Over the course of the last few days, Lindy Ruff and his coaching staff have put an added emphasis on meeting with different players one-on-one and with individual lines to have some in-depth conversations.
'Conversation' is the keyword here as the meetings aren't about pointing fingers. It's about learning to improve, by understanding one another. Both parties are involved in the discussion. It's not simply a coach telling a player what they're doing right or wrong, it's a discussion where the coaches want to understand the players' perspective as well. Why did they make the play that they did, right or wrong.
Everyone experiences a game from a different vantage point. Coaches are down on the bench, but not out on the ice. Those things can make a difference, as can these conversations.
"Sometimes what they see and what we see doesn't really line up so it usually turns out to be a good conversation," Ruff shared. "We show them probably eight to 10 clips of you know what they did well, where we can improve, what sometimes they were thinking on some of the reads that were inside the game and where we could probably support each other better and in a lot of our defensive zone play and then up ice, creating offense talking about, you know, what do you see here, what you read here?"
Meeting of the Minds | BLOG
Coach Ruff discusses the inner workings of a player/coach one-on-one meeting
