Puck possession is an interesting stat to track in girls hockey.
While it’s nice to see your team have the puck more often than
the bad guys, I’m sure you’ve seen many instances where one
team dominates the other in terms of time with the puck and the
team with less time of possession wins.

A more critical stat to look at is your giveaway-to-takeaway ratio.

Giveaways are unforced turnovers by your team.  A common example
is when a forward on the attack makes a pass from below their opponent’s
goal-line into the slot without looking. Quite often, the puck ends up on the
stick of the opponent and serves as the first pass for their breakout.
In most games you’ll see instances of Ds making a weak play up the
wall directly into the forechecking pressure or of a player throwing a soft pass up through the middle right to the opponent’s D when there is chaos in front of their
own net. In these cases, it’s not the direct pressure from the other team that forces
the mistake and turnover; it’s a bad decision by your own player.

Takeaways are turnovers that you directly force your opponents to make.
When a forward takes an excellent angle and keeps their feet moving on
the forecheck, they put themselves in great position to takeaway the puck
from the opponent’s D.  Smart pinches down the wall by your D, hard back
pressure by the forwards on the back-check and good sticks positioning on
the penalty kill are also common causes of takeaways.

The simplest way to track your giveaway-to-takeaway ratio is to give a +1
for every takeaway and a -1 for every giveaway. You can track this as a
single number for your whole team overall.  After a few games, you’ll start
to see that the team plays a much more controlled game when you’ve got
more takeaways than giveaways.  I won’t guarantee that you’ll win the game
as a result, but your execution will be much better.

I also find it extremely valuable to track the giveaway-to-takeaway ratio for
individual players. Each time they directly force a turnover, they get a +1
and every time they turnover the puck unnecessarily, they get a -1. The simplest
way to set this is up is to have one column for takeaways and one for giveaways
and to simply write the number of the player responsible in the column and then
add them up at the end of the game.

Keeping this stat on an individual basis will give you a clearer idea of who you
want on the ice at critical moments in the game. You’ll want players who force
the most takeaways on the ice when you need a goal late in the game so that
you can get control of the puck.  And you’ll want the players with the least giveaways
on the ice when defending a one goal lead late in game so that they can make
smart decisions with the puck under pressure.

As with most stats in hockey, you’ll need to consider other factors when
looking at the giveaway-to-takeaway ratio. You can have two players who
are at “0” in their ratio, but for very different reasons.  One player may get
a lot of ice time at even strength and on special teams, play against the
other team’s top players and be on the ice in critical situations at the end of
the game while the other may only get 5v5 ice against the opponent’s 2nd or
3rd line.  In this instance, the ability for the player with more ice time in more
pressure packed situations to keep that “0” ratio might be seen as more
impressive than the player who keeps the same ratio without as many challenging
minutes.  You may also want to cut a little bit of slack to your more creative
offensive players in this regard.  These players have the skills and vision to make
spectacular plays, but in trying to do so, may turn the puck over a bit more often.

While puck possession is nice to have, having a good giveaway-to-takeaway
ratio is much more important.  Success isn’t dictated by simply having the puck
but by what you do with it when you’ve got it.

Work Hard. Dream BIG. Take Care of the Puck.

Your friend and coach,

Kim

PS – Feel free to share this message with any friends, teammates or coaches
that you think might benefit from reading it.

Kim McCullough, MSc, YCS

Director & Founder, Total Female Hockey