AcademyThe RinkLog philosophy

Understanding roles in hockey

In hockey as in football, a team is not eleven quarterbacks or twenty scorers: it is an assembly of complementary roles. The problem at the youth level is that roles are hard to see and hard to embrace: everyone watches the one who scores, and the kid who excels at protecting, blocking or retrieving pucks can go seasons without ever hearing that their game has a name, a value and professional role models.

Progress, not pressure

Identifying a role is not locking a kid into it: before adolescence, everyone should try everything, and roles remain tendencies, not destinies. But naming what a kid already does well gives them a positive identity on the team and precise statistics to grow. That is exactly why RinkLog offers preconfigured boards by player type when creating a profile: each role has ITS statistics, and each page below explains which ones and why.

  • The center: the three-zone pivot, first on faceoffs
  • The winger: speed and finishing on the flanks
  • The power forward: the net front, the boards, space created for others
  • The 200-foot forward: reliable in both directions of the rink
  • The offensive defenseman: the breakout and the point shot
  • The stay-at-home defenseman: the wall in front of the goalie
  • The physical defenseman: the corner battle won and the crease cleared

RinkLog measures and computes all of this automatically during your hockey, ball hockey and ringette games.

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Read next

The center: the three-zone pivotThe power forward: the one who creates spaceThe stay-at-home defenseman: the wallThe full RinkLog Academy