This drill is brought to us by Peter Russo, who is an assistant coach at The Brooks Prep School in North Andover MA. Peter also runs a website where he shares his ideas about all things hockey. You can visit his site at www.coachprusso.com .
In Peter’s own words “The main focus is D1 retrieving pucks quickly and efficiently and learning how to jump into a rush”.
Got this drill from my friends at Hockey Canada. Worked it at practice last night and it looked good once we got the hang of it. The drill works on supporting the puck with the weakside D as well as transitioning to offense using the forward cutting through the middle. Make sure your D concentrate on the D2D pass as well as the initial transition pass to the forward. You can add a D at the other end to make the drill a 2v1 if you prefer.
I’ve used this drill for years to help develop the skating skills of my defensemen. It works many of the fundamental skills a good defenseman needs to play at a high level. If you have the ability to split your ice to work with the defenseman, this is a great drill to add to your practice plan. Be sure to run it on both sides of the ice.
I received this drill from Coach Eaves last year, but thought it would be good to highlight again as we begin to prepare for the upcoming season. I use this drill a lot because it works a number of areas in a quick moving drill. Players need to concentrate on good passing and receiving skills, timing, speed through the neutral zone and attacking the net. There are a few options for this drill. You can have the D be the players in the corner so they can work on the outlet pass, or you can have all the players work both parts of the drill to gain confidence in the outlet pass. You can also have the player from the corner turn to the outside to receive the pass and attack the zone wide. Also, be sure your goaltender is concentrating on directing his saves away from the front of the net.
Here is one final drill from Mike Eaves. This is another passing drill that works on the stretch pass to a player driving the middle of the ice. Be sure that the players are skating hard on the drive portion of the drill. This will get them used to the speed they need to move at to possibly beat a defenseman up the middle of the ice. Have the players in line making the passes move their feet so they aren’t stationary during their portion of the drill.
You can also add a player to the net front area to work on screening and rebounds. This will force the goaltender to make smart plays with the puck off of a save.
I hope you’ve found the drills posted the past few days from Coach Eaves helpful. I want to thank Coach Eaves for the drills and wish him great success in the upcoming season.
Once again, I would like to thank the guys at www.hockeyshare.com for their really easy to use animation software, that help bring these drills to life.
I really like this drill. It works individual defensive skills along with team defensive skills.
The idea is to get the puck out of the zone either by carrying it or passing to a teammate who can carry it. You don’t want the defensive team to just flip the puck out of the zone. The drill is designed to make the players work on transition from defense to offense in the defensive zone.
This drill along with the 4 Whistles drill from Rico Blasi really get the players working hard on transition.
Here’s a drill from D1 head coach Mike Eaves of the Wisconsin Badgers.
Nice drill to work on zone entry and getting to the net hard. It incorporates timing passes and full ice skating.
I also want to thank Kevin and the guys at www.HockeyShare.com for the animation software, so I could create the video of the drill. Very cool stuff. I’m not an expert, but it was pretty easy to use the first time I tried.
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.
I thought it would be interesting to see what the top viewed drills were in 2013 and share that with everyone. I was surprised a little by one or two, but the others seem to make sense. Many can be run on half ice, which so many organizations are doing now to get more teams on the ice each week. Here is the list of the top 10 in order of most views.
