At 15 years of old, Kim Muir was asked to teach the children of a hockey parent how to skate more efficiently.
“They were watching me skate and decided the only way their sons were going to progress as far as they could go is to skate as well as they could for the game,” Muir said.
Those twin boys grew into six students in a month.
“People always want what other people have,” Muir said. “By that summer I probably had about 100 students.”
Two years after her first lessons, Muir founded Can’t Skate Can’t Play.
When it came time to graduate high school and attend college, her students numbered more than 200. Her methods were so popular that it paid for her college education.
“I was making way too much money for a high school graduate,” Muir said. “My parents thought I would drop out of college.”
Instead, four degrees later (biology, chemistry, education and physicians assistant), Muir has made mom and dad proud and continued her business success.
This past week Muir, now 43, brought her teaching methods to the Treadwell Arena ice for five days of instruction for youth and adult hockey players.
Muir’s path to Juneau came about by a chance meeting with then-Juneau Youth Hockey coach Tom Rutecki.
“He begged me to come to Juneau from 2005 to 2007,” Muir said. “I came in 2007 when I was four months pregnant. I ran the camp by myself and people loved it. I told them if you like it with just me coming, you will like it more if I brought my staff.”
She has been back every year except during a three-year hiatus training players in Sweden. Her schedule stays busy considering the number of NHL coaches asking her for help.
“People here in Juneau are really amazing,” Muir said. “They are very welcoming and friendly, and they like hockey.”
Figure vs. hockey skating
The Muir house was decorated in Detroit Red Wings colors with a tinge of the University of Michigan.
Her brothers went on to play college and then major junior hockey, but it was Muir who eventually made it to the NHL.
“I used to tell my brothers all the time that they should be doing this figure skating move or that figure skating move,” Muir said. “And they just looked at me like I was crazy. They always knew I was a good skater but I don’t think they understood that figure skaters were better and stronger technical skaters than hockey players.”
At first they didn’t take her advice but now they admire her methods.
“There’s not one day do I regret that I was never a hockey player,” Muir said. “I loved the game but I am truly a performer and I loved my years of figure skating. And that is who I am. When I am on the ice it is a performance of teaching but in the best way that I know how. In the parallels it is a performance for me. Sometimes I get out there and do a random figure skating move, but it is just for myself, to say that I can still do it.”
Muir said the easiest thing to teach young hockey players is — everything.
“You can go into their backwards skating,” Muir said. “Just form, posture, stride, stride size, and stride strength. The same thing forward and backward, lateral movements, transitions with and without the puck, stopping and no stopping in the game. Transitions without stopping is probably the hardest to teach. Everyone sees something at high speed and the thought of wanting to do it without having to stop and change direction is probably the hardest thing.”
Muir’s best moment on the ice was doing a back flip.
“I am only one of only three women in the world that can still do one,” she said. “But I haven’t done one in 10 years.”
Muir has a 7-year-old son and 5-year-old daughter. “Yes, they both skate,” she said.
From humble beginnings to NHL skating coach
Muir’s success as a professional coach is all the more remarkable due to her humblest of beginnings. At six months old she was found next to a trash bin in South Korea, and lived in an orphanage for the next four years.
“No one claimed me,” Muir said. “I had no name tags.”
Her one memory from being in the orphanage is true to her personality.
“Back then they had shoes lined up outside the rooms,” Muir said. “In an orphanage everything is first come first serve, to includes clothes, food, shoes, everything.”
There was a hierarchy in the pod of kids Muir was in the orphanage with.
“I particularly got these pair of shoes that I liked, usually first,” Muir said. “One day some other girl got to these shoes — I didn’t like it. I knocked her down at recess, I took them off of her and that is my only memory of orphanage is getting in trouble.”
Muir was adopted when she was four and put her her first pair of skates a year later.
“I was blessed to have parents who didn’t care what I looked like,” Muir said. “They respected me, my nationality and religious background.
“The emphasis was on my learning English and being socially integrated,” she continued. “Once that happened my parents put me in figure skating, my parents being old school traditionalists. They didn’t believe that girls should play hockey, but I grew up in a hockey family. I was the youngest of three.”
Muir was raised in Trenton, Michigan, just southeast of Detroit. Her two brothers were 10 and 12 years older and she was taken from rink to rink when they played hockey.
“Hockey was the only sport I knew,” she said. “I knew from the get-go I would never be a hockey player because my parents would not let me, but I took a liking to figure skating and did well with it.”
Well included eight years as a national competitor with the U.S. Figure Skating Association and a junior ladies freestyle championship.
“As an amateur I wanted to make it into the Olympics,” Muir said. “I ended up in Colorado Springs for one year, broke my ankle when I was 15 and that was the year I decided I wanted to be an adolescent and have friends outside the figure skating world.”
She has been back to South Korea since she was adopted, but that could soon change.
“They are hosting the Olympics in three years,” Muir said. “I am trying to see if I can help them with their national hockey team.”
When the Red Wings came calling
Muir said her moment of validation as a skating coach came in 2010 when Detroit Red Wings head coach Mike Babcock phoned.
“He called to ask me to come out and work with the Red Wings,” Muir said. “This was a Hall of Fame coach.”
Muir had already been a private skating instructor to Babcock’s children and had some college and semi-pro students.
“When Mike took over as coach of the Red Wings he was looking for a skating coach,” she said. “Somebody in the organization recommended me and I was blessed to take on that job. Doing the private lessons for so long with his son and daughter one day turned into me coming out and working with the big boys. That is the validation — being respected by the respected.”
Muir said that first day of practice was amazing.
“I stepped out on the ice at Joe Louis Arena and looked around the bleachers and stands and felt like I had made it,” Muir said. “The crazy part is during the very first drill I demonstrated I actually fell over my toe picks.”
Muir said Red Wings player Tomas Holmtröm asked, “Just like that?”
“Just like that,” Muir replied. “I didn’t have a come back. They were probably thinking ‘we have to learn from this girl who can’t even stand up on her skates.’”
They did learn and the floodgates opened for Muir.
The Carolina Hurricanes called next, and then even more NHL players and teams began requesting her services. Muir has also traveled to Sweden to work with that country’s elite team.
Muir said the difference between youth and professionals is the skill set.
“The NHL guys know the game better, not necessarily the skating better,” Muir said. “My college hockey players are my better skaters but my NHL skaters are better about hockey awareness.”
Muir has a standard move that she uses when hulking players aren’t paying attention: she shoves them over.
“You always have to be ready,” Muir said. “This particular sport is about body contact and at any given time you have to be prepared to pass, shoot, score or have and accept the body contact. If I see a kid who is not really paying attention to me it is kind of my go-to move to catch him off guard and knock him down. The gratification, however, is when you take a kid who didn’t know how to do the drill in the first day and (later) they can do it, you can instantly see their development. They are trying and respecting the drills and seeing a purpose for it all.”
It is not uncommon for professional players to thank Muir profusely after her lessons.
“That is when I know I belong,” she said. “Any time you second guess your abilities are to the highest level, and when you have those moments where NHL players can’t do your drills, or are asking a lot of questions, and want to spend more time with you to learn, then it is that ‘aha’ movement.”
As for those first two pupils, 5-year-old twins Tony and Brad Zancanaro, they went on to be hockey captains at Providence College and Boston University, respectively, and both ended up playing in various minor and professional hockey leagues.
“They were always tough, gritty little kids,” Muir said. “And they are still that way.”
Professional skating coach Kim Muir conducted one of her many “Can’t Skate, Can’t Play” power skating camps at Treadwell Arena last week. Muir students have included members of the Detroit Red Wings, Carolina Hurricanes and the Swedish National Team, as well as youth, high school, college, semi-pro, professional and adult league hockey players.
Professional skating coach Kim Muir conducted one of her many “Can’t Skate, Can’t Play” power skating camps at Treadwell Arena last week. Muir students have included members of the Detroit Red Wings, Carolina Hurricanes and the Swedish National Team, as well as youth, high school, college, semi-pro, professional and adult league hockey players.
Professional skating coach Kim Muir conducted one of her many “Can’t Skate, Can’t Play” power skating camps at Treadwell Arena last week. Muir students have included members of the Detroit Red Wings, Carolina Hurricanes and the Swedish National Team, as well as youth, high school, college, semi-pro, professional and adult league hockey players.
Professional skating coach Kim Muir conducted one of her many “Can’t Skate, Can’t Play” power skating camps at Treadwell Arena last week. Muir students have included members of the Detroit Red Wings, Carolina Hurricanes and the Swedish National Team, as well as youth, high school, college, semi-pro, professional and adult league hockey players.
Professional skating coach Kim Muir conducted one of her many “Can’t Skate, Can’t Play” power skating camps at Treadwell Arena last week. Muir students have included members of the Detroit Red Wings, Carolina Hurricanes and the Swedish National Team, as well as youth, high school, college, semi-pro, professional and adult league hockey players.
Professional skating coach Kim Muir conducted one of her many “Can’t Skate, Can’t Play” power skating camps at Treadwell Arena last week. Muir students have included members of the Detroit Red Wings, Carolina Hurricanes and the Swedish National Team, as well as youth, high school, college, semi-pro, professional and adult league hockey players.
Professional skating coach Kim Muir conducted one of her many “Can’t Skate, Can’t Play” power skating camps at Treadwell Arena last week. Muir students have included members of the Detroit Red Wings, Carolina Hurricanes and the Swedish National Team, as well as youth, high school, college, semi-pro, professional and adult league hockey players.
Professional skating coach Kim Muir conducted one of her many “Can’t Skate, Can’t Play” power skating camps at Treadwell Arena last week. Muir students have included members of the Detroit Red Wings, Carolina Hurricanes and the Swedish National Team, as well as youth, high school, college, semi-pro, professional and adult league hockey players.
