August 26, 2017 • 11:18 am 1
Now that the new season is about to start I wanted to share two drills that Robert Morris Head Coach Derek Schooley shared with me. As with all drills, these should be run at a high tempo to ensure players are practicing at game speed. Both are full ice drills that run from both sides simultaneously.
Support 3 on 0 with Point Shot
Filed under: Breakout, coaching, General, Shooting, Robert Morris
October 10, 2014 • 4:33 pm 0
While looking at the stats for views on the site, I noticed a lot of action every day in the Defensemen section. To give you more choices, I’ve added 16 new drills, that my defensive coach runs throughout the season when we split up by group. Hopefully you find these useful in building the skills of your defensemen.
Defenseman Shooting Sequence
D Lateral Skate With Shot
D Puck Movement
D Rim Pass Shoot
Full Circle Pivot With Pass
Swedish Shooting
Puck Protection
Off The Wall Dump
Lewis D2D Support
Horseshoe Skating
Right Up
Reverse
Quick Up Option
D Over
D2D
Breakout Simulation
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Filed under: Breakout, coaching, Defensemen, Drills, Skating
September 25, 2014 • 10:35 am 0
Coach Schooley brings us another drill designed to work on breakout passing and 1 on 1 play.
Drill runs from both ends at the same time. Make sure that the defensemen work the reverse pass at game speed and are positionally sound. D2 should hold the front of the net with his skates up ice until the reverse pass is made and then he should sprint to the puck, get his head up and make the breakout pass.
Coach Schooley is the head coach at Division 1 Robert Morris University and his Colonial team is the defending Atlantic Hockey Champions. If you are interested in more information on Coach Schooley, you can visit the RMU Athletics page or follow him on Twitter at @DerekSchooley .
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Click to Download the Drill
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Coach Schooley has a terrific DVD to help develop defensemen. Every coach should have a copy of this DVD, it is really well designed and thought out. I have a copy of it myself and use many of the drills with my defensemen every year.
Click to Purchase DVD
Filed under: 1 x 1 - 2 x 1 - 3 x 1, Breakout, coaching, Drills, Passing
September 24, 2014 • 11:39 am 0
Coach Schooley brings us another drill today. This one works on the breakout, regroup and 2v1 play.
The drill runs from both ends at the same time. To avoid some confusion in the diagram of the drill, we only show one side skating the pattern, but both are going together. I think the attached video shows the drill in action pretty clearly.
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Note: Some readers have asked me about using the PlayManager animation software over the past few days. I’ve been a big fan of this product for years, but the developers stopped working on it over two years ago. Now they give it away for free. The above video took me less than 20 minutes to create, but I have been using the software a long time and have a pretty good feel for how it works. The guys over at www.HockeyShare.com now have an animation feature to their product that works really well, but it is a paid service. Both products do the job, but I think the HockeyShare product is easier to use.
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Click to Download the Drill
Filed under: 1 x 1 - 2 x 1 - 3 x 1, Breakout, coaching, Drills
September 23, 2014 • 10:24 am 0
Robert Morris University Head Coach Derek Schooley gives us this drill today. The drill is designed to work on the breakout pass from the D to Forward down low, followed by the all important second pass to get your team out of the zone. For this drill, the second pass is a chip off the wall to F2 coming through the neutral zone with speed. This is a simple drill in design, but a skill that many players have trouble executing. The ability to chip a puck off the wall, behind a pinching D, into an area of the ice that allows a forward to pick the puck up in stride with speed, is a very important offensive skill to develop in your players.
On the initial pass from the D, the puck can be wrapped to the Forward on the wall, or a direct pass. It’s good to practice both so the F can become comfortable with catching the pass and transitioning up ice.
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Click to Download the Drill
February 25, 2014 • 11:50 am 0
Here are some drills from head coach Rico Blasi that he runs with his D1 Miami of Ohio team. Obviously at this level these drills are done at a very high tempo. Some of the drills we have on the site already in a similar style, but I thought it would be good to group all these drills together anyway. The drills cover  warm-up, passing, read and react, coverage and player battle areas of the game.
I use the Double Pass Wide in almost every full ice practice because it gets the players to make passes through some traffic and keeps them skating. I’ll add a player to the front of the net to track rebounds so the goalies don’t get lazy when making saves. I also use the Two Shot Drive and 4 Whistles drills many times during the season. I believe that these nine drills alone can make up a very good practice that runs at high tempo.
One Touch Passing
Double One Touch Passing
Double Pass Wide
Two Shot Drive with Stretch Pass
Miami 1on1 Continuous
5×2 To 3×3
4 Whistles
Half Ice Breakout
Player Battles
Filed under: Breakout, coaching, Drills, Passing, Practice, Shooting, Transition, Warm-Up
October 31, 2013 • 2:48 pm 0
We all know how important it is to have defensemen who can play under pressure. Many times we run drills that don’t really put the D under any real pressure to make passes and come game time that causes bad decisions and bad passes that can cost games. Here is a drill I use to help my defensemen learn how to compete under pressure. We use this drill to teach them how to communicate with each other and the goaltender and how to handle a hard forecheck. Make sure the D are doing proper shoulder checks while skating hard to retrieve the puck. Also listen to make sure the players are communicating with each other. You can also use this drill to let your forwards practice proper positioning for the forecheck system you use for the forwards. Personally I use this drill just as a way to help the defensemen learn how to play under hard pressure and the goaltender is used just to work on his communication skills with the defensemen, but you can have the offensive players cycle back into the zone after the successful breakout and play 3v2 against the D while the original three forechecking forwards vacate the zone. Either way it’s a great drill to help your defensemen build confidence when playing under pressure.
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Click to Download the Drill
Coach Nielsen's Ice Hockey Drills 