By Sara Browne
A group of about 20 burly 67’s players skate slow and relaxed circles around the clean ice at the Civic Centre.
They joke among themselves as they await the trainer who’s going to make their leg muscles burn and their lungs heave for air.
A 5’4” petite woman, wearing black leggings, a black jacket and white figure skates steps onto the ice. As the players gather around 30-year-old Lisa Leeder, she disappears behind them. She can’t be seen but her voice rings out.
Training begins. Leeder screams at her players to skate harder and faster. They listen.
“She’s helped a lot of our players become better skaters,” says Ottawa 67’s coach, Brian Kilrea. “She’s so good I don’t even go on the ice. I just watch.”
Although there is debate about the benefits of hockey players training with a figure skater, Kilrea says it works.
Over the past 10 years, Kilrea has been using Leeder to run four or five training sessions during the hockey season to help players improve their skating technique.
This year, she’ll work with the 67’s to help them win their second consecutive Memorial Cup.
Dan Tessier’s hair is dripping with sweat after one of Leeder’s practices. Tessier, who has worked with Leeder for the past three years, says the 67’s are known as a fast team and they have Leeder to thank for that.
“She likes to work us really hard,” says the Ottawa 67’s centre forward. “It’s good to have a couple of days where we just skate and get our strength back in our legs and strides.”
Leeder has also worked with the Ottawa Senators, the New York Islanders, minor hockey teams and most recently, individual players trying to improve their skating skills before the NHL draft. She says hockey players can learn from figure skaters.
“I understand skating and the breakdown of it,” Leeder says. “Hockey players just put skates on and learn how to skate through trial and error, so if there’s someone who has a deficiency, a lot of times a hockey coach can’t correct it (the problem) because they can’t identify it.”
Not all skating experts agree that hiring people like Leeder is the way for hockey teams to go.
John Ollson, owner of Ollson’s Hockey Clinics, says figure skating and hockey are fundamentally different because of the blades and the skates.
“The forward stride with a pair of figure skates on is more straight back and straight through than it is with hockey skates on. The toe needs to push out more when a hockey player skates and if you do that with figure skates on, you’re going to catch the toe-pick all the time.”
He adds another disadvantage with figure skaters as hockey trainers is that “most of the figure skaters have never had a stick in their hand and you have to coordinate the use of the stick when you skate, plus the puck.”
Leeder, who has a degree in physical education from the University of Ottawa, says the technique and the muscles used in a stride are the same. Hockey players need to be more hunched over, but not to the degree they usually are.
Despite controversy among the experts about using figure skaters to train hockey players, the 67’s seem content with Leeder.
“She’s great,’ says Tessier. “She’s helped our hockey club in tremendous ways and hopefully she’ll keep coming all year.”