At the youth hockey level, I have all but abandoned the idea of “special teams” and no longer assign anyone to power play or penalty kill lines. Through various levels and age groups I have gone back and forth and found that for best development and even fairness, just rolling the next line (and of course having to adjust for PK units) works best and gives everyone the ability to develop as players in different scenarios.
With that, I also don’t focus much on power play strategy outside of teaching them through drills to control the puck and finding shooting lanes. Giving them the chance to find out what works and what doesn’t.
However, on the penalty kill, I have taken a slightly different approach. It’s not that I have gone too deep on strategy on how to execute the perfect box, or how to stop all goals when trapped in the zone. It’s that I have decided my team is going to be best when we’re dangerous on the PK, and don’t reserve ourselves to being stuck in the zone.
Instead, we execute a power kill, and carefully control the play generating offensive chances. We’ve worked on the art of executing our breakout and breakin with just four players and are not afraid to take the chances when given to us.
It’s made us a more dangerous team to play when we go down a man because teams don’t expect it.
To get there, we run a few basic drills to build player confidence being down a player, and then work on things like our breakout with fewer forwards so they aren’t always relying on an off-wing player to be there.
Drills created with Hockey Coach Vision.
2 on 3 Drill
In this drill, you run a 2 on 3, where the two forwards attack the net against three defenders. This is the same drill I have used to teach defense how to collapse and trap players in the zone, but it works wonderfully with a focus on offense as well. It forces the forwards to get more creative with finding ways to get each other the puck and create scoring chances.
4 on 2 Breakout
Here, you’re not playing the drill shorthanded, but rather, teaching your players how to execute a clean breakout with 4 players. As the players get better and better, a good way to keep layering this drill is to add more defenders.
Four players skate in to break the puck out with pressure from 2 defenders.
One defender should put immediate pressure on whoever is getting to the puck first while the second should be helping remove passing lanes.
Ideally, your defenders move the puck to the weak side of the ice where the winger takes the pass and moves it quickly to the center driving out. The 4 players breaking out should then try to score on the center ice net.
Blow the play dead once they have a scoring chance, or in the worst case, the 2 defenders get control and create their own scoring chance.
4 on 0 to 3 on 2
In this drill, the team continues working on a four person breakout, and then three forwards enter the zone against two defenders. Again, the attacking team is not shorthanded, but on a well executed breakout, you won’t be skating into 5 players. Instead, this one has three players entering against one defender and one backchecker.
It begins with four players working together, and then turns into a 3 on 2. You get a lot of teamwork, then a lot of competition.
All four players enter the zone for a breakout, working together to gain the blue line. Once outside, the play turns back and the three designated forwards attack the net while the first player who played the puck plays defense inside the zone, the defenseman up high then provides the backcheck, giving pressure to the forwards, making it feel much more game-like.
Outside of drills, we instill smart habits on our forwards. If they get the puck into the zone on a dump, only 1 player will apply pressure, if we can create a turnover or gain possession, others will begin to join. We don’t want to get caught with too many players deep if we don’t have the puck.
With USA Hockey not allowing icing from the shorthanded team, this also ensures we always gain the red line before deciding to enter the zone or send the puck in. This means we’re always working on the breakout on the PK because we can’t afford to get the puck out of the zone without control.
With these drills, we have begun scoring more shorthanded goals then we often score on the power play. As I said earlier, most teams are caught off guard by our aggressive PK and these drills have instilled the confidence needed to go out and dominate when most teams turtle back into their shells.
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