Bloodline Hockey

Most guys will read the Michkov story and miss the main point.

They’ll see the three-a-days and think the point is he worked harder.

It isn’t. The point is that he mindfully changed his approach to preparation.

Last season gave him information he did not want.

Benched. Called out. Scratched.

He could have stayed in the argument about it. Instead, he publicly named the lesson: you have to prepare well for the season and not treat it carelessly. Then his summer reflected a different standard.

That order matters.

The important shift was not just more work. It was a different decision about what preparation required

Here’s why so many players miss it.

They don’t know how to change their minds. They find one way of doing things and they defend it. Same summer program. Same habits. Same story about why it isn’t working yet.

And when the information keeps coming, they go looking for someone who’ll agree the information is wrong.

“This coach just doesn’t get me. These guys do.”

That’s not loyalty to a process. That’s refusing to gather new information because you already decided what it means.

A pro stays open. Not soft. Open. They hear the same noise everybody hears, sort out the two or three things that actually matter, and let it change how they prepare.

It’s Labor Day. And there are two kinds of labor in this story. Showing up the day after you got scratched is one. Changing your mind about what you thought you knew is the other.

The second one is harder, and it’s the one most rarely see.

Talent gets you noticed. Consistency gets you paid.

Michkov’s public response was clear:

“I need to play well. I want that myself.”

Then his summer training reflected that commitment.

Yours doesn’t have to look like his. It has to look like you made a clear decision about what your own preparation requires.

Simplicity + Consistency = SUSTAINABILITY

Your thought process will never be faster than your belief system.

That’s what was cool about today. I sat there looking at the board, thinking about a couple more reps, and I didn’t have that usual tension with it. I wasn’t wrestling with it. I had the commitment. The intention was set before I walked in.

Even with a little “Oh you could do a few more” in the back of my head, I looked at it with significantly less emotion. I just sat there and went, “Nope. I said what I’m going to do.”

There was no battle to fight because I believe it now. Not because someone told me. Because I’ve seen the results twice in my own life. And the more I see with my own evidence, the more I realize how important it is to see things for yourself.

Because here’s the real battle. It’s not you against the workout. It’s what you think reality wants from you versus what you know is best for you. Everything around you says push, keep going, do more. And when you’ve never tested that against your own experience, you just keep obeying it.

It took me 40 years to learn this lesson with my training. Two examples, two fast recoveries, one decision: shut it down right away. And now the decision costs me almost nothing, because the belief is doing the work instead of the willpower.

Stop with what others are saying. Stop with what others believe. Learn from your own evidence. Not from what you’ve been told to believe, but from what you’re seeing for yourself.

Most guys will read the Marner story and take the wrong thing from it.

They’ll take “he needed a change of scenery.”

That’s the first misread. If a new city fixed the blender, every guy who got traded would show up light. You know guys who got traded and brought the whole thing with them. The city doesn’t unpack your bag. You do.

The second misread is quieter. They’ll see “mental health” and file this under something that happens to other people. Not a performance problem. Not their problem.

Here’s what the slides don’t say out loud.

Every result you attach your name to becomes weight you skate with. Contract. Spot. Ice time. What the comment section thinks. What your parents drove four hours to watch. None of it is heavy on its own. All of it together is a load. And load doesn’t care what you call it. It shows up the same way. Slow hands. Flat legs. A read you’d have made in October that you don’t make in February

That’s why environment, attention, and who you talk to aren’t the soft stuff. They’re the only three places you can actually set something down.

Marner didn’t get lighter because he moved. He got lighter because he spent five years learning what he was carrying and started putting pieces of it down. The move was one piece. Not the answer.

Doesn’t matter what level. Agent’s text or coach’s text. Contract or scholarship. Trade rumor or portal chatter. Same load. Different bag.

Pick one thing you’re carrying that isn’t yours. Drop it for seven days. If your game gets lighter, you know what it was.

Simplicity + Consistency = SUSTAINABILITY

Line 2 knows the jobs.
Line 3 learned the cues.

The difference isn’t the coach.
It’s what happens after the coach walks away from the whiteboard.

We call this mindset exercise:
“Make It Your Own”

Seven-year-olds or 25-year-olds. Same thing.
I give them the principles.
Here’s the forecheck.
Here’s what you might see.

Then I say:
Go talk about it.
How are you reading off each other?
What are their D giving you?
What are you going to do?

Not their own system.
Their own understanding of how to run our system together.

Here’s the part we rarely post about:
I’m human.

There are reps where I want them to do it exactly the way I see it. I want to step in, clean it up, and move on.
And plenty of times, I do.
I catch myself mid-sentence, giving them the answer I told them to find.

The difference is I correct it fast.
“Scratch that. You guys talk it through.”
Then I shut up.

So I’m coaching myself as much as I’m coaching them.
Don’t step in.
Let them talk.
Let them get it wrong.
Let them feel it.
Let them hold each other accountable to what’s actually happening out there.

That doesn’t mean I disappear.
I ask questions. I tell them to come find me if they’re stuck. And when they’re moving in the right direction, I tell them. Sometimes players need to borrow your confidence before they trust their own voice.

That exchange is mindset performance.
Not just what the players are doing, or thinking.
What I’m doing to create the conditions to allow them to think for themselves.

It looks messy.
It’s supposed to.
Hockey isn’t order that produces chaos.
It’s chaos, and order gets built inside it.
The more time I give them to build it themselves, the faster they think for themselves. And the faster they see the next play.

Make It Your Own.

Players tell me all the time:
“I don’t want to think out there. I just want to play.”

So I ask them:
Do you think about the things you don’t want to think about?

Because that’s the irony most players miss.

The defensive read.
The hard route back.
The puck-support habit.
The detail you know matters, but would rather not look at.

If you gave your attention to it, then went and did it, you’d see the result.

You’d feel the difference.
You’d see the success.
You’d see what it gives you, and the team around you.

And ironically, that’s what turns your brain off and reduces the unnecessary noise.

Not avoiding the thought.
Experiencing the evidence.

You start to believe in what you paid attention to because you saw it for yourself. You didn’t borrow it because someone told you it mattered. You recognized it in your own game, in your own body, through your own reps, and your own intention.

That’s how durable belief gets built.

Everyone wants fast thinkers on the ice.
The better question is: how quickly can we help players think for themselves and see the evidence for themselves?

That can’t happen if their attention is going everywhere else.

Media.
Opinions.
What someone told them to want.
What someone else told them they should care about.

Questioning where you give your attention is a skill. It’s one of the roots of developing your own thought process.

I’ve watched this show up with NHL players and 10-year-olds. Same issue. Different level.

This is why I’m building out the mindSET METHOD™ and sharing it now with others.

Your attention is where belief starts.
Question where it’s going.

This is why we say I KNOW is greater than I think.
⠀
Coaches tell you what pro is going to be like. Agents tell you. Older guys tell you. None of it is knowing. You don’t know an environment until you’re standing in it, and everything you carried in is still just what you think.
⠀
The constraint isn’t skill. Guys arrive skilled. The constraint is how fast you can tell the difference between what the game is giving you and what you’re trying to give the game. Most players spend years trying to make the level accept what always worked, because it always worked, so it should keep working. That’s a think, not a know.
⠀
That’s what a mindset performance process actually is. Not motivation. A way to turn what you think into what you know, faster than the league can pass you by
⠀
Most players never check. Not because they don’t want to.
Because they haven’t been taught how to.
That’s what the Mindset Method does. Five ingredients. He needed one.
⠀

Life is easy when you work with people you love❤️

“For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.” 🐺 WolfpackHockeyClub