Grow the base of hockey; give kids a positive hockey experience and an opportunity to learn life lessons.

Comprehensive Plan for the Herb Brooks Foundation
Continuing the Vision -
Growing the Game from Good to Great!

August 21, 2006

HBF Comprehensive Plan

The Comprehensive Plan outlines the Foundation’s goals. It guides decisions and is an excellent strategic framework. Additionally, it helps the Foundation continue Herb Brooks’ efforts to improve hockey for players at all levels, especially youngsters. A unified, talented, and committed team ensures
that the Plan is carried out, and adheres to a shared vision.

The Vision

The Foundation’s vision is to become the cornerstone in the effort to grow hockey, and to produce more American players with world-class skills. Additionally, HBF will go to great lengths to make hockey more accessible for players of all capabilities.

To do this, the Foundation will lead by example: It will show players, parents, officials, coaches and youth associations how to make hockey less structured and more fun, while building the base of “the pyramid.” As a result, more kids will play, and their skills will improve along the way.

The Foundation’s strength is its ability to advocate for the sport while focusing on youth development. It is widely recognized as innovative, and as an organization that lets players, parents, officials and coaches understand what is really important for young people who play hockey and other sports.

The Mission

Grow the base of hockey. Give kids a positive hockey experience and an opportunity to learn life lessons.

The Goals

1. Memorialize the 1980 “Miracle on Ice” and Herb Brooks’ legacy.

2. Create and operate the most innovative ice hockey skill development and training facility in the United States for players and coaches, with an emphasis on youth hockey.

3. Create and operate the best educational/leadership training program for players, coaches, officials and administrators.

4. Create and operate a learning environment that “gives the game back to kids” by incorporating unstructured “pond hockey” opportunities.

Guiding Principles & Four Pillars of Program Development & Training

The Foundation’s Guiding Principles reflect Herb’s wishes and vision. Like the Comprehensive Plan, they are a framework for achieving Herb’s hockey development vision. These principles were developed with Herb’s family and the Foundation’s board of directors and advisors.

The Four Pillars of Program Development & Training

1. Dry- land training

2. On-ice training

3. Character/Leadership/Officials training

4. Unstructured “Pond Hockey” training

Indoor/Outdoor Training Facility

The Foundation operates in the Herb Brooks Training Center, within the National Sports Center, in Blaine, Minn.—a world-class facility that gets better every year. The facility provides instruction and mentoring to players, parents, officials and coaches, and the methods incorporate Herb’s key ideas:
Enabling unstructured “rink-rat” opportunities; providing professional coaching; delivering leadership training; and maintaining a focus on “giving the game back to the kids.” It also aims to keep kids (and adults) playing as long as possible, while using sound research and state-of-the-art equipment, methods and facilities.

Office, Staff and Location

As outlined in its charter, the Herb Brooks Foundation features an executive director, John McClellan, who organizes and administers day-to-day operations. The main office is at the National Sports Center in Blaine.

Click here to review the Herb Brooks Foundation Board and Staff

Provide Research & Development

The Foundation features an advisory committee and funds research to understand the best methods for creating exceptional hockey learning environments.

Networking

The Foundation will have an advisory committee that will work with Minnesota Hockey, USA Hockey, Canada Youth Hockey and other groups that share a similar vision.

Fundraising

The Foundation’s Fundraising Advisory Committee secures funding for ongoing operations. It has helped establish numerous programs, chief among them a state-of-the art, 12,000 square foot off-ice training facility. Major projects being considered today include a pair of outdoor ice ponds and an additional indoor ice rink within the NSC.

A For-Profit Model as a Partner

A for-profit model will be explored in order to help fund the development and ongoing programs of the Foundation. An advisory committee will be set up to explore and implement this model.

Annual Awards Celebration

A committee also organizes an annual Herb Brooks Foundation Awards Banquet. The event celebrates Herb’s life and recognizes individuals and organizations that implement his ideas.

Youth Hockey Hall of Fame

The Foundation has established an Internet-based, Minnesota Youth Hockey Hall of Fame. Individuals—folks highly devoted to youth hockey development—are nominated and inducted into the Hall at the annual awards celebration. (Organizations are eligible, too.)

Sports Academy & Prep School

The Foundation is exploring the development of a school that combines a back-to-the-basics curriculum along with one focused on athleticism. The school will use the NSC during the school day, when typically, they host little action. The Post-Secondary Education Option (PSEO) will help elite players remain in Minnesota while developing their hockey skills. They will attend local high schools during their junior and senior years.

High School Hockey Advocate

The Foundation will advocate for a strong Minnesota State High School League by lobbying for 20-minute periods and a 30 game season. This will help keep the best players in Minnesota during the winter. The Foundation will also work to remove violence from all levels of play by lobbying officials to enforce rules consistently, regardless of game situations. Consequently, skilled players will reach their full potential, and the game will focus on speed and skill – a better learning environment for individuals, teams and the sport as a whole.

“No Check” Opportunities

HBF is working to increase “no-check” opportunities for youth players. While checking is an important part of hockey, our research shows that it is best delayed until age 15. Kids younger than 15 should focus on skill development, skating, stickhandling, shooting, passing, etc.

From Good to Great! Building the Next Miracle & Giving the Game Back to the Kids

How does the Foundation memorialize Herb’s legacy and make his ideas reality without him? Herb prepared the direction, goals and even identified the individuals to lead the Foundation. He set the example and prepared an army of volunteers. For years, these exceptional people have been putting the pieces together, while constantly finding and employing innovative ideas of their own.

Herb wanted to help the United States become a world-class hockey power by providing the best training methods and facilities. He wanted American youth players to have the best opportunities to develop their skills—along with their character. Fortunately, he documented his ideas in great detail—for recreational players and elite athletes (see attachment A).

Change was needed

Herb was unhappy with hockey when he died – especially youth hockey, which he wanted to transform, rather than “reform.” Reformers, he felt, think youth associations already do all they can, and that tinkering, rather than wholesale changes for players, coaches and facilities, is enough. In fact, Herb thought that “reformers” usually fail to change anything that matters.

Transformation, what HBF shoots for, challenges consensus and fosters leadership and entrepreneurship—rethinking everything. As Albert Einstein said: “You cannot solve a problem from the mindset that created it.”

Herb was an activist who never backed away from challenging the status quo in life or hockey. His desire to grow the sport was clear during the last years of his life. As a result, the Foundation that bears his name dares to be different, and focuses on innovation. It caters to overachievers and over-preparers—people who excel through hard work and persistence.

Additionally, the Foundation encourages courage. That is, participants dare to dream. They are not afraid to fail. They are lifelong learners and teachers who love the game.

Back to the kids

Herb’s ideas were shaped by hockey’s rich history. His mantra, to “give the game back to the kids,” was his way of taking the game from good to great.

Herb grew up when players owned the game. Kids played hockey on frozen ponds and outdoor rinks around Minnesota, for fun. Herb and his friends played almost every day and evening, from about Thanksgiving until mid-February. Snowfall and the elements made maintenance difficult, so the outdoor season was 10 to 12 weeks at best.

A dearth of indoor rinks meant the season ended when the ice melted. During that short season, however, young Herbie and his friends would play between 200 and 300 hours of unstructured hockey each winter—mostly at Phalen Park in St. Paul. An average weekend would include a bag lunch and 15-20 hours of unstructured hockey practice. By contrast, a typical youth hockey season included 12 games a year and a practice or two a week with a coach—about 30 hours of structured hockey per season.

Unstructured power

A generation ago, Johnson High School in St. Paul was a Minnesota hockey powerhouse. It boasted four state championships, and until 1965, was the only school south of Duluth to have won any. Its success wasn’t due to better coaching, facilities, or innate athletic ability of East Side kids. Instead, it was the countless hours of unstructured practice by the Phalen Park rink rats. Hockey was part of the culture on the St. Paul’s East Side. Kids went to the rink/pond to meet their friends and have fun playing hockey. The game belonged to them.

Tellingly, although he was a legendary coach (he won all four titles), Johnson’s Rube Gustafson didn’t even know how to skate. He directed practices from center ice in overshoes. And Phalen Park was no better than other Twin Cities ice facilities of that era.

Herb’s “giving the game back to the kids” efforts were based on his youth experience, what he considered the chief reason for Johnson High’s success. Moreover, like Herb and his friends on the East Side years ago, the 1980 Olympic team was a group of rink rats.

According to Herb, youth hockey is too structured. We should combine the best “rink-rat methods”—lots of unstructured play and kids having fun—with outstanding coaching and facilities. That blend will result in more kids playing longer, having more fun, and developing better skills. It is a “model” he discussed often.