With these 3 drills, you can begin to see change in your team's passing ability, strength, and awareness in only a few practices.
Passing is one of the most critical parts of any hockey game. The ability to move the puck out of your zone, through the neutral zone, and hold possession in the offensive zone all require good, hard passes.
Yet, a lot of passing drills have players standing still and learning the fundamentals, which is important, but doesn’t end up simulating a game-like experience. Other drills will involve a lot of passing, but you’re really working on something else and not focused on making sure the passes are done right.
To increase our team’s passing ability, we use a variety of drills and these three stand out as ones that help make the most difference.
Drills created with Hockey Coach Vision.
4 on 2 Breakout
We work on our breakout almost every single practice. It’s one of the most important elements of our game. However, on the breakout, the breakout passes we make are also our biggest weakness.
In this drill, we run it half-ice (if you have the room, move the center ice net to the far blueline), and dump a puck into the defensive zone. 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.
While the breakout is key here, what is more important is that the passes be on the ice, hard, and hit their target. This is a 4 on 2, the 4 should not face too big of a challenge in this drill unless they move the puck poorly giving the 2 defenders more time to capitalize.
3-on-1 Power Play Passing
This drill is a player favorite, and really puts the emphasis on hard passes that are all about keeping possession while drawing the defender and the goalie out of position.
Have 3 forwards line up in a triangle formation outside of the faceoff circle, with the net placed on the goal line. A defender is inside the circle, and they cannot leave it.
The offensive players on the outside can move around on their side of the circle and should pass the puck around to each other until a clear shooting lane has been determined.
Watch out for players taking bad shots just to score and encourage more passing to find the exact right moment.
One modification we make once the drill is flowing is that once the shot is taken, forwards can crash the net and the defender can leave the circle to help protect the net.
You can also add points. 2 points for a goal, 1 point for a good shot on net, and if the defender inside catches the puck or blocks a shot or pass, they get one point.
1 Touch Pass Zone Entry
This last drill we run on half the ice split lengthwise, but you will easily see how you can run this full ice.
We’ve all seen those situations unfold where a player is a little ahead of the play and gets a pass flat footed. Oftentimes they will try and skate it but with no speed they get caught and lose the puck.
So in this drill, a forward starts with the puck in the defensive zone and skates it out, as they encounter a coach at the blue line adding pressure, they make a hard pass to the second forward who is up near the far blue line.
With a coach waiting to add necessary pressure, the second forward should then send the puck right back to the first who should be coming through the neutral zone with speed.
Staying onside, the players should cross allowing the puck carrier speed to enter the zone and pinch in past the defending coach (who can apply varying degrees of pressure each time). When crossing, this allows the second forward to stay onside and begin gaining some speed to create a 2 on 0 play towards the goalie.
Watch out for weak one touch passes to empty ice. These create a larger chance for a turnover if the forward isn’t the closest player to a puck in the game. Instead, encourage those passes to be hard and on target.
With these 3 drills, you can begin to see change in your team’s passing ability, strength, and awareness in only a few practices, which will begin to quickly translate into games.
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