How to Excel in Tryouts

Photo Credit: Chatham-Kent Sports Network

Tryouts are probably one of the most nerve wracking times of the season. What your entire next season will look like is determined in a few short hours in front of coaches on the ice and scouts in the stands. There’s the feeling of added pressure and nerves when you step on the ice. The price of any mistake feels higher than it does in a typical practice, or maybe even a game. But while there are a lot of things you can focus on, like the nerves or the pressure, the overarching key to succeeding in tryouts is mental discipline in the form of focusing on controlling what you can control, and nothing else. While it sounds simple in theory, when you are trying to make a team, it is easy for your mind to stray off track. We will break down what it means to focus on only what you can control, and some pitfalls to avoid when striving for your best focus, so that you can give yourself the best chance of making the team.

But before we do that, we have to deal with the physical side of tryouts.

Be in Great Shape

Being in proper shape is important for two reasons. One is the most obvious— because you will perform well and perform consistently if you are in proper shape. But the second is less obvious: coaches will make a snap judgment on your commitment to hockey and the team based on what sort of shape you are in. When we have aided in coaches selecting goalies for their team, they have said things to us like, “eh I’m not sure I want X player on my team, because they’re out of shape.” Notice that this has nothing to do with how many pucks they stop. To coaches, being out of shape is a commitment problem, and therefore a culture problem. They don’t want that around their locker room. Do the proper training and make sure you are in good shape when you get to tryouts. Being in great shape will put you ahead of others because when coaches see a player in great shape, they view that player as someone who is disciplined, consistent, and committed.

Work Hard

This is another point that goes without saying, but you have to showcase your work ethic when you are trying to make a team. You have to give your best effort every rep. If the coach calls for a hard lap, skate as hard as you can. Coaches notice all of these little things. They want the hardest workers with the best ability on their teams. You can easily separate yourself by competing on every rep, doing all the little things right, and giving the best physical effort you can.

Another part of working hard and doing things right is proper body language. Move around the ice with purpose. Be ready and focused for every drill when it’s your turn. When you are resting between reps, be alert and ready to go back in. When coach is talking or explaining a drill, look at them and listen intently. And when you make a mistake, do not appear bothered or upset. Remain confident and get ready for the next rep. Coaches notice body language. The players who carry themselves as the most focused, ready, confident, and collected will be the players they will have their eye on for their team.

Now that we have the physical pieces out of the way, we can get into the mental side of things.

Don’t Compare Yourself to Other Players

Being well conditioned and working hard are not easy, but they are simple to do— you either are committed to them, or you’re not. You either do them, or you don’t. For the rest of this article, we will get into the much more murky and difficult mental side of things. Focus is tougher because it is harder to control, and harder to execute. Usually we know when we aren’t working hard, because we are either pushing ourselves physically or we’re not. But even though we are trying our hardest to be focused, our minds can still become focused on things external to our control without even realizing it. One of the ways this can manifest is in the form of comparing ourselves to other players in the tryout, and trying to figure out whether we are having a better tryout than they are.

In tryouts, like practice, nobody is going every single rep. So when we are resting, it is very easy to watch the other players, and try to figure out whether they are better than we are, or whether they are performing better than we are. Maybe we get into the net for ten reps and we give up three goals. Then we switch out with the other goalie, and watch their ten reps, and they only give up two. It is natural for our minds to wonder, “Do the coaches like them better than they like me?” This speculation takes your mind off of doing what you need to do to be your best and make the next save. It is also useless, because you won’t see every shot the other goalies face, and so your analysis of who is playing better in tryouts isn’t going to be accurate.

You do not control the results other players get, and you don’t control what the coach thinks of you compared to someone else, so don’t allow yourself to focus on it. If you find yourself doing it, clear your mind and get it back to where it needs to be- being at your best on the next rep. To play your best, you need a clear mind. Comparing yourself to someone else, whether you think you are playing better than them or worse, clutters your mind with irrelevant thought.

Worrying about what the coaches may think of us leads us to our next mental key when trying out:

Let Mistakes Go

Getting scored on is already tough enough to deal with mentally in any situation, but what makes it tough to deal with in the unique setting of a tryout is that you know there are coaches and scouts constantly watching and evaluating your performance, and that fact is constantly in the back of your mind. Whether it is a good goal or a bad goal, you wonder what the coach thought about it, and if you have a worse chance of making the team after getting scored on. You can find yourself asking, “What did the coach think about that goal?” “Did I just ruin my chances of making the team?”, and a thousand and one other questions. The fact of the matter is that this questioning isn’t going to help. One, because you have no way of accurately knowing what the coach is thinking, so it’s a waste of mental bandwidth to think that way. And two, again, it takes your mind away from where it needs to be, which is being ready for the next shot.

Another thing to consider is that making a mistake can actually help you in the long run if you are willing to respond to it the right way. Over the course of a season, there is not one single player in any given sport at any given level who won’t make multiple mistakes all year. It’s part of being human, and it’s the human element of sports that makes them so engaging. Coaches know that every single player will make mistakes, so they’re not worried much about whether you make a mistake, but rather, how you respond to a mistake. Over the course of a season, it’s the players who can respond to their mistakes the strongest that end up being the best players, and their teams that end up being the best teams. If you can immediately regroup mentally, and be poised and focused the rest of the tryout, you will separate yourself from those who allow their mistakes to distract them and drain their focus.

Don’t think twice about a mistake. Just regroup with all of your intention on the next play. If you are going to let your mind think about it, think about how you can use it to your advantage by responding strongly and playing your best game going forward. If you get scored on again right away, whatever. Keep refocusing and moving forward unbothered.

Don’t Try Too Hard

Obviously there are tons of nerves surrounding a tryout situation. Nerves are normal— they’re a signal that you care. These nerves can sharpen your focus, but don’t let them cause you to go out there and try extra hard to stop the puck, because you will get in your own way from playing your best game. You still have to compete hard and do everything right, but it is a fine line. If you are actively trying harder to stop the puck, rather than remaining mentally quiet and just allowing yourself to play your game, then you know you are off track. Making the team is everything you have worked for, so it’s natural to want to go out there and try extra hard. But the way to put yourself at your best is to play the way you have trained. Thinking you have to try harder to stop the puck will take you off your game. You will find yourself over committing to pucks, or sliding all over the net out of control. You will find yourself reacting before the shot is taken, rather than allowing yourself to react the way you know how. Allow your mind to be free and clear, and your body will follow and react the way it knows how to react. You will activate your instincts, and when you play with your instincts, you will be at your very best.

Trust Your Game

All the practices, games, and training sessions you have done have prepared you for tryouts, whether you realize it or not. Assuming you have pushed yourself to get better every time you are on the ice, and in your workouts off the ice, you have done all the preparation necessary to play great in tryouts. Now it’s time to trust it. Don’t try to do anything different just because you are in a tryout setting. You already know what to do.

Fill your mind with positive thought in the time leading up to tryouts. Know you have done the work, and have full faith that you will know what to do in any situation that may arise on the ice during tryouts. Now all you have to do is go out there and have fun.

The Best Tryout Advice We’ve Ever Received

Tryouts are demanding. While physicality has some part of it, most of success in tryouts has to do with being disciplined with your mind. This is an incredibly difficult task to manage. All it takes is one instant for your mind to get side tracked to something that is out of your control. You may not even realize that your mind has gone down a negative path, and it may wander far before you realize it and are able to steer it back on course. Have the mental toughness to push yourself to your limits physically. Focus on your game, specifically the next shot, rather than what other players are doing. Don’t worry about what the coaches are thinking. Let mistakes go, and don’t try harder to stop the puck due to the pressure of the situation. All of this takes your focus from where it needs to be: playing your game, and stopping the next puck. Trust the work you have put in, and trust that no matter what happens, you will make the next save.

In closing, we’d like to share some of the best tryout advice we have received over the years. Both MG coaches been to NHL training camp, which at the pro level, is your tryout.

We were preparing to play our first scrimmage game at the NHL level, and we remember asking the goalie coach, “Should I just focus on playing more controlled?”, which is something we had been working on leading up to camp. We were incredibly nervous, and we were hoping that by asking that question, he would offer some advice that might calm our nerves, if only slightly.

He smiled and said “Nope… Don’t think… just play”.

This advice obviously caught us a little off guard. Like “That’s it??? That’s all you got for me?” We didn’t feel any less nervous.

But that was all he had for us. Why?? Because even though we had been training certain aspects of our game leading up to camp, he knew, from his ten plus years of NHL experience, that if you are thinking while you’re playing, you are only getting in your own way. Thinking blocks your best focus from manifesting within your mind. Your training will be put to best use if you trust it and allow it to show up in your game naturally, not by trying to force it. Your best focus will engage from trusting your game and quieting your mind, which creates space for your best focus to take over.

Trust yourself, trust your training, and trust your instincts.

Focus on what you can control.

And as always, do your best.

The rest will take care of itself.