Attending your first NHL Dev Camp: What to do and what to expect

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The 2025 draft is fast approaching and that means development camp is around the corner. Attending a NHL development camp is a pretty cool experience. You might be a guest invite or part of the NHL staff or working for the an affiliation team. Nevertheless, this is a great time to introduce your self to the organization, see how the event is run and meet your co workers or future coworkers.

Here is a list of items you should do a dev camp:

• Enjoy the experience

• Introductions

• Shadow the video coach

• Notes

• Responsibilities

• Team building activities

Enjoy The Experience

As mentioned at the start of the post, enjoy the experience. Its cool to see how the coaches, equipment, medical and strength & conditioning department function at the NHL level.

Introductions

Introducing yourself never hurts, make sure to shake hands and look people in the eye when you meet them. This goes a long way especially since these might be your new or future coworkers.

Shadow the video coach

As young video coaches, we are eager to see what goes on in the NHL. Do your best to shadow, ask questions and take note of their responsibilities and see if you can help out at all with filming, sharing the practice video, cutting clips or creating the practice plan.

Notes

Take notes about what interests you and perhaps there are some ideas you can take back to your team. Once you start attending multiple dev camps, you can see what works, what doesn’t work and what has improved over the years.

Responsibilities

Depending on the organization structure, the AHL staff might be responsible for running dev camp along with the development staff of the organization. If you’re working dev camp, here is what you can expect to potentially do:

• Help get jersey colours for the equipment staff,

• Put together, print and distribute the practice plan

• Film, cut drills and distribute video

• Help get the new coaches sorted with computers, new software or video

Team Building Activities

Team building activities are a great way to get to know your current or future work colleagues. These can be anything from going to doing a hike, another local sporting event, listening to a guest speaker and even going out for a team dinner. This is why it is important to introduce yourself to everyone so you can be familiar with others when doing these activities.

Again, enjoy your first NHL development camp experience but make sure to introduce yourself and take in as much information as possible to help yourself develop. The camp isn’t just for players, you can grow as a video coach as well!