Toporowski looks to use past experience to transform future of PA Minor Hockey

Born into a hockey family in P.A. and raised in Paddockwood, he explained that hockey has taken his family all over the continent and the world, as his brothers Kerry, Brad, and Shayne played pro in various U.S. and European leagues, while Shayne now coaches at the pro level in the Southern Professional Hockey League (SPHL).

While his own pro dreams never materialized, Kelly took the corporate route and graduated from the University of Saskatchewan with a commerce degree. That eventually led him to landing lead executive roles with Xerox and Konica Minolta in their Western Canada operations where he spent 30 years.

During his time with Xerox, he had moved out to the Edmonton area and his son started playing hockey in Sherwood Park. Naturally, he said he began coaching and the association gave him a Hockey Canada manual that told coaches what skills they should be teaching the kids at each level.

“We were told to follow it, page by page. This was a manual of 40 practice plans as you usually have 40 practices in a year, roughly, right? And we’d follow every practice plan and all of a sudden, you figure out there’s a system for this. These manuals are teaching the kids all the right skills at the right time. And everybody thought I was a pretty good coach, but I’m just following the Hockey Canada system. Sherwood Park was mandating this to all their coaches and then all of a sudden, we had just a crop of players that were really, really good by the time we were in atom.”

He continued that by then, the association managed two AA atom teams that both finished near the top of the standings with 40 wins each, featuring players like NHL drafted and current pros Duncan Siemens and Reece Scarlett.

“We had just had a great group of kids, and I’m not sure if it was something in the water or if it was them following the system of all the right manuals.”

Around that same time, he was asked to host some power skating classes for another team as they were impressed with what Toporowski was doing with his own. That quickly progressed into hosting clinics for Hockey Alberta. He then sat on Sherwood Park’s minor hockey board of directors and was an integral part in the creation of the Sherwood Park Kings program.

Right after that, the association decided to set up a mentorship program for coaches, where Toporowski was the chair of the committee. That gave him the chance to meet some high-profile coaches and gain some insight on how to better run his clinics and teachings.

“You just gain all this knowledge and you’re just lucky because you’re in the right place at the right time.”

He returned to Saskatchewan in 2006 and was hired in Saskatoon to do a coaching mentorship program based on his work in Sherwood Park. HockeySask then brought him on as a mentor, along with the Flyers zone in the Saskatoon Minor Hockey Association (SMHA).

A few years later, he left his executive role at Xerox to become a full-time skills instructor, which he did for three years. He said he taught kids as young as four all the way up to NHLers, clocking himself at over 8000 hours on the ice during that time. While hosting camps in Saskatoon, he was teaching a Hockey Canada program called Skills of Gold, which he’s planning to relaunch in Prince Albert later this summer.

A poster for the upcoming Skills of Gold camp in August. (Image Credit: Kelly Toporowski/submitted)

He said Skills of Gold takes some inspiration on how teams in Finland develop their players. During a trip to Finland to watch his brother Shayne, he said he was impressed by their methods in minor hockey.

“Being on the ice with his teams, with some minor teams, and watching what they do, everybody was moving, there were different stations like nobody was standing around. The work to rest ratio is usually one to one, and everybody talks about two to one, but in a practice with the young kids, you should be able to do one to one. What is typical in Canada now is a work to rest ratio of about one to two at best, usually one to three. That means the kids are standing around for over half of the practice. So, I want them to be moving for half the practice and developing those skills. That’s a bit of what people can expect as I move forward.”

Now the general manager of minor hockey in his hometown, he said the best thing is to take a step back and understand where Prince Albert minor hockey is currently.

“I think the main thing is to not really do anything right now. It’s more to listen, maybe bring in some key ideas that I can implement that [residents] ask me to implement right off the bat. But I want to learn, you know, what’s going well for P.A. hockey and what people want to change, and really understand the landscape first.”

“After that, it’s understanding what we can do to get better and helping understand what Hockey Canada and HockeySask are doing to get better, what other benchmark organizations are there across Canada and try to implement some of those ideas here with P.A. hockey.”

He continued that his main goal with P.A. minor hockey isn’t just to improve the development and mentorship of players and coaches, but the officials too.

“We’ve got a really good official crew here from what I understand, and I don’t dispute that. There’s lots of commentary I’ve heard from Saskatoon and from Warman that when you come to P.A., the officiating is very, very strong. I don’t know if I’m going to tweak anything there, but [I want to] understand what they’re doing right and maybe throw some ideas on how they could improve.”

“That’s a long process of understanding of where everybody at is right now, what is Hockey Canada and HockeySask doing, and then how do we develop that system here within Prince Albert to make sure that everybody’s seeing that we’re on the right track.”

—

loganc.lehmann@pattisonmedia.com

by Logan Lehmann

Toporowski looks to use past experience to transform future of PA Minor Hockey

What's Trending