Establishment of Puck Control Standards for Ice Hockey Players Ages 6-15

Skill assessment by expert judgment through the observation method may be subject to bias by the person of the expert. In ice hockey, it is very difficult to find standards that have been created using scientifically based tests. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to define standards in ice hockey for players aged 6-15 years. Ice hockey consists of a large number of skills. Therefore, the focus of our work was on one of the basic ice hockey skills - puck control. Using Rasch and Mokken analysis, an assessment tool arranged in the form of a Guttman scale based on the difficulty of the items was developed to test players in controlling the puck in ice hockey. In this paper, on a scale from 1 to 17, the standards of puck control in ice hockey for players aged 6-15 in the Czech Republic were defined. Standards have been set for cohorts of players under the ages of 7, 9, 11, 13, and 15. The standards are 0, 2, 4, 6, and 9 items.