These hockey practice drills build upon each other to reinforce the necessary steps to a quality zone entry, none of which rely on dump and chase.
Entering the offensive zone is always a lot easier said than done. In previous articles, I have looked at the breakout and neutral zone play, and how to control the puck, and even regroup to try again.
Here, we are looking at how to rush the puck into the zone, with a dump and chase being the last option. In fact, USA Hockey strongly encourages coaches to avoid dump and chase tactics, but that is kind of unreasonable given that not every play goes as planned and sometimes the best thing you can do is just get the puck deep, 200 feet from your own goalie.
This first drill below is a great warm-up and gets players moving with speed and making a few good hard passes. Great way to get both their legs and hands moving early.
Drills created with Hockey Coach Vision.
In this drill, you can run it both directions and get a flow going, but you have four lines at each face off dot in the zone, with pucks at opposite dots. Player 1 makes a pass to player 2 next to them and they both skate down the ice. At centre, the puck carrier makes a hard pass to player 3 in front of them, who then makes a quick pass to player 4. From there players 1 and 2 cross paths and player 4 makes a hard pass to player 1 and along with player 2, they go down for a 2-on-0. The other side can begin going once the other players have crossed the red line for the attack.
This warm-up reinforces the quick, hard passing of neutral zone regrouping and forces them to keep their speed for the drill to work. Once they start losing their speed or making bad passes, you will see the drill begin to fall apart. That’s a good time to remind them they need to keep speed and make tape-to-tape passes.
Now, we can work on entering the zone and setting up for plays.
This drill utilizes half ice and sends 3 forwards in against 2 defensemen. There’s a lot of variations and options, but to start, have the centre pass to a winger, and that winger should bring the puck in wide, while the centre crashes the net and the weak side winger finds open ice in the high slot. The winger should find the other winger and get a shot on net.
From there, the defence can add different levels of pressure, or anticipating the play, can force the winger to either pass to the centre, shoot, or even send the puck behind the net.
To better include defence, you can put a coach at both sides of the blueline and award them a point for clearing the puck with a clean pass to a coach.
Finally, we can put the 3-on-2 to a full ice rush. In this drill, we incorporate a play to kick it off by working on walking the line and a tip by having the defence line up in one corner and at the blueline. The drill starts with a pass to the point and the player walks the line and takes a shot on net. The other player should have skated to the net creating a screen and looking for a potential tip.
The second the shot is taken, the 3 forwards on the opposite side begin to skate their puck out of the zone. As they do this, the defenceman who was screening the goalie loops behind the net and provides a backcheck, while the defenceman who took the shot immediately starts playing defence against the 3 attacking forwards.
These forwards are moving into the zone with speed, and like the drill above, spreading out and giving themselves options. This time however, they know they have a defensive player coming in behind them, so they must know their options quickly when getting into the zone.
These drills build upon each other to reinforce the necessary steps to a quality zone entry, none of which rely on dump and chase. As the players get better at these drills, coaches can add more pressure at the entry that will sometimes force a dump and chase play and you can then teach them the importance of chasing after the puck they sent in rather than just allowing a turnover.
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