“Teaching the How and the Why” with Power Skating Specialist Lindsay Tilley

Foreign this is Sharpening youg Edge with Chuck and Eric.

In this episode, we'll be speaking with Lindsay Tilly.

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Hello and welcome to another episode of Sharpening youg Edge, presented by CV3 Hockey Development.

And I'm Chuck Vertolino, along with my co host, Eric Melanson.

And today we are honored to have the founder and owner of Heat, a triple USFS gold medalist in figure skating and over 10 years of experience with youth all the way to NHLers.

Welcome to the show, Lindsey Tilly.

Thanks so much for having me tonight, guys.

Lindsay, thanks for coming on.

I know we've been talking about doing this for a while.

I'm glad we were able to link it up.

I think once we go video, we'll have to get the three of you guys on here.

You, Stacey and Sarah.

It'd be one heck of a podcast, but we're gonna.

We'll just jump right into it.

So Chuck talked a little bit about your background and I know a bit just from my interactions on social media with you and then with mutual friends, but kind of tell us a little bit about your journey from grown up skating figure skating and then when you made that transition to say, all right, I like teaching skating and I want to teach hockey players how to skate better because that seems to be everybody's Achilles heel.

Yeah.

To what you said.

I did grow up as a figure skater.

I was a competitive athlete all through my youth.

I did it in a town that was not a skating town.

I grew up in Virginia Beach, Virginia.

You either played soccer or you surfed or skateboarded.

I didn't do any of those.

So I was kind of always the odd man out in terms of what my peers were doing at the time.

So I was a competitive skater my entire primary school academic 4 years old to 18.

And I guess at age 18, I made a decision that I was always a great skater, but I was a lousy competitor.

I just lacked that mental performance aspect that was necessary to put out the performance when it counted.

And we didn't have the mental health resources like we have now.

And I wish that we had back when I was a competitor because I think I could have really benefited from it.

But regardless, it then pushed me to get into coaching.

And so at age 18, I turned pro.

I started coaching athletes and realized that I was actually a really good coach and I really enjoyed it.

And even though it helped pay for college, I ultimately ended up deciding to make a career out of it.

And right out of school was asked to be the skating director of the Charlottesville Ice Park.

Which was such an awesome time in my life, right?

I was young.

I had just then met my husband, who was also a coach and a skater and was given the keys to a program with just amazing owners who let me do whatever I wanted.

And that was just such a fun time in my life to really sink my teeth into coaching and get really good at it and figure out how to engage with athletes, get their best performances out of them.

And then once my husband's career started to take off, so this is now probably six years post graduation.

And being in this position and job, his career started to relocate us.

By that point, we had our first child and I found myself having to start and restart every time we had to move for his job.

And that was every three years that started this cycle.

And I was at a point in my life where I was also having more than one child now.

And it's the same pattern, it's the same system every time you go into a new town, you start teaching.

Learn to skate.

You pluck talent out of learn to skate.

You develop the athlete and hopefully they become great competitors.

And that's really the system that everybody uses in figure skating.

And by the time we had moved, I don't know, maybe our fourth move every three years, it landed us in North Jersey.

And at that point, my boys were starting grade school and I was realizing that I just didn't have the time to invest in restarting and developing figure skating athletes.

And it's very time consuming.

You're away a lot on the weekends, there's a lot of travel involved.

And just by accident, the local skating director at that time asked me to substitute A learn to play class and I dusted off my hockey skates.

I played adult league in my 20s when I was a skating director.

I was really good at the beer drinking part, not so much at the hockey part, but it gave me an opportunity to kind of learn that sport and put the gear on and try it all.

And I did it for a couple of seasons.

It was fun.

And so now fast forward.

I've been asked to teach this learn to play class.

And so I put on my hockey skates and I came up with a plan.

And I realized really quickly that these kids really didn't know how to skate.

And a light bulb kind of went off, right?

I was like, well, wait a minute.

Well, maybe this is the crossroads that I'm at, right?

Like, I don't think I'm going to invest now into this career of being this elite level coach because A, I keep having to restart and B, my kids are getting to an age now where they need me more.

But maybe this is a way to kind of still stay in it and maybe not dedicate 100% of my time, but maybe part time.

And after that 30 minute learn to play class, I had parents instantly come up to me, like, that was so great.

My kid learned more in that 30 minutes than they have in the whole series.

And where can we get your information and how can you work with our kids?

And that's kind of what started the transition for me from figure skating to hockey.

That's a pretty awesome journey.

The full circle moment for you coming where you had that crossroads.

That's awesome.

And I'm sure it's really taken off since that first Learn Escape class.

Obviously, looking back on it.

Yeah.

I mean, nothing that I had ever intended.

In fact, I went in thinking, well, I would be okay if I had to move away in two years.

Right.

Like, how could I ever get attached to hockey players?

Or I just felt like it was an easy avenue for me to take and still be involved and not be so heartbroken when the time came that I had to move.

But, you know, the joke's on me.

We ended up being there for eight years.

That's kind of where he then evolved.

And nothing ever that I had initially intentionally set out to do.

That's great.

You often see some of the most successful power skating coaches coming from a figure skating background.

I also want to shout out Barbara Williams, who was the first female power skating coach in the NHL.

She worked with the Islanders in the early 80s, and luckily for me, around that time too, when I was Three years old, she was my first power skating coach.

So as a triple gold medalist in figure skating, what technical advantages did that background give you, do you think, when coaching and transitioning to hockey players?

Yeah, that's a really great question.

I think that when I look back on my skating career, I think the one discipline in particular, that now maybe I'm dating myself a little bit.

I was the last generation to do school figures.

And if anyone knows anything about figure skating, that your overall performance and overall score were actually two different components.

Back in the day, you had your jumping and your spinning and your performing part that you see on television.

But then there was also a mourning part that people didn't see, and that was school figures.

And that was such a crazy discipline that we had to do every single morning.

You woke up and you got on a fresh sheet of ice, and you were given just a section of it, and you weren't allowed to talk to anybody.

And for a whole hour, you had to concentrate on your edges, right?

And you had to trace your edges around in a figure 8 formation.

And each level got more challenging, whether it was turns, brackets, rockers, counters, transitions, backwards, forwards.

I mean, you had to know your edges inside and out, literally.

And I think that discipline taught me so much body awareness and how to manipulate the blade to the ice and focus.

It's crazy that it doesn't exist anymore, because it's really what made skaters really good.

I mean, we have great skaters now, but for me, it was such a transferable skill when it came to coaching.

And I think I owe a lot of how I've taken my figure skating background and have transferred it to hockey just solely based on the fact that I had to do school figures.

That sounds brutal, but also, it seems very Canadian.

I don't know if it started there, but it seems very Canadian.

Or maybe Russian.

I don't know.

I guess maybe I could go with the Russian, too.

I think every federation had to do it.

It wasn't just.

Yeah, it wasn't just the United States.

And most skaters weren't very good at it.

They were great at jumping and spinning, and then they'd get to their figures and that's where they would lose points.

And I was the opposite.

I wasn't a great competitor, but, man, was I really good at figures.

I got it, I understood it, and I enjoyed it.

And a lot of kids, especially at a young age, didn't.

Right.

It was boring.

And we didn't just do it once a week.

We did it every morning.

I mean, we're talking five mornings a week, you did figures.

And so I look back on that and I see the difference in the level of training of what I had to do versus what kids are now doing nowadays.

It's just so different.

Absolutely.

So you started he hockey edge agility training and now it's all female staffed.

So is that something important to you to start Heat with all female cadre?

You know, it wasn't again, anything that I had intended to do.

I set up.

Heat was started just by myself because I had a general manager tell me that I couldn't do it.

And I had no intention of even starting a brand or a business.

But when I went in to go try to buy an hour of ice to do my own clinic, I had someone tell me, well, I'm not a business.

And so come back to me when I'm a business and if anyone knows anything about me, I'm very much a hold my beer kind of person.

If someone says I can't do something and that's really how he started, that's how the brand and the name started.

I mean, I think I went home that night and came up with a name and filed for an LLC certificate with the state of New Jersey.

I bought a business book on how to create websites and link it to E commerce.

I mean, dove like if I was going to be a business, I was going to be a business.

And so Heat started off with just me.

It was like it ran like that for a while.

I ran clinics.

I tried to get my name out there.

I tried to promote that skating can be fun to learn.

It doesn't have to be torture.

Like I think so many hockey players view it.

And it wasn't until I met my first female professional player who wanted to work with me that I really started to see that there's this side of the sport that I didn't even know about.

Right.

I didn't even know anything about women's professional hockey.

I didn't even know that was a thing.

And when I started working with this athlete, I asked that if we work together, can you just as I teach you.

I need you to teach me.

I wanted to know more about hockey.

I felt like I understood skating, but I was missing connecting the dots for some of my players because I didn't know enough about the game.

And so when I started working with this player, we exchanged information.

I mean, it was just a mutual relationship, and friendship grew from it.

And so I really got to learn a part of the sport that I thought was necessary for me to know when it came to teaching skating and hockey players.

Fast forward, that turned into me working with the team.

Once the general manager of that team, it was the nwhl.

Metropolitan Riveters at the time, saw that this player had made such a huge improvement over the summer, asked who she'd been working with.

And so I kind of got involved in women's professional hockey pretty early on.

It was a great gig, and it was.

It was great to work with professional athletes, and I really loved my time with them.

But then we all got the same email the day that the league dissolved, right?

It was the nwhl, and it kind of picked up to be the phf, and it was just having all of these turnovers, and some of the girls that I had been working with decided that they were going to end their professional career and that they were going to go try to get jobs.

And that's when a light bulb went off, and I was like, come work for Heat.

Like, let this brand be more than just skating.

Like, you guys have taught me so much about the hockey side of it.

Why not be a company now where we can all work together?

And it just so happened to be that we were all female, but those are really the players that helped me grow and get better.

And so it only seemed fitting that I would then continue this brand along with them.

Such a cool story.

It's unfortunate that the league had folded so many times, you know, whatever name they gave themselves, but it's reassuring to see the success that it's having now.

And having been to the last, the first and only Fleet game so far at the Boston Garden, I mean, that place was packed to the gills, and it was so much fun to watch.

It's such a great time, not only for the game of hockey, but, like, women's hockey.

It's so awesome.

So just the fact that you were able to pay it back to those players, that kind of helped teach you just as much as you taught them.

I think that's such an incredible, like, life lesson and just an awesome part of the story.

Yeah, thanks.

It only seemed right.

That's the direction it was going to go and seeing that my struggles even as a female to try to break into some of this stuff.

Well, if I could give an opportunity to make it a little bit easier for them, having already established this brand and giving them a space to develop their own craft, that is something that I didn't set out to do but quickly became really important to me.

Talk to us a little bit about the we touched on Heat but the Power three side of things.

And I know Stacy is well known in the Little Caesars community.

Right.

Obviously she's got Michigan and Sarah, who is awesome and works out of Maryland, trained both my boys.

How did you guys come together and what's next on the horizon?

Yeah, so what's interesting is that he was very much a company and a brand that started up and of course eight years later I am relocated again.

So the girls that work for the brand are still up in that area.

And now I find myself back by myself and for selfish reasons is a little bit why I created Power 3.

I wanted to take what I did specifically, which is being a skating technician and a specialist and finding other like minded coaches that do exactly what I was doing.

So it wasn't more game application and skill drills, but it was down to just the skating.

And I met Sarah through a mutual friend who introduced me to Stacy.

And we had been developing this relationship for quite some time, just sharing ideas and both of them were so willing to collaborate.

You don't always find that with coaches that want to share their knowledge and they were more than willing to share knowledge, as am I, always.

And so the three of us together decided, well, let's try this out together.

Let's take our show on the road.

And it's still at the very early stages of it.

We just had our first clinic, the three of us all together.

And I think what separates us from other skating clinics is a few things.

A you get, you're getting three specialists, right?

We all have our own business, our own brands and we've come together and we really are putting importance on keeping these clinics small.

I think sometimes when you go to skating clinics, it's just, it's a lot of kids out there, which is great, right?

I mean any type of skating is great.

It's going to be beneficial.

But I think what we are specifically focusing on is that higher level player who is really looking to make that next step, what's going to give them that next edge.

And I think that's tough to do in a large situation, in a large group.

I think there needs to be some individualized planning for that and hopefully as Power three continues, we're able to offer that to whoever wants to come to our clinics.

I mean, I think if there's any three to do it, it will be you three.

And I look forward to.

I'm actively working to bring you guys up to New Hampshire, so we would love that.

Absolutely.

And now let's take a quick break to hear from our partners parents.

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So when Eric and I sat down and got this idea to start the podcast, our main goal was just to have a platform to educate parents, coaches and players from the youth level all the way up to the professional level for our audience.

And we've had members from many different fields on whether it's mental health, concussion specialists, dietitian, strength and conditioning coaches, and often the same topic comes up with the explosion of social media.

There's a lot of people out there that claim they're experts.

Right.

And with that, there are a lot of big misconceptions and some wrong advice out there.

So what are some of the biggest misconceptions players and or parents have about skating development?

Yeah, I think to your point, it is something part of our brand philosophy is educating parents.

I think there is, like you said, there's a lot of information out there and I think you can go down a deep rabbit hole as a par and very much get caught up in the frenzy of the craziness of youth hockey.

I think one of the biggest misconceptions though is that skating can be easily fixed and not necessarily fixed, but changed or to benefit the player in the game.

And I always laugh when I have a player or a parent that doesn't see me regularly, call me in February and ask if their kid can get in with me before tryouts.

And it's like it's a one lesson fix, right?

Yeah.

Right.

Like, I wish that I could just wave a magic wand and poop.

You're faster and more secure with your edges.

And I think the misconception is that you only need a few lessons.

Right.

It's not that easy.

And it takes time to change muscle patterns and biomechanics.

And sometimes it doesn't change.

Right.

Like, you only can do so much with a player to hope that they can connect their mind with their body, but at the end of the day, they ultimately have to do it.

And so you think with enough repetition and enough time and enough drilling and enough conceptual thinking about it and being able to apply it to the game, that you'll eventually see progress in the game.

But that takes a lot of time and consistency.

That is very funny.

You mentioned that.

It brings like a little anecdote to my.

Or story to my head or.

I think it was around the first lesson that my son, my oldest son had with Sarah, she was like, man, he skates way too.

Like, he's standing up damn near straight when he's skating.

Like, we're gonna fix that.

And I think around, like the 18th month, 18 month mark, she was like, I think he just skates tall and that's okay.

And we're gonna work with that.

And she was like, we'll just make that better.

And she did.

And I think it was.

It was.

That was a light bulb moment for me, like you said, where it's gonna take a long time and it might not work, so you might have to adapt.

And I think that's a critical lesson.

Yeah, absolutely.

And Sarah, that's why Sarah's a good coach.

Right.

Like, everyone's going to look different out there.

And it's not figure skating where it's choreographed.

Right.

It's very much unchoreographed a game.

And so I think I've had to really change my mentality as a coach when working with hockey players, knowing that not everyone's going to look alike.

And so you've got to take how people are built and what their strengths are and where their weaknesses are that you can improve and hope that you can connect it all together for them.

And so we've touched on, like, I think the things that have come out of your mouth have touched on every human performance topic that Chuck and I cover.

From the first thing, talking about mental health, which I'm huge on.

But I.

One of the interesting things I noticed about your camp, specifically that you guys just ran in Pittsburgh was that you had an off ice section to it and that you don't see that a lot.

How important do you think?

And you talked about the biomechanics and the muscle pattern development when you're teaching.

How important is it that these players that want to make those bigger changes are also doing something off ice to strengthen those muscles to develop stronger, to get faster off the ice so that it's easier for them to hold that edge longer?

Yeah, I think that's another really great question.

I think what we wanted the kids to get out of that camp were off ice drills that they can do on their own for free.

Right.

Let's be honest.

This sport's expensive ice is expensive.

Ice time is expensive.

And so if there are ways that we can still drill our bodies that are transferable to the ice, that's.

Those are skills that I want to give to those players.

I want them to understand that they can strengthen those muscles and those muscle patterns and especially their mobility off ice.

And that's.

I think that's a huge component of development is being able to, in when you can't get on the ice, still be able to actively move your bodies in that type of way that then can transferable on the ice.

Yeah, I mean, I think the.

The hip mobility piece alone, I think is one thing that a lot, I know a lot of these high level strength coaches preach is the hip mobility and making sure that these.

Because they're stuck in this one motion all the time on the ice and with the amount that everybody is skating, especially youth players nowadays, like they're getting stuck in these movement patterns where if they try to do anything else, they could get injured.

So having that mobility is key to injury prevention and then just success on the ice as well, for sure.

So you not only work with youth players, but you work all the way up with NHLers.

Currently you're the skating specialists with the Philadelphia Flyers.

And we've talked to scouts about every level you go, you have to keep going and improving.

You can't just stay static.

And you might be the highest scorer or the best player in junior, but when you go pro, it's a whole nother ball game.

So obviously there's a big jump in the speed of the game as you go up the ladder too.

So what differences do you notice between NHL level players and youth or junior players or NCAA players when it comes to skating habits?

Yeah, I mean, first of all, we're dealing with much larger human beings.

Right.

So right from the start.

Right.

We have Those challenges in terms of height and weight and mobility, and lack of mobility for that matter.

I think sometimes players continue their development on the ice, but again, like you said, with the mobility factor, they're not also developing that as well.

And the older you get and the bigger you get and the stronger you get, the more we see that kind of mobility can tend to decrease.

And so I don't think there's so much difference in the fundamentals of what we do with youth players versus higher level players.

But I think it's sometimes maybe smaller details, that they've got good foundations, but maybe they're not bending at a certain joint more, they're able to do it more, or they just don't have.

They don't understand.

They haven't seen it.

And so we do a lot.

We do.

I will be doing a lot of review.

I have to be honest with you.

I'm very new with the Philadelphia Flyer organization.

I just started in November.

And so right now, in season, we don't get that opportunity to really develop their skating.

There just isn't time.

And up until this point, I would say my position with that organization has just been data collecting.

Right.

I get in there, I get to meet the players, I get to see them on the ice.

I've been able to work with some of them, especially the AHL guys who were hoping to get pulled up to the NHL roster, which some of them have, which has been really awesome.

But right now I'm spending my time developing those relationships with them and developing that trust with them, because they have to be able to buy what I'm selling.

And so the organization has really made it a point and a priority for me to get to know these guys first.

So I'm really looking forward to that.

That's awesome that they really want you to get to know the players first.

I think that's a super important part, and I can tell you that I hope that you are.

I'm not a Flyers fan, but I've grown to like them, especially the culture that they have going on right now.

I think it's pretty special.

And shout out to Bump for his big performance last night.

That was fun to see.

I know you've had a little bit of work with him, so I know that's got to be bittersweet for you.

You've worked a lot with men, I guess, as of late, the professional men, obviously, given your current role, how have you seen the women's game kind of evolve from when your time with the Riveters to the things that these girls are doing now, winning gold and then just being electric in the pwhl.

Like how have you seen that evolution?

Yeah, I mean I, like I said, I had no idea that there was even a women's professional hockey world when I first got into this.

And I dove a little bit deeper.

I was shocked by the challenges those girls faced to try to even be professional hockey players.

I mean these women had to hold multiple jobs and be a professional athlete on top of that just to make ends meet.

And I was just so blown away by every single woman that was doing that.

Right.

They had 10 o', clock, 11 o' clock practices at night, only have to get up at 6am for a workout and then only to go to their job.

Right.

And then, oh, on the weekends, play all weekend.

I mean their schedule was insane.

And to see it now evolve where these women can actually do their job and be full time professional athletes and be compensated for it is just been amazing to see.

And it just recently happened.

But all the work I got to see all the work build up to that.

And that, that's been the cool part is seeing, seeing it go from that to now this to now selling out arenas, to getting on TV to having fans.

I mean none of that was happening when I was involved, just that small little part in the NWHL and the phf.

And so to see that now and to see these little girls.

I am involved in the girl youth organization up in North Jersey, the New Jersey Colonials, which is such a huge girls program.

I mean they feel two teams at every single age level, which is just outstanding.

And to see that even grow and to see these little girls now have someone to look up to and to visibly see on TV or go to a game, it's just, it's awesome.

It's totally awesome.

Yeah.

And I think it gives those girls something to aspire work hard.

To put that hard work in that you've mentioned is significant when learning a skateboard.

It gives them something to aspire to, to put that to.

To know that I'm working hard because I have this attainable goal now.

Totally.

And staying on the topic of girls and women's hockey, which is near and dear to my heart as Eric knows.

My 10 year old daughter is a goalie that plays boys hockey, higher level hockey.

So she.

Chuck's very modest.

She's amazing.

She's one of my favorite players.

I can't wait to wear Her PWA Jeff jersey one day.

Right on.

Yeah.

So sticking on the topic, which we like to plug and help grow every week, we had Greg Fargo on for and for those audience members who don't know, we talked with him about how I saw him at one of his Colonial games when my daughter was playing right after him.

And our daughters are actually going to be teammates for PA Roses in a couple weeks up in Eric's neck of the woods up in Boston.

I'll be there.

We're looking forward to that.

Yeah.

And we had him on recently and he talked about a little bit about his next gen development camps and you've teamed up with him and Fargo Hockey.

Talk a little bit about that and what yourself and Heat and Fargo Hockey hope to accomplish for girls and women's hockey with this camp.

Yeah, I think it's just providing an opportunity for girls to train with other girls.

Right.

Which is still not something that's the norm.

I think girls often, especially in the summertime, have to join groups with boys and that's not a bad thing.

I mean, plenty of players do it.

But to be able to offer them a week long camp where they get to train with their teammates because ultimately if they are aspiring to be higher level hockey players, whether it be NCAA or professional hockey, they are going to be playing with other girls.

And so I think to give them a safe, constructive environment where they can make mistakes and learn from them, try new things and get a little uncomfortable with their edges.

If they're going to work with me and explore what they can do in the game and with their skills and not feel any type of judgment.

Right.

All be in it together, I think is what Greg and I ultimately want to achieve for the week for these girls.

That sounds cool.

I would love to go to that, but it's not going to work out for me.

So I think you talk to us a lot about your work with all these high level athletes and that really speaks to how driven you are as a person.

But I think a bigger part of you, and this may be of news to the folks listening, but like what strikes me is the part about working with Hockey Without Borders and Sarajevo and it kind of really speaks to your character and just that you truly do love this game and love teaching.

So could you touch on what that, what did you gain from that experience and how has it shaped you going forward now as you coach?

Yeah, I think something that I preach to all of my players is this idea to give back.

Right.

We're not just creating good athletes.

I Hope we're also making really good humans.

At least that that should be a goal of any coach, right?

You're in an opportunity to help shape and develop these players character.

And for me, I didn't.

I've always given back in my skating.

Whether it was working with Special Olympics or working for programs that had less resources coming out and volunte.

It's always been a part of my development as a coach and I was seeking an opportunity to continue to do that.

And I had a really good friend, Pete Kamen out in Minnesota who had constantly been documenting all of the crazy adventures he had been going on, whether it was through the Friendship League or through Hockey Without Borders.

And I immediately reached out to him.

I'm like, how can I get in on this?

Because this seems something that I could sink my teeth into and I would really enjoy.

And I think putting yourself as a coach into an uncomfortable or new situation helps grow your own coaching right now.

Here I was, I was accepted into the Hockey Without Borders program.

They sent me to Sarajevo.

I didn't know what I was getting myself into.

I didn't know if the kids could speak any English.

Half of them could, half of them couldn't.

And it's one of those things where you get on a session and you're like, huh, okay, I've got eight UA level players all the way to 16U AAA level players and go and figure it out.

And so I think when you get that opportunity to get into a situation where it might be something you've never done before or it makes you uncomfortable, I think that's where real development and growth happens in your own coaching.

That's so cool.

And now let's take a quick break to hear from our partners.

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CV3ockywraparound.com we are really proud to be supporting the guys at Sharpening youg Edge.

Enjoy this episode of their show and have fun skating.

Take care.

So speaking of growth and coaching, unfortunately today in the youth hockey world, we see a lot of coaches that focus on.

They think that the most successful coaches are the ones that have the most banners at 8 to 10 to 12 years old.

But they don't focus on what got you to that banner or even looking further to.

To developing these players until they're 18, 20 years old.

So in your mind, what does great coaching look like in today's game?

Wow.

Yeah, that's a really good question.

I think really good coaches are developing really good characters, not necessarily the best athletes.

I think at the end of the day, if we can create good teammates and create leaders and create people who are going to support one another and, and be loyal for one another, the talent will come.

Right?

I would take that over talent any day.

I think some coaches just don't stress that enough that they have this really great opportunity to be influential to these players and to help guide and shape them into these roles of teammates and leadership.

And to me, we're in the business of creating characters, good characters, not just good performers and good athletes.

Now, you're also part of the NHL Coaches association female Coaches development program.

That's a long.

They need to like shorten that one recommendation.

But.

And I've got a friend of mine who, she's the assistant GM for the Devil's Kate Madigan.

And you see great human being, she got my son down to be and give Jackie, who's a fist bump for his birthday.

And that was the best birthday present I could have ever given him.

So shout out to her.

Just a great human being.

But what has that experience meant to you?

I mean, coming from Virginia beach all the way up through now to having that impact on that grand of a scale, what does that, what does it mean to you and what have you learned from it?

Yeah, I mean, I'm so grateful for that program.

I've been in that program, I think for five years.

I was accepted into it.

And that has just been a whole world of networking that I would have never have had otherwise.

And it's the reason that I, I ultimately am with the Flyers.

I mean, all the roads that led to it started with the NHLCA female development coaching program.

It got my resume in people's hands that ordinarily wouldn't have gotten my resume.

The biggest one is when I got a call from Barry Trots that I was in the running to be a guest coach for the Nashville Predators camp.

I thought I was being punked.

I did not think that who was calling me.

We laugh about it now.

And I didn't get the job right away.

I mean, I didn't that summer.

I wasn't selected, but I was in the running for it.

And I had.

God, I had an.

I had a zoom call for an hour with him.

I mean, no other way I would have gotten that opportunity just to get in front of him and to kind of share my coaching philosophy and talk about his.

I mean, it was like just talking with a good friend.

I mean, it was just a great hour long conversation.

And we ended that conversation with, if this, this summer isn't going to work out because we're going in a different direction, we're going to work at some point together.

I thought that was a really nice way of rejection.

I was like, okay, I'll never hear from him again.

That was great.

And I can tell my kids that I got to talk to him for an hour.

But a man, true to his word, two years later called me and said, this is the summer.

This is your summer to come.

And I couldn't believe it.

I couldn't believe two years later that he had still remembered our conversation and me.

And again, I think having being part of that program was just such a huge opportunity for me to advance kind of my coaching career in a way that I would have never been able to do it.

And that's such cool.

I mean, Barry Trots fan now.

That's awesome.

Yeah, man.

True to his word.

Well, a lot of the stories I hear about Barry Trots from people that know him say the same thing.

He's just a man of not only a great coach and a great general manager and management, but just a quality character, high character, human being.

So that's another cool story to hear about him.

Yeah, he's the man in youth hockey today.

I think we alluded to it earlier.

It's a lot different than it was, say, 15, 20 years ago.

There is a lot of undue pressure put on youth hockey players today, unfortunately, from whether it be coaches and especially parents today, many kids get discouraged and we see a lot of burnout.

So how do you approach building confidence in players, especially younger athletes and maybe even female athletes as well?

Yeah, I don't know if it's necessarily building confidence, but I do take an approach with my coaching that I hopefully keeps kids coming back and that is keeping it fun.

Right.

I am in the business of not only working with players at any level, right, to develop their skating, but I want it to be enjoyable.

And I think sometimes we miss that in practices, right?

Like, it can be the same old, or it becomes repetitive, or maybe coaches don't bring that level enthusiasm and energy that they want out of their players.

And I think there's.

It's a two way road with that.

Right.

And I think every single time I step on the ice, I am trying to find ways to get kids to fall in love with skating development.

And when I was first starting out, I was so shocked that I would be introduced as the power skating coach.

Like a club would hire me and say, hey, we're going to power skate today.

Here's Lindsay Tilly.

And every kid would just like, be horrified.

Like, they're like, ugh, disgusted.

They want to shoot pucks, they wanted to stick handle.

Like they didn't want to work on skating.

And I thought to myself, like, well, that that stinks.

Like, I want to change that.

I want it to be so enjoyable and so fun that they walk off that hour session, whether we touch pucks or not, thinking it was the best time they've ever had on the ice that week.

And that was my goal.

I laugh at sometimes my Instagram feed, right?

I have lots of hockey Instagram feed that comes through.

But I think more than hockey, I have, I follow PE teachers, right?

Like, what are PE teachers doing to keep their students engaged and active in a gymnasium?

Like, what tools are they using?

Hula hoops, balloons, balls, dots, all the things.

And those are all transferable skills.

Like, at the end of the day, we're teaching movement, right?

And so if I can find ways to make it engaging and enjoyable and fun, I hope that reduces burnout.

Because like you said, it's a boatload of pressure and there's a lot going on and there's a lot of tournaments and there's a lot of money at stake.

And so then you get pressure from parents because of that, whether they intend to or not.

It's just, it's inevitable because of the high price tag.

I Think.

And so for me, if I can be that physical and mental reprieve from those pressures, that's a goal of mine as a coach every time.

Yeah.

So I recently saw your Instagram post today about the warmup with the balloons.

So I'm assuming you got that when you mentioned balloons and hula hoops from PE Teachers.

And that brings me to another point Eric and I talk about, and this goes to show that you are a great coach that we talk about that great coaches agree to be coached.

And that's a lot of things we're seeing, too, in youth hockey.

Today is where coaches might think they know everything, but, you know, they're not willing to take input.

Right.

I'm always willing to get ideas from people.

I'm always willing to share ideas with people, whether it be practice plans.

And another coach is, oh, I love this drill.

Blah, blah, blah, Like, I will share stuff, and I love taking stuff from others.

And people might think, oh, you're not creating your own things.

But no, great coaches agree to be coached, and they're constantly learning.

Just like you said earlier, they're playing.

We want our players to learn.

And I think coaches need to learn as well.

So I'm glad you brought that up.

Yeah, for sure.

I mean, I'm the first person to tell everybody that I. I don't have all the answers.

Gosh.

And I hope I never do.

Right.

I hope I'm constantly pushing myself to find resources to do something better.

And I think you're right in that.

Point is that I think really good coaches are always a student first, and really good coaches are secure with their own coaching that they're fine to share.

Like, I don't feel like I'm gonna lose business because I'm sharing my ideas with somebody else.

I think there's a level of confidence and security that you have to have with your own coaching to be okay to do that.

And we've played a lot of great competition across North America.

So I can assure you that what you're doing is working.

So if plagiarism is the highest form of flattery, I think you both said it spot on, that coaches, it needs to be bidirectional.

You need to always be willing to learn and I think that's how we grow and we make the game better.

For sure.

Yeah, for sure.

And to Bizzy's credit, he came to me with a pretty good foundation, so it made my job pretty easy to tweak a few things with him.

He's electric with the puck, that's for sure.

I think you have had overwhelming success, but I think probably your most proud is being a mom.

So how has being a mom shaped your coaching style?

Like, what do you take anything from the way you speak to your children to the way you speak to your students or vice versa?

Yeah.

So I think really being a parent has made me a little more.

Well, a lot more empathetic to players.

Right.

Coming on a session, sometimes I get guys that are in a rotten mood or they don't they.

Sometimes they're not performing the way I want them to perform.

And now as a parent, I know that there could be outside factors going on.

Right.

Like they could have had a crappy day at school.

They could be in a fight with their best friend.

They could maybe fail the math test or whatever it is, or maybe they're fighting with their parents at home.

And so I think I'm a little more sensitive now to that when I work with players and to be another adult in their life that they can come talk to.

Right.

I hope that my kids have those adults in their life that I trust that they can talk to that's not their parent.

And if they're having trouble with something, maybe get some advice.

And sometimes you don't always.

You don't always want to go to your parent.

But to be another adult figure for these players to come to is something that I hope my players feel.

I feel like I've always been very approachable in that sense.

Yeah, I mean, I know, man.

Chuck, I'm sure you can relate.

I know that the coaches names who I remember and that I still call coach to this day are those ones that had that quality right there.

So I think that is something that needs to happen more for the this game to continue to have the success it does.

Yeah.

I think there needs to be a level of understanding that coaches need to consider when working with kids.

Like, they're not robots, Right.

They're humans.

They have their own boatloads of problems that we have as an adult.

And I think being sensitive to that and tuning into that is.

Is necessary for sure.

And we're competitive, right.

We want to win.

We do this because we everybody competitive.

But at the end of the day, like, they're Just a person.

Right.

You got kind of.

You know what I mean?

Like, you're there to.

They're going to the rink for an escape.

Right.

Because it's fun and they want something enjoyable.

So to make that soul crushing for them.

Right.

You're doing them a disservice.

Yeah.

But we see it, though, right?

Gosh, we see it.

It's disheartening.

Yeah.

It's something that hope changes because I see it more often than I probably should.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

And I'm sure Eric, too, you remember those coaches, not from the drills they put you through, but the impact they made on you.

Yeah.

I couldn't tell you a drill that we did in practice, but I could tell you about the things that he did for me with this one coach in particular, that he was like that older brother that I never had.

And it was.

I'll remember it to the day I die.

I mean, it was the stuff off the ice that was more important to me.

Yeah.

And I found that I was a coach like that as figures in figure skating, too.

I mean, the greatest compliment to me is when I get a wedding invitation from one of my former students that I might have not have talked to them in over 10 years, 15 years, but I somehow left an impression to be a guest at their wedding or get their baby announcement.

I love that players still want to keep me involved in their lives, even after the game and after they're done with their athletic careers, them.

All right, so we're going to go through some closing sl.

Rapid fire questions.

Okay?

Okay.

All right.

All right, so I'll start the first one off.

Okay.

One skating drill that every player should be doing.

Weight shifting.

I like that one.

Yeah, That's a big one.

That's a big one that we don't talk enough about.

You could do it in.

That's one that you like.

You mentioned you could do it off the ice, too.

Yeah.

Weight shifting, big time.

I mean, your power comes from your weight.

Right.

And so if we can learn to weight shift from one side to the other in.

In different variations, I think that's a pretty core principle of physics that we use on the ice.

Yeah.

I feel like if you look at, like the way McDavid's gates, he's a pretty much a poster child for that.

The amount of power that he generates kind of by just shifting his weight is remarkable.

It's remarkable.

All right, I'll go.

Most underrated skill in hockey, I'm going.

To say the ability to separate your upper body from your lower Body.

Yeah.

That's a skill that really tricks.

That's tricky for players.

Right.

We like to skate with our shoulders connected to our hips.

Right.

We don't want to divert from torquing our upper body against our lower body.

I find that at all ages and levels that, that, that's a challenging one for players.

Yeah.

McDavid's also, every night has a master class on that as well.

Yeah, yeah.

So we'll just study McDavid.

Yeah, exactly.

He's a freak.

He's a.

He's just a mutant.

Yeah.

All right, next one.

Best advice you've ever received.

That is probably from my dad, which is the risk is worth the reward.

I feel like I've made.

I made a major career shift in my life and it was a risk and I knew nothing about it going into it, but it has been the most rewarding experience and still experiencing rewards that I could.

I could have never imagined.

So, yeah, the risk is worth the reward.

Best advice.

Yeah.

You never lose.

Right.

If you're always learning, you're never losing.

Totally.

All right, last one.

Advice to young female coaches trying to break into hockey.

Yeah.

Keep pushing.

Just keep pushing.

Right.

If someone tells you no, well, prove them wrong.

You know, I think that is probably my biggest takeaway for young female coaches.

And there's still a lot of challenges that they're going to face.

I mean, it's the women before me and the women before those women have certainly paved the road, but there, there's more highway to be driven on.

And I think that if young female coaches can just keep pushing that envelope, we're going to get there.

Awesome.

All right, so we have a couple more wrap up questions before we let you go or edging up on that one hour mark.

So we've talked about a ton of different things, things during this 55 minutes or so, but is there anything that we missed that maybe you wanted to discuss that you think it's important enough to pass on to our audience?

I mean, we've covered.

We've at least we've covered the core philosophies of what my coaching and the Heat brand is.

And that's teaching the how and the why.

But keeping it fun, I think, is one of our priorities we aim for.

I think we put a big emphasis on parent education, which is.

Is really important, I think, in a player development.

I think parents really need to also be part of that player development.

I think the sense of giving back to the sport is something that all coaches can start to integrate with their players.

Whether it's having the older players come out to the youth practices and be an extra set of hands or start to get those guys involved in coaching because one day their playing is going to end.

And so if they want to continue to be in the sport or let's start developing good coaches at a young age.

And lastly, I think as coaches, we need to constantly be evolving and developing our own education and craft.

And I think if we can put an emphasis on that across the board together, we're all pulling that rope and to make these players better.

And I think that should be the ultimate goal versus personal gain.

It's funny that you mentioned the parent involvement piece as well, and I think that's huge.

And that is shout out to Sarah, because I think every time the boys got off the ice, she would beat them off the ice and come up to me and give me feedback on what they did well, what they need to work on and what they need to be prepared to do the next time they stepped on the ice with her.

And it was awesome.

And I think that's why you guys are so successful.

Yeah.

I often wonder if that's maybe just rooted in our figure skating days.

Right.

I mean, parents were ultimately the customers.

They were stroking huge bills.

It was an individual sport.

And so you spent a lot of time talking to parents.

So I think it might just be ingrained in us.

That's what we do.

Well, I love it.

I love it.

Keep doing it.

And yeah, I think any coach that's kind of worth its salt, he or she will give the parents that feedback to say, hey, like, your kid had a great game and here's why.

And.

Or maybe here's some things he needs to work on.

I think.

I think that helps.

Right?

Because it takes a village.

I know we talked.

You're pretty active on social media, at least on Instagram, between PE teachers and hockey videos.

But you've got your businesses now.

What is the best way for folks to get in touch with you for these cams, for the one with Greg Fargo, for the stuff that you're doing with Stacy and Sarah?

What's the best way to get in touch with you anyway?

Yeah, there's a few avenues you can take.

I have a website which is skatewithheat.com.

There's a way to email me from there if you want to chat or talk shop.

My Instagram account is also Skate with Heat.

We throw a lot of our current schedule up to date.

Camps, clinics that we'll be doing.

And then Power three skating is our other Instagram handle, where we've just started that one, so give it a follow.

It's brand new, but again, we'll be posting our updated schedule when we're coming to an area, there'll always be links in the bio on how to register, how to pay, and you can certainly message us through those Instagram handles or you can go to my website.

Perfect.

Perfect.

All right, the final question, the question we ask all our guests, since this is an educational podcast, the developmental podcast.

What in your words, what is your definition of development?

Could be any aspect of the word.

Mental, physical, in your words.

Well, it's different for everyone, right?

I will say that I don't know if you get people answering it that way, but I think it's different for everyone.

I think that development is a personal growth.

Right.

In all of the aspects that you just mentioned, mentally, physically, emotionally.

And that doesn't always happen all at the same time for every single individual.

And so I think that if players continue to consistently work on themselves, they're going to develop.

Right.

I think the key word there is consistency.

I think development takes time and it takes consistency.

Yeah, I think that's well said.

I think that really just reinforces a lot of the common theme that we've heard a lot across a lot of our guests is that everybody's got their own path, right?

And it happens at a different time.

And it happens everything.

It's different for everybody.

Just like development, right?

Yeah.

Awesome answer.

Did I pass?

Everybody passes.

That was a great answer, Chuck.

And I win because we get to learn, we get to develop by listening to folks like you.

I thank you so much for coming on.

This was a blast, Lindsay.

I'm glad we were able to make it happen.

Yeah.

Thank you guys so much.

This is one of the first podcasts I've ever done.

This was a treat for me as well, so thanks for that.

Thanks for the opportunity.

Awesome.

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