With these three hockey practice drills, we create a foundation that shows them the benefits of the system without forcing the complicated nature of it on them.
In my recent interview on The Glass and Out Podcast, I discussed teaching systems hockey at the 12U level, even the 10U level, despite the fact that USA Hockey, and many others, discourage systems play until at least 14U.
It’s not that USA Hockey is wrong. 10U and 12U are not the place to throw in systems, they won’t work as planned and you can sacrifice important development of a player’s skills and abilities by focusing on imaginary systems that will break down the second the puck drops and chaos ensues.
Yet, in the same interview, I was asked about what we’re working on at this point in the season. I said defense. And the defense we’re working on is a system, but how we teach it, and implement it, we believe breaks that mold.
We call this system “Make It Small,” and it’s based around a similar defensive structure that was demonstrated by Arizona Coyotes head coach André Tourigny in his TCS Live presentation.
Ultimately, we are creating a 5 on 3 defensive structure where we make the area in which the puck carrier can maneuver small, eliminating their options, and then breaking the puck out after we gain possession. We are currently using a handful of small area games and drills to accomplish this, not by forcing them to understand one massive defensive concept, but through piecemeal work that shows the benefits of making the area small, and how to capitalize.
Drills created with Hockey Coach Vision.
2 on 3
In this drill, five players enter a very small area of the ice; 2 players are offence, trying to score, while the other three are defence. The defence should trap the offensive player along the boards, making it hard to access their teammate. If their teammate falls into the trap as well, bonus for the defence because they’ve now trapped everyone.
For defence, their goal is possession and to skate the puck out past the coach who will be acting as the blue line. For the offence, try and score.
A variation of this can give the offence the option to pass to a third player in line, or if your group is small enough (we run five players per station), the coach can be up there and activated as their third forward.
The concept you bring here is that the three defenders need to collapse on the puck carrier and run them out of space and win that puck battle. For the offence, it’s about capitalizing on the defender’s mistake if they make one.
2 on 2 on 2
This game is a lot of fun, and at first glance has nothing to do with making it small. What makes it a great drill is that you can actually teach a lot of lessons in it depending on what parts of the drill you’re being vocal about at that practice.
In this drill, three teams of two enter the zone, able to score on any net, but it’s only you and your teammate. You have four other players after you, and they are even after each other.
Yet, if the four without the puck can work together long enough to force a collapse around a puck carrier when the puck goes into a corner or along the board, they can use Make It Small to trap the puck carrier.
5 on 5
This one looks more like the game, and it is. For this, we use it to focus on multiple plays. It has Make It Small, it has our breakout, it has our offensive zone play.
Here, we put all 10 players right into the zone, into the positions we assign them. We then dump a puck into the zone, pass it to a random player, or shoot it on net for the goalie to deflect away.
We then want offence to get shots, and defence to break it out. But we have a rule about the whistle. If the coach blows the whistle, everyone freezes in place. This is how we teach.
The caveat to this drill is, it takes time, and ice time can be hard to come by, so use it sparingly, but you do sometimes need to sacrifice a little time to teachable moments. But it puts the concept into a real game-like scenario and allows the ability to make mistakes and get real time feedback from players when you freeze them and ask them to show you what is wrong in the current setup.
The video above shows the drills in the first stages of defence trying to break out, losing possession and then making it small on the puck carrier. Ideally we let this drill run until the puck is out of play via goal, clear, or cover. However, with another line of players waiting to go, we try to carefully limit to no more than 45-50 seconds before we reset unless the play is really playing out in a way we want everyone to see.
With these three drills, we create a foundation that shows them the benefits of the system without forcing the complicated nature of it on them. For the player, the strategy to take away their space, as a group by making it small. It plays out differently in each game or even each shift, but it gives them something to use as a strategy that is oftentimes a surprise to our opponents.
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