Danvers Youth Hockey Information

DYH makes every effort to ensure a fair, impartial and balanced evaluation of players for our various Travel Team hockey programs. This is by far the most difficult task that our volunteer coaches and evaluators undertake in any given season. As Brian Burke indicates above, hockey skill is difficult to quantify by the numbers. One of our most senior coaches tells the story of an unknown player trying out at St. John's Prep, easily the fastest kid on the ice in every drill run. By sheer speed, and skating ability, one might conclude that this player was the best out there. And the player who came in second every time? It was Bobby Carpenter who went on to a long NHL career. We tell this story and quote to convey as best we can, that hockey skill and placement of kids on teams is an imperfect science at best. DYH uses the following combination of skills evaluation, game scenarios, and coach evaluations to get the fullest picture possible of the players who are trying out:Skills Evaluation: DYH designs a number of drills and procedures on ice to judge the skating, stickhandling and other skills necessary to play hockey. These might be cone drills, agility drills, obstacle courses, etc. Game Scenario Evaluation: As relayed above, sometimes the best pure skills do not translate to in-game playmaking and "hockey sense". DYH uses game scenarios to evaluate players on these dimensions: positioning, aggressiveness, playmaking, impact in the ice, passing, battling, shooting, etc. Coaches Evaluations: we rely on input from the coaches who have seen the players all year long to help round out our impressions from tryouts. Each of the ways that we evaluate players is taken into consideration in the selections process. Evaluations are conducted over two try out sessions per level, one focused on Skills and the other focused on Game Play.