One of the greatest coaching skills is your ability to modify your core drills to address key skills and tactics with your team. Once players learn the name, set-up and key points of a new drill, it’s much more effective and efficient to stick with that drill and tweak it slightly than to teach them an entirely new drill.
Get Puck Back Attack is one of my favorite drills to run with teams to work on players’ ability to win pucks back & transition quickly to offense.
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GET PUCKS BACK - BASIC VARIATIONS
GOAL: To help players build confidence with their ability to contain, pressure and obtain pucks and transition to attack quickly.
SET-UP: This awesome battle drill can be used anywhere along the wall - but it works very well in the corners. We typically run this drill out of both corners simultaneously while the goalies warm-up at the other end. The drills moves very quickly so you can easily have 8-10 players in a group and get lots of reps, teaching and compete done in a very short period of time.
#1. Pin & Puck Breakout: If you can’t break the puck out effectively, you can’t score. So I like to start by teaching this variation to emphasize the importance of puck recovery and quick transition to drive the offensive attack coming out of our own zone.
X1 recovers dumped puck and tries to score. X2 gets in first as defender and angles puck carrier to get puck/player stopped (PIN). X3 waits on the goal-side to see how well X2 does with pinning - if X2 pins, X3 gets puck. If X2 gets beat, X3 must become PIN player and X1 must get goal-side to be support player. Once X2 & X3 gain possession, they look to breakout with possession above the blue-line. X1 tries to steal it back to attack.
#2. Pin & Puck Attack: This is the opposite of the drill above simulating forechecking to recover pucks and transition to offensive zone attack.
X1 recovers dumped puck and tries to skate it out. X2 gets in first as defender and angles puck carrier to get puck/player stopped (PIN). X3 waits above the puck to see how well X2 does with pinning - if X2 pins, X3 gets puck. If X2 gets beat, X3 must become PIN player and X1 must get back above the puck to be the support player. Once X2 & X3 gain possession, they look to attack the net quickly against X1 on a 2v1.
#3. Change Point of Attack to Net Front Battle: This drill starts out the same way as #2 but adds attackers changing the point of attack before getting pucks to net. I typically have them move it from low to high to the point player, but have also run it where they move it to a 3rd attacker on the weak side down below the goal-line.
Add another player at the point who plays on the attacking team. Once the X2 & X3 gain possession down low, they move the puck up to the high player who walks the line for a shot with 2 attackers and 1 defender in front. Play out that net front battle for a few seconds.
VARIATIONS:
• For initial puck carrier: skater has to stay up the wall, has to stay on same side of ice puck went in on, goes at 50%, 75% or 100%.
• For 2 players winning puck back: script number of passes they must make before shooting/skating it out.
KEY POINTS:
• Contain, Pressure, Obtain: 1st player in must contain, then pressure/pin and 2nd player gets puck.
• Pin & Puck Mentality: 1st player in is looking to angle & PIN (NOT steal the puck). 2nd player gets PUCK.
• Quick Transitions: players on both sides of the attack must quickly transition from attack to defend & defend to attack
• Communicate & Compete!
Try these variations out at your next session to help your players be more confident and dominant at getting pucks back. Challenge yourself to come up with your own variations that best fit your team’s needs.
