Coach Nielsen's Ice Hockey Drills

New Drills from Robert Morris University

Coach Nielsen — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 05:41:30 +0000

Head coach Derek Schooley at Division I Robert Morris University has given us three new drills that he runs with his team. Coach Schooley has been a major contributor to this site and his continued participation is greatly appreciated.

Defenseman Shot and Hinge – This drill works passing, receiving, shooting and skating skills for your defensemen in a drill that mimics game like situations. You will need three coaches to act as passers or you can have the other defensemen not running the drill work as the passers.

Kosty Lateral Transition – Nice drill designed to get your defensemen skating with the puck laterally and making the transition pass to start the breakout from the neutral zone. The drill ends with the forwards going hard to the net 2 on 0.

Pearl Small Area Game – This is a nice take on the small area game drills that many coaches use these days. Basically a 2 on 2 with a transition to a new set of two players. The drill is continuous and gets everyone involved pretty quickly.

I hope you find these drills helpful.

A Few New Practice Drills

Coach Nielsen — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 18:18:42 +0000

Sorry it has been so long since I posted new drills, but have been very busy coaching two teams plus games, I’m sure you all know the feeling. Here are a few drills I received from coaches associated with Team Canada and I ran each of these the past two weeks at my team practices to see how they worked. All four are very nice and force the players to skate hard and pay attention.

Team Canada Rush – This one I like a lot. It has two parts that are run simultaneously and it creates traffic in the neutral zone while working on shooting / passing and skating. Make sure the defenseman who starts the breakout skates hard to get to the far blueline.

Team Canada 3×1 – This drill works on teaching the defensemen to jump into the rush off a neutral zone regroup. On the play the defensemen has the option of passing to a wing or skating with the puck, but make sure no matter what he does he jumps into the play.

Canuck 2×1 – This drill works on passing and tempo. Make sure the forwards are skating hard coming out of both zones and make sure the passes are hard and on the tape. Once this drill gets going it flows real nice.

5 Passes Warm-up – This drill is designed as a beginning of practice passing and receiving drill. It gives the players a chance to skate / shoot / pass & receive all in one cycle around the rink.

Hope you find these drills helpful. Enjoy the remainder of your season and good luck if you are in the hunt for playoff spots!

I will add these drills to the Canadian National Team section and the 5 passes drill will be added to the Warm-up section.

Half Ice Drills Section Added to Site

Coach Nielsen — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 21:35:36 +0000

With more and more teams going to shared ice practices to save money, the need for solid half ice drills has become more and more in demand. Those of you who follow my site know that I try very hard not to post drills that I haven’t already run myself with one of my teams. Before I post a drill I want to be sure it serves a purpose. With that being said, I have spent a good deal of time since September trying different half ice drills so I could be sure I was giving you good drills to work with. Here is a collection of 40 drills to start with and I will continue to add more as I go along the remainder of the season. Remember to also add small area games to your half ice practices (even full ice when you can) because they are a great way to incorporate game type situations into a fun drill.

Half Ice Drills

Small Area Games

51K Unique Visitors in November

Coach Nielsen — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 21:47:42 +0000

I try not to put out too much personal stuff on this site but I just had to take a minute to thank everyone who visits this site. In September 2009 when I started this simple site I had 551 visitors and thought I was rolling in traffic. Over the past two years I’ve seen the count grow each month to the point that last month there were 51,649 unique visitors and over 250,000 views of individual drills. I’m sure there are sites on the internet that garner far more traffic than this for their hockey drills but I am overwhelmed by the success of this simple site. When I first started I thought I could get a few thousand hits, but never anything like this. So, a heartfelt thank you to every coach that visits my site and I hope that I can continue to bring you useful information and drills going forward, all FREE .

Coach Nielsen

New Drills from the Coaches at Robert Morris University

Coach Nielsen — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 16:02:44 +0000

Division I head coach Derek Schooley at Robert Morris university has been a contributor to our site for over two years and now his assistant coaches Mark Workman and Josh Brown have contributed a few drills.

The first drill Brownie Quick-Up is designed to work on neutral zone transition and 1 on 1 defensive rush play.

The second drill Worky Rush ID is designed to make the defensemen read the rush and determine how to defend it.

Both of these drills are designed to run at game speed, so make sure you force the players to work at a high tempo.

Brownie Quick-Up 1×1

Worky Rush ID

Coach Eaves of Wisconsin Contributes a Nice Flow Drill

Coach Nielsen — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 19:06:00 +0000

Division I University of Wisconsin head coach Mike Eaves has contributed another drill to our site. This one is a full ice flow drill that works on supporting the puck in all three zones of the ice. Coach Eaves tells me that he uses this drill every practice right now to get his players in the habit of supporting areas of the ice during the breakout. He suggests that at first you run the drill from only one end at a time and then when the players become proficient in the concepts and positioning you run it from both ends simultaneously. Check it out, hope you find it helpful.

FINN 3×0

Coach Pooley of Notre Dame Offers Offensive Drills

Coach Nielsen — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 21:27:10 +0000

Paul Pooley is the former head coach at Division I Providence college and now associate head coach at Notre Dame University. Coach Pooley offers us a few drills on building offensive attack options as you enter the zone to maximize scoring chances. These drills work on attack options that can be created when your players are skating hard and thinking about proper positioning entering the zone. Each drill is designed to work on different parts of the offensive attack. Hope you find these helpful.

3 on 0 Loose / Tight Gap
Tight Area 2 on 1
3 Quarter Ice 3 on 2
3 on 1 Transition To 4 on 2
3 on 1 Transition To 4 on 3

Keys to Scoring

Player without the puck makes the play work as much as the player with the puck.
You may not score on the first shot so attack the net and look for rebounds.
Hit the net with your shots to increase your chances of scoring.
Shoot for a rebound if a shot to score is unavailable.
Scoring goals is hard work so be ready to work hard.

Hockey Cheat Sheet

Coach Nielsen — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 21:16:39 +0000

The guys over at HowToHockey.Com have put together an interesting “cheat sheet” for players to give an idea of what to do with the puck or your movement from different areas of the ice. Looks like a lot of work went into putting this together and I think it can serve a purpose for your players.

View the “Cheat Sheet“

Download a Copy

New Robert Morris University Drills

Coach Nielsen — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 13:47:56 +0000

Coach Schooley, head coach at Division 1 Robert Morris University has once again offered his help and contributed four high level up tempo drill selections from his drill collection. These drills are designed to help your players work on skating, shooting, passing and timing. As with any high level drill, speed of execution is critical to the drills ability to help your players become better hockey players.

Coach Schooley has been a consistent contributor to this site in our two years of operation and we greatly appreciate his continued support and contributions.

If you’re interested you can follow Robert Morris Ice Hockey online or Coach Schooley on Twitter.

View the past drills contributed by Coach Schooley RMU Drills

A Few More Drills from the Canadian National Team

Coach Nielsen — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 18:46:45 +0000

I can see from looking at the site stats that we have a very large number of coaches from Canada that use the site and the Canadian National Team Drills section takes a large number of hits daily. With that information in hand I went back and asked for a few additional drills and received four more last night. I’ve actually used two of these drills in the past under different names and they work really well. Hope you like them.