to one camp in the summer. Great. No worries.
But you don't need to go to 16 of them. Every week you're off during the four month, you know, whatever. So that's the difference.
You know, it's and I'm going to use my boss as an example. So he was a bit of the ADM experiment because he started his son in ice hockey before he came back to work for USA Hockey. And he would call me and say, all right, what should I do?
And so he grew up. Never skating in the summer. Till he basically got to 14 and we started having a district player development camp and he wanted to make that.
Played other sports, you know, and he would tell me that, yeah, that the other the other families would say, well, geez, you know, what power skating school did your son go to this offseason? And he would say, well, none. He went to when he took swim lessons.
It did did gymnastics. Get a skating better, right? Like all the things.
And he even even made a choice when he was in high school to not go to a program here in the United, one of our junior leagues and go to a junior league in Europe because it ended earlier. So he could come back and continue to play baseball for his high school team. And his son is at 23 is in the National Hockey League.
And was not was a decent player coming along. It was a good player. Never on any of our national teams and any of that kind of stuff.
And, you know, but he's in the he was, you know, miss. There were two rounds of NHL draft that went by. It was drafted in sort of the last chance he could get draft.
I mean, so follow the course and seems to work out a little bit. But and then you look at a player like an Austin Matthews who did not follow the traditional path in in our sport out in Phoenix. A lot of a lot of work on a very small ice surface.
Right. At Aussie ice over there, you look at I mean, interestingly enough, maybe the best American soccer player. Kristen Polsek right now, his background didn't follow the same path.
You know, his parents kept him in a local program instead of sending him off to the travel, whatever, too early. Yet these are two of the best players in our respective sports. So, you know, you look at the Williams sisters, who everyone thinks they special.
They'll tell you. They'll say my dad was way ahead of the time. He had us doing all kinds of other sports and other activities.
So. You know. The media wants to portray one thing or again, it's the survivorship bias.
That kid made it because of me. So come back to my hockey school or come play for me.
[Jason Jacobs] (41:31 - 41:34)
Does playing with better kids get you better, faster?
[Ken Martel] (41:34 - 42:55)
I believe that at a certain point it does. At a certain point, I think competition and some things are a little overrated, really young. We push that a little too soon.
But I would say. By the time we're 14. Playing with other better players is starting to become important.
Simply because. Oh, how should I put this? If, for example, I read the play and I read the possibility.
And I work hard to put myself in a position to get the puck back. And I never get it back. I will stop making that read.
I will stop making the right decision away from the puck. So and a huge portion of our game is played away from the puck. So at some point, players that think the sport.
And they're starting to make similar reads are important. But I would also say we push that a little bit too soon. Because it's not necessary at a younger age.
[Jason Jacobs] (42:56 - 43:28)
I think that's kind of a more narrow part of a broader question, which is the role of parents. Because I know the party line is, you know, the parent should be the biggest cheerleader. And keep it fun, keep it fun, keep it fun.
Take follow your kid, you know, let your kid guide. Take school, for example. Like a lot of kids aren't going to do their homework every day if you don't bug them to do it.
And in the long run, they're going to be better off in life because their parents helped them keep the train on the tracks. I mean, is the same true in sports or what role should the parents play?
[Ken Martel] (43:29 - 46:02)
So one of the things I can tell you that we notice with our national team kids and players have been working with. It's the ones that have gone so hard, so young. When it gets to their teenage years, and when it's actually time to ramp it up, there's no emotional energy left in the tank.
And it becomes hard. And so I would say my advice to parents is because we get salty. Well, my kid loves it or whatever.
And keep them a little hungry. Right. You know, and then the chasing it back back sort of to the previous question.
People were like, well, I need to play up or I need to be on that team. And, you know, I would say if you're one of the back end players in the group, you're probably or you're too far ahead of yourself. That's actually detrimental for you because you will learn to survive.
So you will get rid of the puck quicker. You will make plays that kind of dumb down the sport that won't allow you to grow and make decisions. And those things, you know, are sort of general rule on because everybody's like, oh, my kids elite, my kids elite.
We throw that term around, you know. And as a sort of general guideline, the whole play up kind of thing. I would say if your child can play up in the age category above and they're on the top three forwards, top two defenseman or the number one goaltender in that age group above on the top team.
Then, OK, you, the organization and everybody else might think about it, but there are still some social, emotional considerations because not everybody's ready to. You know, I know when my kid was 12, he was not ready to be in a locker room with 14 year olds. And nor would I want that.
As a parent. Right. So there are some other considerations.
But if they're not, then stay where you're at, because you're you're it's better off that you're getting more opportunities and the ability to do more things with the puck at those younger ages, for sure.
[Jason Jacobs] (46:02 - 46:31)
So I'm going to lump these three things together, but you might separate them. One is the trend of repeating grades or reclassing. One is going to juniors in between high school and college.
If you even finish high school before going to juniors. And the third is increasingly older freshmen. Like, I mean, in some cases, 21, 20, 20, 22 year old freshmen for college hockey when when the rest of the student body is 17, 18.
What do you think about that trend or those trends? If you want to decouple them?
[Ken Martel] (46:31 - 51:33)
Well, yeah, in the college hockey trend to take older players that started 30, 40 years ago, I was myself, I was a I turned 21 in the freshman dorms. And, you know, look at other sports like we are a contact collision sport and look at football that typically red shirts most of their freshmen when they come in. So they don't they don't play this practice and train to get bigger and stronger.
And the difference between a 20 year old and a 17, 18 year old just coming out of high school, the physical side of things is different. A little bit older, a little bit more mature. So colleges are going to continue to take older players.
It's outside of somebody that is that, like I said, with our national team program, the early physical mature, like they are fully grown at 18. They are they are they're not like they are the the exception to the rule. But others catch up and are world class athletes down the road and will pass those players.
So, you know, so the colleges are going to do what they do because they want to they they're looking for, you know, kids to step in and get into the lineup right away. Now, it might change somehow with scholarship rule changes. You know, it's now 26, not 18.
So we'll see. But it was like the the NHL, you know, and signing players, they used to be a little bit more ready to keep a kid in college. Now it's they want their assets under their control.
And so there's changes at those levels. The play high school jumped a junior back and forth. Like I would I would never tell a kid to deprive himself of, you know, an opportunity to play high school hockey with his peers, with friends, family and those things, depending on the situation.
You know, like if it's in a situation where, you know, there are other players of similar ilk that will allow you to sort of, you know, be reasonably challenged, reasonably great. But there are situations where that's not the case for some kids. And, OK, maybe jumping to junior or, you know, playing junior hockey before your high school season.
And we have some players that go before to the USHL and then jump back to high school. And wonderful that that's a family sort of decision and wonderful. I think that's a good experience.
They get a little test with some older, bigger, stronger kids. They're getting that social, emotional experience with with their teammates in school and those things. That's great, too.
But as we talked about at those ages, playing with some other good players is starting to become important. Having those opportunities is something to look at. You know, for us, you know, for me, I think at the 15, 16, 17 year old age categories, those are sort of years that.
We would say those are based on research across our sport and others, that those are the investment years where kids are deciding that, OK, you know what? I want to do this. I want to be good in the sport.
So, you know, do they have the emotional energy to put in and and, you know, take it upon themselves to to train and develop? And and we have this this big sign right inside our facility in Plymouth with our national team players. And it's the constant message with our coaches is take responsibility for your own development.
Because at the end of the day, you're the athlete is the only one that can choose to do and, you know, put the effort in. So so there's those are messy ages. And I can't tell you what the right decision for every kid is, because every kid's situation is a little different and they are socially, emotionally at different spots.
Some have really good situations where they're at and some don't. So they have to make some decisions. I've had a few staff members that have coached at the highest levels of our sport and their kids are coming through and they'll even say, look, these are difficult decisions.
And they'll say, geez, I even know I know what the opportunities might be. And it's still hard for me to make some decisions around my child.
[Jason Jacobs] (51:33 - 51:57)
I don't know how it is in in Minnesota, but here in New England, most of the kids that I know and families who play club hockey, a lot of the development is happening outside of the walls of the team in between the practices where the team practices are, you know, team systems and power plays and breakouts. And but when the kids actually getting better, they're mostly doing that on their own. Do you think that trend is a good thing or a bad thing?
[Ken Martel] (51:57 - 54:24)
That's a bad thing. As a matter of fact, our coaches aren't taking responsibility for assisting in the development plan of their athletes. And we see this where they've actually started cutting back.
So the club team or that or that entity of practice twice a week. For us, you know, the the the model that we emulate with our national team program is more more like what happens in Europe, where training and practice is the most important thing. The game and the competition is just the test.
And so we do we consider a lot of individual development. Now, we there's there's a lot of good research on. It's not just me individually working on my technical ability, but me working on my individual technical ability with other players.
That's really important. Which does need to happen in. You know, in a setting with other players.
Like one of the really interesting things. We have a lot of skills coaches out there that. You know, have our kids go around lots of cones and a lot.
And it's all that's not how you interact with in our sport. Like there's never a dead implement on the ice that you're staring at. There's never an immobile object like there's always a read and adjust.
And and so we need to change how we operate. And a lot of this needs to happen within more of the team setting where there's an overall development plan. And I think we're letting kids down a little bit by.
You know, and the overdoing it on team systems and in all of that too soon is a yes, there's structure in our our sport for sure. But it's the ability to read and adjust. You know, it's that's the most important thing that's going to allow our kids to move on.
So, you know, we. We still have a ways to go in how we look at skill acquisition and how we look at player development and those things in our sport.
[Jason Jacobs] (54:25 - 54:53)
We were talking earlier about about resources as an advantage and inequity in the game, which I agree with. But there's another way to look at it in that in some ways, having resource can be detrimental because it can mask maybe a lack of self-directedness and hunger on behalf of the kid. And so my question is actually a bit of a different one, which is in a world of unlimited resource.
When is that resource utilized? Healthy. And when is it detrimental?
[Ken Martel] (54:55 - 56:54)
I would say, especially when we're talking children, it is it's when it's self-motivated and self-directed. Then it's fine, like kids will self-regulate. You know, if they're going to go outside and shoot pucks and they'll go and when when they're tired of shooting, they'll stop.
It's when we start to force them to do things that it quickly in the short term. OK, might have a little bit of benefit, but it will quickly become a job. It quickly becomes something other than and to where, you know, they're they're done.
And you're seeing it in in sport where I mean, there was the the women's, you know, volleyball, basketball player that, you know, scholarship to UConn and top school and just decides I'm done. I'm done, you know, you know, top recruit in the country and just go, I can't do this anymore and went and played a different sport. But we're seeing a lot of of that in in players like I can tell you, even with some of our national team kids, the ones that overdid it early tended not to be the ones that had the continued trajectory.
And I've talked to a lot of them because, again, early on, we weren't making some of these decisions. But I go back and talk to some of them and they'll tell you, you know, shoot, I got drafted at 18 by the NHL. I should be excited about this.
I should be really going out to try and put in more and put more into this. And they're like, I'm not liking going back to the rink right now. I don't.
And. Yeah, never really panned out because they weren't emotionally invested in it. And so, you know, what's the line?
And, you know, every parent, everybody thinks, well, my kid's different. You know, that's the problem. It's they're not as different as we think.
[Jason Jacobs] (56:54 - 56:59)
Well, it's something like 90 90 percent of people are above average. Right.
[Ken Martel] (56:59 - 57:01)
Yes. Yes, exactly.
[Jason Jacobs] (57:02 - 57:10)
We're almost done. I have a few other items on the on the punch list. One is just what do you think about academies and Zoom school?
[Ken Martel] (57:11 - 59:30)
I'm nervous about. The online everything that is going on with because we're on the I'm nervous about the social development of our kids. But I can tell you that, you know, schools like Harvard will take.
You know, kids that have gone through online school and accept them. So, you know, I'm not the expert in that area to question what the educational level is in that environment. But it does.
I do see different challenges, but I also see some benefits depending on how things go. You know, one of the more difficult things in our in our hockey playing world is, you know, especially in some markets where the rink is across town. It's not my local rent.
Like my local rink is 45, 50 minutes away. You know, we are going there six, six days a week with my my teenage child. And all of a sudden.
They can go do ice hockey during the school day and come home and maybe our family gets some family time and dinner together. And we're not sure, you know, and that's I know a cell from those those programs. I'm not sure how realistic is that.
Is that actually happening? I don't know. But in my mind, I can understand the cell there and the appeal.
Like if we can give families time back together to be families, that's great. But I do kind of worry on screen time and a bunch of those things. I want my kids to socialize, you know, and I can't quite get into it.
But we have noticed our coaches with our national teams and those things have noticed a difference. Very recently in the kids coming through. Because who knows, you know, no definitive answer, but a lot of them are doing more of this.
[Jason Jacobs] (59:32 - 59:40)
So not difference in their behavior, but difference in the track before they end up in the NDP difference in their track before they end up difference in their.
[Ken Martel] (59:41 - 1:00:04)
I don't want to get into deep with it, but difference in. In just some things about them as as athletes and some additional challenges now to help them get where they say they want to go. We can assume a lot of things, you know, as a covid, is it, you know, like some of these kids were at certain ages, you know.
So who knows?
[Jason Jacobs] (1:00:04 - 1:00:14)
Semi-relatively, what do you think about the rise of agents, advisers, player development coaches who are working with the players and families versus the team?
[Ken Martel] (1:00:15 - 1:02:16)
I can say at the highest level of the sport, the agents are certainly not at the highest level. I mean, NHL and down like like, you know, you get to a certain point and it's your play that dictates things. It's they're not needed.
So the way I put it, I had a had a colleague who his kids were really good players. And he coached at a high level and. He his kids, he ended up getting his kids agents after they were drafted by the National Hockey League.
And he said, you know, all I watch and I see all their teammates and everyone else getting calls from everybody, you know, out there at a young age. And they would say he would say, well, I don't get those calls because they know. I know.
I know that they need them yet. You know, they need to go to the rink, get better, do what they do, focus on what it is. But they're not getting.
You know, they're not providing the value that you might think at a really young age, they can't do for you what a lot of times they say they're going to do. Especially at these young ages. You know, and then the, you know, we'll pay me and, you know, I'll, you know, call coaches.
You know what? Yeah. You know what?
They'll they'll they'll get you to it, to an open tryout. That's a moneymaker for some team that just needs bodies to pay the ice bill. Oh, yeah.
I got you a tryout. You know. Hell, you could have gotten that trial by picking up the call and saying, hey, I want to come try out and pay my two hundred dollars to try out like.
Now, there does come a time when the agent is highly valuable. You know, but it probably isn't, you know, 10, 12, 14 years of age.
[Jason Jacobs] (1:02:16 - 1:02:25)
The road to college hockey with the change in the, you know, the Canadian major juniors is getting harder for the for the U.S. kids. How do you think about that? Good thing or bad thing?
[Ken Martel] (1:02:25 - 1:06:20)
Look, I work for USA Hockey and my our sole goal is to have more opportunities for our American players. And, you know, the college system has been our choice for within our development model. It's where we've, you know, our preferred method of development.
It has the best. It has the best resources. It's got great coaching.
It's got and it's the longest runway to prepare yourself for the highest level. Because, look, you know, you can count on one hand the number of 18 year olds that are drafted that go to the NHL right away every year on the planet. Right.
So our players need this this pathway for most of them. The average rookie's 23 in the NHL. So it's our chosen model.
And overnight. The player pool that is available to our 60 whatever Division One universities. Has more than doubled because it's now not just the CHL, it's the contracts and the things in for the European player.
My word, you know, there's American Hockey League players and East Coast League players that have now come back this year to college. So, you know, there's a real challenge for our American player to get to Division One University. All I know.
Is that. There'll be less going forward than there were previously, simply because access to more players and those coaches are going to take. They're going to take who they think is the best player.
Now, I believe that the pendulum swung. Really far this year. It will early on because that's the shiny new penny.
But we're already hearing it, you know, from some colleges and some people that yeah, you know. Players aren't all. Yeah, there's some good ones.
Don't get me wrong, but. So, you know. Not as big a difference as we were thinking it might.
So I think the pendulum might come back a little bit. But from a USA hockey perspective. We won't be able to dictate what happens at the NCAA level.
That's they're a completely different organization. They have completely different rules. What we need to focus on is how do we help Americans be the best they can be?
Be better players, be better than the Canadian, be better than the Swede, be better than the Finn or the Russian or the Czech or whoever that's trying to compete for that job. That's our goal. So how do we help our kids be better?
And at all ages. Have a great experience in the sport. And then for those that choose to be good and put the time and effort in and have the capabilities.
How do we help that group? So we have some real challenges ahead of us in my mind. Because the landscape just got completely overturned.
And we don't know how it's going to shake out. It's going to take a year or two to see where this goes. But even from the NCAA, what's coming in?
And then how do we look at this and how do we support our players and support our system better? Because we need to think about the trickle on and what's happening down the system that prepares our players. So don't have a lot of answers yet.
We have a lot of questions just like everybody else.
[Jason Jacobs] (1:06:21 - 1:06:42)
When you think about player development, what role does technology play? And that could be video. That could be tools like Huddle or SportLogic or Helios or 49ing.
As an organization or as an individual who's steeped in the game for a long time. How do you think about technology and what's exciting to you and what's maybe overhyped?
[Ken Martel] (1:06:42 - 1:09:42)
Even the advances and the changes that are coming behind the scenes at the NHL level. From a coaching and development standpoint, some of the tools that are being developed at that level. And how it eventually trickles down through things.
And I know you had Dr. McGregor on, maybe probably talking about load management. Skate sensors. For sure.
And so how that's changed. From a chest, heart rate, accelerometer combination, internal, external load. To using something that's less invasive like a skate sensor.
Those things really help from a compliance standpoint. And again, we use the things that Dr. McGregor has helped. And a plug for him.
He's recognized, I think, by our Olympic Committee as maybe one of the best wearable technology guys out there. He's got a background in cycling and has advised in other sports beyond just ice hockey at the Olympic level. And he's probably pretty modest.
He wouldn't have said it, but he's an IQOS award winner through our Olympic Committee, which is really, really cool. For those that are probably unaware of that. But anyway.
And so when we look at technology and how does it apply. There are ways now that we can start maybe to bring that back into the youth level. That really could make a big difference for our athletes.
From a training and development standpoint. But I can say that there's a lot of fluff out there. A lot of noise.
A lot of things that don't work. Or people will do false research projects that are funded by the company. And what they'll show a lot of times is near transfer.
It won't actually show a transfer back to the hockey game. And that's a whole separate podcast on what we see works and doesn't work and those things. But technology has some real advantages for us.
My caution at the youth level is what's usable. What actually is helpful. And it's costly.
So every time you're adding something in, you're adding more costs to the players. And what's the bang for the buck? And I'm sensitive of overdoing it too young with what we do.
But there are real advantages to having access to certain information. But it's the expertise of knowing what to discard and what to pay attention to.
[Jason Jacobs] (1:09:43 - 1:09:55)
And maybe my last question. And gosh, this is kind of the crown jewel question in terms of what keeps me up at night. But can Hockey IQ be taught?
And if so, what are the most effective ways that you've seen to teach it?
[Ken Martel] (1:09:56 - 1:12:07)
So 100% we can improve our game intelligence of our players. Absolutely. As a matter of fact, I think the lack of game intelligence in our players to some extent is based on the type of coaching that we've done.
Historically in the past. Some of it's our fault. We do a lot of activities that do not require our players to be more aware in practice.
And I usually preface this by asking a lot of coaches. Do you talk to your players about habits? And they're like, oh, yeah, yeah.
How do you build a habit? Like, well, you know, lots of repetition. Okay, well, how much?
Well, lots. And I would say, well, as much as necessary for that athlete, because it is a little different for everybody. But it's typically lots of reps at certain things.
And then when you look at the activities that they design and they put their players in that do not require their players to make reads, make adjustments like they have to do in a hockey game. I would say, well, what kind of habit are you building? Because you're giving them all these reps at being unaware.
So some of this is on us. The other side of it, it is a skill like everything else. Some players are just going to be better at it than others.
They acquire things faster than others. And so there's all this individual difference in players and that's player development. But like anything else, we can make some improvements.
And there are some real strategies that coaches can use. We have some research projects going on right now in this particular area. One on visual perception, and we've already been able to take some things back, apply it with our national team program, and then back down.
We're doing some stuff right now with 10U, 12U that I think is really impactful. Because we're starting in an age when it can be really impactful. Because they have time.
[Jason Jacobs] (1:12:07 - 1:12:35)
Maybe one final question, which is just speak to the parents for a moment. For the parents that are dumping money and time into the sport and it's getting away their jobs and a huge sacrifice to give their kids every opportunity. Inevitably, they might ask themselves when they go to sleep at night about those three horrible letters, R-O-I.
So my question or my, yeah, I guess my ask of you is just speak to those parents for a minute. And what's your advice to them?
[Ken Martel] (1:12:35 - 1:14:49)
Return on investment. I mean, at what point did youth sport, the return on investment change? When my parents brought me to sport, it was, hey, you know, it was the learn some teamwork, learn all those kind of life lessons that are going on.
And yeah, I want my kid to have a great experience. I just want him to go. I want to be happy.
I want him to see some improvement. I want him to develop physically, socially, mentally, all those good things. And so that needs to be the continued focus because that is what youth sport is.
The other piece of advice is you get good at your local ice arena. Right? The amount of money it costs for your team to travel and go to some tournament someplace to get on an airplane or go or whatever, stay in hotels.
If you take that money alone from one trip and you put it into ice time at your local rink. Now there's development. There's a big difference.
Competition and the game and all that is way overrated at those younger ages. So you don't need to spend what everyone thinks. Like I got to, as an aside, in our area, had a friend who had their kid in a local 10-U program.
And they said, oh, we got to take our kid to the big Fargo 10-U tournament. Fargo, North Dakota. Because this is the biggest tournament in the country.
Supposedly, I don't know, around 10-U Hockney. We have to go here for competition. And I'm like, well, what's your team record?
And they're like, well, we're 7-10 right now. Seems to me you got lots of competition here locally. Why do you got to go for a week to Fargo?
It's Fargo. I've been there. Wonderful people.
Wonderful people. But a lot of money for in the name of competition.
[Jason Jacobs] (1:14:50 - 1:14:56)
Well, this was such a far-ranging discussion. Is there anything I didn't ask that you wish I did? Or any parting words for listeners beyond what you already said?
[Ken Martel] (1:14:57 - 1:15:57)
Not off the top of my head, but other than, Jason, thanks for what you're doing and bringing information to families and parents and those things. For us at USA Hockey, I think one of the more difficult avenues for us to connect with all the time is our parents from 60,000 feet. We don't have that direct line all the time to communicate with them.
And we hope they're having a good experience. In the background, we're trying to help put in place good systems, good structures, and those things that support the development of your child and the experience that they get. But it's a volunteer-run network.
So the expectations sometimes, understand where things are at and have some patience with your kid. But it's the greatest sport out there. And I hope that you continue to convey a lot of really good information to the families out there.
[Jason Jacobs] (1:15:58 - 1:16:18)
Okay, thanks again, Ken. Best of luck to you. And thanks for all the work that you and that the whole USA Hockey organization does for the kids and for the sport.
Thanks. Thanks for listening to Puck Academy. If you enjoyed this episode, follow or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and share it with someone serious about their game.
See you next week!