📱The New Hidden Skill📱

The Skill That Separates Players in 2026

As technology races forward and AI evolves by the day, I realized something while coaching our 14- and 15-year-old Bantam boys this season:

There’s a new skill that will separate players who develop quickly from those who stay stuck.

And unlike every other skill we train, this one requires not doing something and something that I am personally convinced can be a major separator in who will become a good play and who will become a great player.

👉 The skill: staying off your phone.

Why This Matters More Than Ever

One of the biggest influences on my coaching journey was Daniel Coyle’s The Talent Code. In it, he explains how myelin — the fatty insulation that wraps around neurons — grows through deep, deliberate, focused practice.

More myelin = faster, cleaner, more efficient neural firing.

As Coyle says:

“To be great at something is to be well myelinated.”

But here’s the catch: You cannot build myelin in a distracted state.

Phones vs. Focus

If we want deep focus — the kind that actually changes the brain — we have to get away from our phones. Players, coaches, parents… all of us.

This season made something painfully clear: Phones aren’t just devices anymore — they’re identities.

Asking players to put them away even one hour before a game feels like asking them to become a different person. It’s personal. It’s emotional. It’s uncomfortable.

And it’s not just kids. Just the other day, I bought bait at a gas station and the clerk rang me up while scrolling her phone, barely acknowledging I was there. This is the world our kids are growing up in. It’s normal and I genuinely feel for them.

The Competitive Advantage No One Talks About

So what’s the “new skill” players can capitalize on?

🔥 Who can master staying off their phone the longest — and at the right times.

If a player wants to squeeze every drop of development out of a training session, they need to arrive focused.

If they’re scrolling TikTok three minutes before stepping on the ice, their brain is not primed for learning. Their circuits aren’t ready to fire. Their myelin isn’t ready to grow.

There are great resources out there now on how to combat phone usage (See below). We need to teach ourselves, coaches & players the best way to come prepared for our skates, especially leading into the summer skill skates.

Skill Acquisition Requires:

🔁 repetition

🎯 attention

🧩 isolation of the neural circuit

🚫 zero distraction

When a player repeats a skating pattern with full attention, that circuit begins wrapping with myelin. When they’re mentally half-in, half-out, the process slows dramatically.

A Simple Challenge for Players

If you want an edge heading into tryouts, it starts long before the whistle blows.

📵 Put the phone away. • Leave it with your parents. • Leave it in the car. • You don’t need it in the locker room.

Let your brain do what it’s designed to do: build skill, build speed, build efficiency — build myelin.

The players who learn to protect their focus will develop faster than the ones who don’t.

Research Is Out There. This Is Not Made Up.

I’m not sitting around reading giant research papers — but the people who do read them keep finding the same thing: phones hurt focus. Here are three quick examples if you want to see for yourself:

1. Mental fatigue = slower decisions

Just 30 minutes of scrolling before activity leads to worse passing accuracy and slower decision‑making. Link: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34404292/

2. Phones shrink your field of vision

Looking at a small screen trains your eyes into “tunnel vision,” which kills scanning and awareness. Link: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/5693319_The_effects_of_cell_phone_use_on_peripheral_vision

3. Your phone distracts you even when you’re not using it

Just having a phone in the room pulls attention away from the task. Link: https://www.mdpi.com/2254-9625/15/5/74

4. Hockey‑specific breakdown: Your phone is ruining your game

A hockey‑focused episode explaining how phone habits lower Hockey IQ, reaction time, and readiness. Link: https://www.thehockeyaddict.com/posts/rslint-goalie-science-your-phone-is-ruining-your-game-ft-larissa-mills-ep-119/

Great Hockey PDF slides from The Coaches Site, (Author I cannot find so I am sorry I am not giving credit):

Imagine courtesy of The Coaches Site “Why Your Smartphone is the Extra Player on the Ice (For the Other Team)

Imagine courtesy of The Coaches Site “Why Your Smartphone is the Extra Player on the Ice (For the Other Team)