Dudar teaches game in new way

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This article was published 21/10/2023 (962 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A cutting-edge approach to improving Brandon Wheat Kings players is evident at their skill sessions.

It’s not uncommon for players to be gathered around an iPad as the team’s new director of player development, Riley Dudar, shows them video of how a drill has been going and what needs to be done to make it better.

“It’s just how people learn,” Dudar said. “I think hockey is so far behind in teaching. As a player, whenever a coach yelled at me on the bench, sometimes I wouldn’t remember the play or I wouldn’t know exactly what they were talking about. I would have loved to have seen that, ‘Hey, here’s what we’re talking about.’

“When I look at how humans learn, how can I create the best possible learning environment for them? If I can show them a video of them doing something and then I can show them a video of Sidney Crosby doing something, and say ‘What do you see as the difference or how can we get you closer to this?’

“The learning and ability of a player to understand how it translates to a game is just far greater.”

Wheat Kings head coach Bob Lowes and assistant coach Mark Johnston weren’t exactly wheeling a VCR out onto the ice when Brandon head coach and general manager Marty Murray was playing with the team in the early 1990s. Murray is a big believer in what he’s seen from Dudar.

“Riley is very well respected with the skills aspect,” Murray said. “There are just some little subtle things he goes over with the guys. He has the ability to teach and is really good with technology. It’s easy to talk but he does a lot of video with the players, a lot of NHL clips and individual clips to help players see it visually to help them translate it to the ice.”

The Wheat Kings were in action against the Everett Silvertips last night in a game that ended after deadline.

Dudar, a 38-year-old Winnipeg product, joined the organization in March after previously working as a scout with the USHL’s Chicago Steel and serving as director of player personnel for the MJHL’s Winkler Flyers.

But his previous junior experience in hockey operations and as a player are just a fraction of what the first-ever Hockey Canada skill coach brings to the rink.

LOVE OF THE GAME

Dudar was active in a lot of sports growing up in Winnipeg, but one held a special place.

“Hockey was everything for me,” Dudar said. “It was every day on the outdoor rinks, it was playing mini sticks inside.”

He launched his junior career at age 18 in the 2003-04 season with the Manitoba Major Junior Hockey League’s St. Vital Victorias — he had 25 goals and 46 assists in 41 games — but it was in his 20-year-old season when everything came together.

After his career took him to British Columbia and Ontario, he underwent surgery on both shoulders and was a free agent. Dudar was recruited by the New Brunswick-based Woodstock Slammers for the 2005-06 Maritime Junior A Hockey League season and had 67 points in 51 games as the team won the league title.

“We ran through the league and there might have been eight of us who moved on to college or Canadian university hockey the next year,” Dudar said. “We had an awesome team and that was an awesome experience seeing Atlantic Canada.”

Dudar then spent five seasons with the University of Manitoba Bisons from 2006 to 2011, and while he admitted he wasn’t an outstanding student, he was much improved when he found the right courses.

“I really liked psychology and I really liked business and took a real liking to the courses I was taking,” Dudar said. “I kind of turned it around. I wouldn’t say I was a great student. I more so became a better learner and built better habits.”

After he graduated, Dudar became involved with the South East Prairie Thunder. The senior AAA squad didn’t skate a lot but went to Allan Cups in 2012, 2015, 2016 and 2018, winning twice.

“That might be the most fun hockey that I’ve ever played,” Dudar said. “I think on our teams, I was the only player who never played pro hockey. I was fortunate enough to get a pretty good role on the teams as well and won two Allan Cups with a lot of my good buddies, which was awesome.”

NEW BUSINESS

The path to a full-time job in hockey actually began through Dudar’s two younger brothers, who he coached at different times. Dudar took pride in staying in shape, and as his younger brothers were getting to the age when they worked out, he started getting requests from parents of their friends to teach their sons how to use the gym.

He started a strength and conditioning business, and had eight clients in his first spring. When summer rolled around, word had spread.

“All of a sudden I had 24 guys, and then it turned into a year-round business where I’m training football players, rugby players, golfers, nurses, real estate agnates and a lot of hockey players,” Dudar said.

He also began serving as an assistant coach with the U of M in 2011-12, handling strength and conditioning with the team and also doing skills sessions. The latter proved to be very popular with players.

“That kind of clicked me in that my path growing up was very different than most players path, where I grew up playing on the outdoor rinks when everyone else was playing AAA hockey,” Dudar said. “I saw the game a different way and learned skills when everyone else was just doing drills and breakouts. I was learning how to develop skills without knowing it so the things I was doing with guys were going over really well and more guys were asking me to get on the ice.

“That’s when I started to tone down time in the gym and spent more time on the ice.”

The final push into this new frontier came when Hockey Canada approached him and Dudar became the first certified skills coach in the country. By that time he had started his new venture, Evolution Hockey, and it became the first licensed business by Hockey Canada.

Evolution Hockey now has 10 full-time employees and 10-20 part-time staff, with a range of players from grassroots to the National Hockey League.

“My whole life has been hockey, and now it’s more so facilitating programs and making sure we’re building programs for the right reasons for the benefit of the player, and trying to develop better coaches and better people,” Dudar said. “That’s pretty much what every day of my life is now.”

Dudar studies the game of his NHL clients, serving as a personal coach who shares video clips from his massive library and tries to build on the strengths of the players while also shoring up their weaknesses.

His youngest age groups attend a single session a week to develop their skills, while more competitive U15 to U18 levels have ice times simply targeted at making them better players. They don’t have any teams or run a formal academy, instead capitalizing on ice times at four different rinks in Winnipeg.

“We create a very competitive environment where we get these fantastic hockey players together and we help them make more plays, we help them see more plays, we help them understand where their shortcomings are,” Dudar said. “We help them learn.”

Evolution also has programs at two Winnipeg schools where students can attend their sessions instead of gym class to get their credit.

The tough part for both player and coach can be the fact that progress is usually so incremental. After all, when anyone is trying to master a skill, giants gains are the exception rather than the rule.

“I’m a big believer in aggregation marginal gains,” Dudar said. “Simply put, that’s just getting a little bit better every day. If you come every single day and you’re trying your best and have the right mindset that you’re going to be in the present and try your best to get better … You might not notice it every day, but over the span of weeks, months, years, that’s a whole lot of improvement, and that’s what I try to focus on.”

Dudar is now certified as a personal trainer, mental game coach, high performance 1 hockey coach and functional movement specialist.

BRANDON

The connection to Brandon was developed through his business. Dudar was working with top Wheat Kings prospect Jaxon Jacobson, the son of owner Jared Jacobson, and they talked about hockey a lot.

When Jared Jacobson started the Western Canada Hockey Academy in Brandon in 2021, Dudar offered him some insight into what he thought might work.

The WCHA program was originally operated by Dave Lewis and Craig Anderson, but after they moved on, Jacobson asked Dudar to step into a more formal role as director of player development.

“Everything that I’ve built with Evolution with our philosophies, the way we do things, our systems, our practice plans, everything, we can just drop that here at WCHA, and that’s really what we’re doing,” Dudar said. “My job mostly at WCHA is to coach the coaches.”

Dudar said he is on the phone daily with the academy’s director of player development and mentorship, Tyler Dittmer.

As a result of his many interests, Dudar doesn’t spend nearly as much time on the ice anymore, instead choosing to get out of the way of his coaches and letting them lead.

That reduction in his actual hands-on role freed up the time for him to join the Wheat Kings.

Dudar attends most home games and is on the ice at some practices, while also holding special skills sessions with smaller groups. He spent extra time in Brandon early in the season to build relationships with the players and to get to know them, asking each who they compare themselves to in the NHL. He is then is able to share video clips with them on a special app.

“I have a very clear picture of where they see themselves as a player, and also hear from the coaching staff what they see the player is like,” Dudar said. “When I’m watching them play in a Wheat Kings game and I see something that Brayden Point is doing, I’ll send it to that player.

“Or a player might reach out to me saying they’re struggling with confidence and I’ll send them some workbooks that I’ve put together on increasing their confidence. Some players reach out and want to work on their shot in a situation, and I’ll do a little bit of research, grab some clips for them and then we try and schedule some time either before or after practice to go out there and work on their skills.”

In some cases Dudar reaches out to the player, and in other cases it’s the reverse.

His work also extends into the team’s prospect pool, who are also plugged into the app, in an effort to help them become acclimated before they even arrive in Brandon.

“It’s ‘Hey, here’s what we’re doing with the Wheat Kings right now, just so we’re preparing them with the information they’re going to need when they come to the big club and not be surprised with any concepts or anything that we’re talking about,” Dudar said.

It’s all part of Dudar’s push to bring the teaching of the game to a new level. Whether it’s technology driven or not, if it works, he’ll use it.

“At the end of the day, the only thing I really care about is making people better,” Dudar said. “If that’s a thing that can help people get better, then I’m going to invest a lot of time into doing it.”

» pbergson@brandonsun.com

» Twitter: @PerryBergson