Marcel Goc is gaining his first coaching experience as an assistant at the U20 course in Switzerland
Marcel Goc is now back at the beginning - his second career. The corona-related cancellation of last season meant the end of the long-time national player's playing career. An end that he himself had, of course, imagined to be different from so abrupt. A good four months have passed since then, and Goc is now striving for new goals. The 36-year-old is now an apprentice again, an apprentice in the coaching job. "I can well imagine," he says, "supporting the young players in particular when they are on the threshold of professional ice hockey."
Before Goc starts as a Skills & Development Coach at the Adler Mannheim in September, he supported the coaching team of the U20 national team around head coach Tobias Abstreiter for the Deutscher Eishockey-Bund during the last summer course in Switzerland. For Goc it is important “that I stay connected to ice hockey,” as he says. The 112-time selection player explains: “I grew up with sports, with ice hockey, it was always my passion and will remain so.”
Goc acquired his first trainer license last summer and is currently completing the course for the B trainer license under the direction of Karl Schwarzenbrunner, the national trainer for science and training. He notes that coaches now have a lot more data at their disposal, not only for controlling the players' load and training, but the analysis of games has also become much more detailed. This is also why, says Goc, it is extremely important for the players to never give up, because the quality across the board is increasing significantly and higher athletic requirements are required than in the past. “Ice hockey has become so much faster in the last few years,” he says.
The increased quality in Germany can also be seen in the current U20 national team, and not just because of the top talents Tim Stützle, Lukas Reichel and John-Jason Peterka. Goc thinks that the players overall “can do a lot on the screen and technically,” but that’s not everything if you want a professional career. “It's about using the opportunities at the right time. I have to learn what game situation I'm in at the moment and what the right behavior is,” describes the captain of the Olympic silver heroes. At about this point he could and wanted to bring in his experience as a 699-time NHL player.
During the course in Cham near Zug, he caught himself thinking like a player every now and then and sometimes having to remind himself that he has other tasks than following the puck and the game situation. But here too, this changes with experience. “It’s as a coach as it is as a player. You can make mistakes, that's not a bad thing, but you should learn from them. And I want to learn as much as possible,” says Goc. So that at some point he might become as good a coach as he is a player.
Photos: DEB