The Ride To The Rink: Building Your Off-Season Hockey Habits

The birds are chirping, the season’s winding down—and that means it’s the perfect time to start thinking about how to build a better hockey player this off-season.

In this episode of Ride to the Rink, Lee and Mike dive into how players (and parents) can start planning a development calendar that fits real life and drives real growth. From simple 20-minute habits like daily push-ups or shooting pucks, to blocking out time in a shared Google Calendar, it’s all about building consistency, not cramming in ice time.

You’ll also hear:

     ✅ Why structured planning beats “winging it” every time

     ✅ How daily effort—even 15 minutes—adds up in a big way

     ✅ Tips for integrating hockey into your lifestyle without burning out

     ✅ Why the off-ice work matters just as much (if not more) than spring tournaments

Whether your player wants to hit the next level or just stay sharp during the off-season, this short ride is packed with advice for setting goals, building habits, and staying balanced.

📌 Because greatness—on the ice or off—starts with what you do every day.

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Transcript

Lee MJ Elias [0:07 - 1:15]: Hello, hockey skaters and goalies around the world. Welcome back to another edition of the Ride to the Rink. It's Lee and Mike with you today. And look, you know what? I'm looking outside right now, Mike. It's, it's sunny, it's spring outside. There might be some rain today because that's what happens in the spring, but we're probably a few weeks past the season ending. Maybe just the trail end of some evaluations are happening. But the point is the off season is here, right? That's what, that's what the robins outside in my area usually means. And you know, you want to get outside, you want to do things now. You want to maybe get a little bit away from the game this time of the year. Or for you kids out there, maybe you don't. Maybe you want to do a little more practice right now. Maybe you want to have some spring hockey. So today we're going to talk to you about this time of year. It's spring. What does your developmental calendar look like? Or how can you create a development calendar? Or what the heck do we mean by developmental calendar? And what that, what this time of the year matters? So I'm going to throw it over to Mike because we are entering the time where we want you to think, if you want to be a better hockey player for next season, about some of the things you can do in the off season. And that includes you actually taking a break. Mike, go ahead. 

Mike Bonelli [1:15 - 3:20]: Yeah, so when I sit down with players this time of year, there's nothing you can do from what was just happened, right? You, you, you made a team. You didn't make a team. You were selected for the group you wanted to be selected with or not. You're still waiting to get selected. You have no idea. Maybe, maybe you're in limbo right now. You don't know. So there's nothing you can do about those things. But what you can do is plan your calendar. You can plan your development calendar. And I think what happens, I think a pitfall that happens to all of us, but mostly young hockey players and young athletes is planning ahead to develop like you can't. Any athlete that just wings it, that just gets up in the morning and says, what am I going to do today? Those are unsuccessful athletes at the end of the day. And my challenge to you is to come up with a developmental calendar. It could be as easy as a Google calendar with mom and dad and just say lay out right now. April, May, June, July and August. That's all you need to have and then black out all the dates. You know, you're doing something, family vacation, a cruise, a baseball tournament. But a couple of hockey tournaments, maybe you're going to a couple of hockey camps, put all that in your calendar, lay it all out there, and then look at the dates and say, oh my God, do I have any dates left to develop? Because that's when development's going to happen. And, and if you, and I'll just say, you know, before I hand it back to Lee, here is when you do this, you're going to find, like, say you have a weekend tournament. It probably starts on a Friday. That means you're probably not training on Thursday. It probably ends on a Sunday. That probably means you're not training on Monday. So now you have Tuesday and Wednesday to train. And you gotta hope that there's real life doesn't get in the way there, you know, so. So unless you have a plan, unless you have a structure, it doesn't have to be, you know, formal. It needs to be. I'm giving myself 20 minutes every Monday, Wednesday and Friday or at this time this week to do this, this and this. Now I can set my development schedule up and at least you have something to track with and keep you on track with. 

Lee MJ Elias [3:20 - 5:09]: Yeah, and you know, Mike, I'll even start you earlier than that. This is amazing advice you're giving. But you know, kids, to me it's all about habits and creating great habits, right? So one of the things my own son does, which, which he did on his own, I didn't prompt him with this, was, you know, we have so many devices in the house. He has told his device, hey, remind me every night at this time to do 20 push ups. And sure enough, every night that thing comes on. Logan, it is time to do 20 push. And he does them. But that little, little help is how we started that. And then he created the habit of, you know, kind of, this is funny, it started after practice, but just shooting in the, the, at the net downstairs every day. So he's created these habits. And this is the funny part, my friends. Small, really no more than 15, 20 minutes. All right? And for those of you young, that's not that much time. All right? But 15, 20 minutes a day of just something to develop your hockey skills can go so far. When you compact that over the summertime, when you talk at that three, four month summer, if you're doing that every day, you're going to develop a new skill that you didn't have, right? And that's in just 15 minutes. If you want to do 30 minutes or 45 minutes a day of a few different things, maybe some stick handling or, or watching a game and looking at the IQ side of the game or shooting. It's the daily habits and the kids that put in that daily time, Mike, as you said, that really see the difference. So if you're not ready to wake up and say, what am I doing today? At least make sure you're waking up with some of those habits built in of I'm gonna do push ups, I'm gonna do squats, I'm gonna shoot in the, at the net. It does not take much time to do those little things and you still have most of the day left to go. And again, if you're older and you want to do more serious stuff, Mike is 100, right. You should have a plan. You should know what you're doing week to week, whether it's working out or practicing or getting outside or even studying. There's, there's levels to this. But starts with those great habits. 

Mike Bonelli [5:09 - 6:32]: Yeah. And any coach is going to tell you if you put in 20 minutes a day, five days a week, 20 weeks a year, you're getting, you're going to be getting like over 2000 hours in development time. Like you're going to be getting that. You can't go thousands of hours of just development where it all does add up, it builds on each other. Nobody's saying you have to go shoot a thousand pox, but you could shoot 20 in the right hand corner, right? You can, you could shoot 20, you could stick handle for 15 minutes doing different way. Like that's all it takes. You could just journal, you could write down, you could say, listen, I'm just gonna do my push ups or my sit ups. But it all adds up. It all adds up. And I think with, you know, and especially now we're in the off season and for a lot of us, hopefully it's the off season for you. But you're going into the season, go in, go in strong, go in ready and go in focused. And then you can readjust your calendar to now say, okay, well I'm already gone the ice for this amount of time. Now I can restructure my time to say, oh, I got to make sure I get my two hours of homework in. I gotta leave. Like you have to deliberately build blocks in your schedule to help you. And if you're doing this with mom and dad, I would even say, listen, if you have a full time coach too, put your coach on that Calendar, you know, that's. It's an easy way for your coach to see, oh, wow, this guy's so busy. This gets really busy. And I'm gonna make sure I'm supporting this player in his quest and, and her quest in getting better. 

Lee MJ Elias [6:32 - 7:17]: I. I love it, Mike. And in closing, I'll say this too, that, you know, if you're playing ice hockey in the spring or the summer, that's great, like, like, if that's what you want to do. But just remember that that game, while fun, doesn't really replace the stuff that we're talking about. You got to build these habits. You got to do the stuff away from the ice as well. If. If you're serious about it, right. If you're not, that kids, there's nothing wrong with that either. If this, this is just something you're doing for fun, there's nothing wrong with that. But if you really want to be better, these are some of the things you got to do. And, and I'll say this too. This goes beyond hockey. This is anything you want to do. If you want to be a great musician, a great writer, a great actor, anything you want to be great at, you got to find the habits and build this into your repertoire, if you will, every single day. Look that word up if you don't know what it means. 

Mike Bonelli [7:18 - 7:21]: You don't become a good tuba player when it's sitting looking in box. 

Lee MJ Elias [7:21 - 8:09]: Right? Right. And they don't just show up on the day you have the concert and are awesome. They gotta practice. Right? It's a great point. So, kids, anything you want to do, anything you want to be great at, you got to build the habits to practice. And that doesn't come from your parents. That comes from you. We can tell you to do it, but the truth is this. You got to want to do it. If you don't want to do it on your own, you got to be realistic about what that's going to end up being. So that's going to do it for this edition of the Ride to the Ranked Kids. Wherever you're at on that journey in hockey or anything else, just remember, we believe in you. You should too. Can't just be us. It's got to be you as well. That's going to do it. We'll see you next time. Remember, have fun, skate hard. We'll see you on the next ride to the ring. Take care, everybody.