The Writing Was On the Wall

The Writing Was On the Wall

When “great” teams lose a few straight or have a bad run of games people often take notice, they are all quick to point the finger and place blame.

“Great” teams aren’t supposed to lose multiple games straight or go on a bad run, but it happens all over the sporting world.

The anatomy of a losing streak is sometimes incredibly complex or very simple to figure out.

The losing starts well before the losses on the ice appear. Poor practice habits, execution or practicing without resistance and getting away from the team’s identity if the team had an identity to start with and lack of consistent DZC structure and accountability can lead to losing, but winning games with those bad habits is scary proposition.

The coaching staff have to recognize that the team are still winning games, but the poor habits need to be addressed, not ignored.

I’m not saying losing streaks can be prevented because there’s so many variables that go into that, but when teams are capable like extremely capable and deeper in every facet than their opponents then one has to question work ethic, habits, character, tendencies and ultimately playing as a group.

Poor tendencies creep into the individual and team’s overall play all of the time, it’s the coaching staff’s job to identify those tendencies or poor habits as soon as they appear.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s tons of variables that cause a loss or a prolonged losing streak with many completely out of the team’s control. Nevertheless, tendencies in certain players and team performance is on the coaches. Coaches need to hold players accountable.

You can blame the schedule, you can blame injuries, you can blame goaltending or lack of scoring, but for the most part everyone has to look in the mirror, readjust and rededicate their efforts to ensure the losing stops.

Obviously, team’s should never hit the panic button, but the losing streak needs to be rectified in practice and obviously other areas.

As coaches a change of lines and D pairings could shed light on several issues, but if that’s happened already then that’s a mute point, and could also be a massive issue into the poor play. Getting back to basics and finding common ground is a must.

Teams on a streak get irritable with one another, everything feels off, that’s why a change is sometimes needed. Keeping things status quo is an awful thing to do, it’s the complacent thing to do. Now there’s people out there saying they wouldn’t change a thing, let things work out on their own, well that proves absolutely nothing.

You see sometimes the writing is on the wall, when it comes to losing!

The player needs to recognize they are struggling, they need feedback.

The coaching staff need to see this coming from a mile away and fix it.

The entire team as a whole needs to come together, redefine their defensive structure, move the puck and trust each other again. To be brutally honest that’s hard for some organizations to overcome.

You see if a team loses one or two games every three or four weeks that’s not a big deal, but three in a row or going on a shitty run, that’s problematic, that causes undue pressure and tension. All of those things could have been avoided if people would see and understand the writing on the wall.

This is where the coaching staff has to have the pulse of the individuals and the team. This is where the coaches earn their pay, earn the respect of the players and regain and reestablish the developmental process and team success.

The toughest aspect to get things back on track is perhaps dealing with entitled players unwilling to play the team game or buy in to the coaching staff’s message or having players willing and wanting to buy in, but having a system that just doesn’t work and hasn’t worked for a long time.

When things are going well, nothing seems to bother them. When adversity arises, you see the true colours of a team and the coaching staff. You see that’s when the losing will continue.

Sure you might win some games based on talent, but you won’t win the games that matter most.

Usually the losing streak starts when you’re still winning. It’s all about bad habits, entitlement, lack of commitment to defence and individual selfish play.

The losing will eventually stop, but it’s up to the players and coaches to turn things around, it’s back to the drawing board, but in many cases the writing was already on the wall for quite some time.