For a large majority of Canadians, winter means hockey.
And for a very small portion of Canadians hockey can become a career.
For local hockey instructor Chris Beaudry, hockey is about getting better both on the ice and as a person.
That is why he started B NINE Hockey Development.
Beadury’s B NINE Hockey Development focuses on skill work in the communities surrounding his St. Front farm.
He says he started the program, knowing there was not a lot of opportunity for young players to get extra training without traveling to a larger centre like Aberdeen, Regina, Saskatoon, or Yorkton.
“I really looked at house hockey. I found when I played, I was a poor player and you’d always go to the back of the line. You didn’t get those extra reps, and when you did in a drill a lot of times if it was three guys going for the puck it never got passed to you. So how do you improve if you don’t get a chance to get better?”
The program runs through the winter, with Beaudry running the program in Naicam, Rose Valley, and Quill Lake in 2017.
“This season the schedule with the Broncos made it a bit tougher but we did run in Rose Valley from November until just about until playoffs started,” noted Beaudry.
He was also able to find time to host stick handling clinics in the upstairs of the Naicam arena this year, he says.
“(It’s) just another way that we could get out and do a little more. The ice was pretty booked all the time but we found an opportunity to make things work.”
Beaudry says he typically runs the programs alone, but did have some help from Gavin Ingram in 2017.
“I was working with him and his brother one-on-one quite a bit so when we did some larger group settings in Quill Lake he was a great help.”
While it is just Beaudry on the ice for the majority of the time, the first year Broncos assistant coach admits he hopes in the future to be able to expand the program to include some Bronco helpers, and says it would be nice to start hosting the program in the communities surrounding Humboldt as well.
While it is still an on ice program, Beaudry says he stands out from a normal practice because he focuses on repetition.
“I find you need to get close to 20 reps of something before your brain and your muscles start to memorize it as a pattern. So we really try to hammer through in an hour session, we may only do three different drills but we just continually do them over and over until you get better at them.”
Beaudry breaks the program down to work on a lot of skills, as well as team aspects like breakouts and zone entries, but says he focuses his coaching style not only on on ice skills, but on off ice character as well.
“I find that they all translate back on and off ice… If you were to look in the Journal at jobs that are available, nowhere does it say in there that you need to be a good hockey player to get any type of job. It talks about being reliable, it talks about hard work, about being a good person,” he says.
“Hockey’s a great game and it’s fun to play and it can take you lots and lots of places but you need to learn those other life skills to be able to have a life after hockey.”
The program is centred around players who want to get better but do not have the financial ability or skills to do so, says Beaudry, who notes it costs players $10 with all proceeds from the programs being donated back to the local arena.
“I really like going to the smaller rinks that don’t get a lot of opportunity for games and whatnot so it helps drive revenue. We all know how hard it is to keep the doors open. Especially on a rink that may only have novice hockey.”
Beaudry says he really enjoys being on the ice and watching the kids grow and improve.
Part of the reason he started the program was to help others.
“For years when I was an alcoholic I focused solely on myself and was a very selfish person. And this is a way for me to be more of a selfless leader.”
While Beaudry is able to get enjoyment out of helping others, he says he hopes aside from becoming a better player, his students recognize the selflessness of others around them, “to see someone else coming out, donating their time to help them get better.”
With Canada being both a warm and a cold climate, summers are more difficult to find ice in the area, so Beaudry says he spends the summer working with players off the ice.
“We have a training centre at my farm and we offer more things like physical fitness, pattern behaviour, how to start recognizing good and bad patterns, how to manage your time properly. If you really want to excel, cutting 15 minutes of video games a day is something small but turning that 15 minutes into maybe stretching or focusing on stick handling or working out.”
With seeding just around the corner, Beaudry says he will be busy with that but once seeding is over he is looking forward to a busy summer.
“I’m willing to work with kids any night of the week they want to.”
