Keep your players motivated and moving at practice, even if you're no longer in the playoffs. Continue to build their skills.
As the end of the season winds down for many, lots of coaches find themselves with a few practice times left and a lot less motivation from the players or even themselves. Exiting the playoffs early can do that.
But not every team can hoist a championship trophy every season. These remaining practices are great opportunities to increase the fun while shifting the mindset of players, parents, and coaches to the what lies ahead. That could be spring or summer tournaments, tryouts, or just in-house programs.
It’s also a great time to ensure players have a way to realize the pressure is off. Many put a lot of pressure on themselves, have it put on them by their parents, or even by their coaches. Everyone wants to win in the postseason, but not everyone can. So now, let them take a breath and get back to what makes them happy in the first place: just being on the ice with their friends.
So with that, coaches need to pick their drills accordingly. It might not be the time to double down on teaching your breakout system, but instead a great time to return to some of the fundamental skills and build upon them.
Drills created with Hockey Coach Vision.
1 on 1 Breakout
This drill is a simple 1 on 1 that works on passing, and gap control. At the same time, it has the offensive player doing a good job working on beating the defender and trying to get to the net.
To start, the first player in the corner leaves without a puck and heads behind the net getting a pass from the second player in line. At the same time, the player at the blueline begins leaving and curls down to get a pass from the player coming out from behind the net.
Now as the puck carrier, the player must leave the zone before entering on the attack. The defender should then pick their gap and defend. As the play reaches the net, the coach can blow the whistle for the other corner to begin their play.
For larger groups, you can add two nets and run it out of a station rather than half-ice.
Baseball
This drill is a race between players. It’s a simple setup, placing one player on each faceoff dot on half-ice, everyone else in one corner.
Players in the corner with pucks start by passing to the closest dot and start to race off, going around all 4 players trying to cross the goal line before the four players on the dot make passes around the dots, ending on the first player who takes a shot.
In the first example, you will see perfect passing that clearly beats the racing player. Yet, in the second, the passing isn’t as accurate, more panicked and giving the skater the ability to gain the edge. At the end, the final player is rushing to get the shot and misses the net.
If you don’t get a shot on net, you don’t get the “out” and the racing player wins. It’s a lot of fun for the players who keep pushing each other, but also a great lesson for the passing players to remain calm, keep their heads up so they have their passing target in sight, and to take care with their passes and shot.
Around the World Passing
Continuing with passing, this drill works really well to teach give-and-go passing, but also catching passes on the move.
Depending on the number of kids, you can replace the passers with coaches or use players. In the example video, I used coaches because that’s how we often run it when we have a smaller group.
Skating out of the corner, players make passes to each coach and have to get the pass back while staying in motion. The final pass to the coach down low results in a pass back that can be taken as a one-timer or just a quick release.
After a few reps, switch corners and make them work in the opposite direction.
These drills aren’t groundbreaking, but they do continue development in both skating, passing, shooting, and hockey IQ. As the summer slows down hockey, the chance to use hockey IQ in games diminishes a little and even the games they do get to play can feel less meaningless, meaning you don’t always get peak performance.
So that means it’s on us as coaches to find ways to keep that development moving at every practice and find fun and unique ways to ensure they are engaged and working through game-like situations and at least finding challenges.
3D Animated Drills are powered by the Hockey Coach Vision App. Test the FREE HCV APP and access 100+ Animated Drills: https://hockeycoachvision.com/
