Will collegians again receive golden opportunity?

By Fluto Shinzawa, Globe Staff | March 9, 2006

Skills competition
Earlier this season, a medal-less member of Team USA returned to his home team after competing in international play, praising the skill level of the Russians and Czechs.

But he wasn't a player from the US Olympic team recently punted out of Turin without a medal to his name. He was Boston College goalie Cory Schneider, whose teenage club of wannabe Olympians failed to medal in the World Junior Championship earlier this year, skating a path that their elder statesmen would find too familiar in the Winter Games against the highly skilled Europowers.
''It's unbelievable what they can do with the puck, how they pass and protect," said Umile. ''They're ahead of us. We're still a pretty good country over here in the way we do things. Maybe they do some things differently with their youth programs and how they develop them." Yes they DO!
Creativity, improvisation, and cleverness are descriptions that have become more applicable to the free-flowing Europeans than the grit-and-grind Americans that emerge from college hockey. Parker, who sent three ex-Terriers to Turin in Rick DiPietro, Chris Drury, and Keith Tkachuk (four if you count former captain Mike Sullivan, an assistant coach for Team USA), points to the early teenage years, a critical development stage for budding collegians, as the difference-makers that draw out the skill in European youth hockey.

''We're(Americans) training hockey players the wrong way," Parker said.

''The Europeans still practice development until they're 14 or 15. Here, we talk about the bantam team that's 62-2, doing great, traveling to Montreal next week, and lost only one game in the last 40. The kid's 10 years old and playing the left-wing lock and getting the system down. But

[the Europeans] don't practice a system of forechecking. They practice how to handle the puck, shoot the puck, and support the puck because the only games they're allowed to play are three-on-three, cross-ice games until they're 12 or 13.
We're doing this all wrong."

Parker recalled an anecdote told by Mike Eruzione when the ex-Terrier looked into registering his youngest son for Winthrop youth hockey. League officials told Eruzione that he would have to pay extra for his son to compete in one extra game and practice per week. Eruzione agreed, but when he said his son didn't need the additional game and would only require the extra practice session, the officials voiced their surprise.

''Everybody should be doing that," Parker said. ''He's 5 years old, so not only does he not know what offsides is, he doesn't care. He's got to learn how to skate first. One other reason they're not developing is that too many kids are quitting at an early age. Nobody's making it fun for them. Whether it's 1924 or 2024,

kids want to do one thing -- stuff that's fun."