Put your mark on the Team

Well its time. The try-outs and training camp are over and you've selected the team. Now the work comes to shape and mould the team . Remember you picked the team and it will be a reflection of you and ultimately you will be the face of the team, accepting all the good praise as well as criticism that comes with the job of being coach.
As coaches, we all have our favourite systems and philosophies in how we want our team to play.
However, all things aside your player selections will dictate what kind of team you will have. The worst thing you can do at this point is to implement a system that your team doesn't have the tools to execute. You need to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of your team and develop a system based on these traits.
For instance, maybe you have good size and fundamentals but lack team speed or maybe your undersized but have good speed and skill. Ideally, you would like to have a combination of both types of players; however, the reality is that this is not always going to be the case. The other point to consider is that you might be strong defensively in your own end but lack the scoring in the offensive zone or vice versa. The whole point of this is to evaluate your team and come up with the system that reflects their abilities and for the most part keep it simple, but do it well.

Cheers