Recreate the speed of skating, the movement, and even the need for quick passing in a few simple drills.

When working in smaller areas, either half-ice or station based, it can seem harder to recreate the game-like experience players have on the ice. But this isn’t actually the case, seeing as how the game is generally played in small areas around the ice. The lack of speed in a station, or the sense of urgency to win a race in a smaller area, however, can sometimes be missing.

And in youth hockey, you’re also dealing with onlooking parents who want to see what they believe hockey should look like.

Yet in small areas, or even just half ice, you can recreate the speed of skating, the movement, and even the need for quick passing in a few simple drills. These three drills offer skating speed, coupled with a game, a drill that focuses on getting open and moving to empty ice as quickly as you can, as well as one that tightens a players mobility while forcing quick passes and even quicker decision making.

Bubble Hockey

We will start with a station based drill we refer to as bubble hockey, which will make sense soon. In this drill, you have two players inside the circle, and while they can move around, they actually cross centre ice. We can draw centre ice with a marker, spray paint, or even just cones on the outside to designate where the line is.

Then, you have a player from each team on opposite ends of the circle. Now, they are stuck on the circle, and can’t move inside or out, just like a bubble hockey player. 

The players on the inside can use their teammates on the circle to move the puck around and find a lane to score. Any player can score once they have a lane. If you have goalies, use them in this drill. If not, M shaped nets or shooter tutors work as well.

Once a team scores, or the coach blows the whistle after 45 or so seconds, rotate the players.

This drill works tight, so decision making and puck movement can’t wait. You don’t have a lot of room to create space so you need to move the puck quickly and can’t stall. 

3 Gate Game

In this drill there are no nets, but instead six tires laid out in groups of two that act as gates. The goal of this drill is to either skate the puck through a gate, or make a clean tape-to-tape pass to a teammate through the gates. When a team does this successfully, they are awarded a point.

You can play this 2-on-2, 3-on-3, or you can even have more than two teams of two out there. The goal and lesson here is finding space, as the puck carrier and those without the puck.

Encourage players to find areas not only to score points, but to generate those chances. Not every pass needs to be a point in the game, but the passes need to be utilized to hold possession and make the other team move around in the hopes of creating scoring chances.

Blow the whistle every 45 seconds to bring in new teams if you have players waiting in line. This is a fun drill to start or end with, because it’s high energy, but the game within the game for points gets the players smiling and engaged.

3-on-3 Chase

This drill is very high speed and has a good tempo to it. Two teams line up spaced out on the blue line. You can put pucks with both teams so that both sides can alternate taking the puck into the zone.

On the whistle, one team skates with the puck around both nets, before then entering the playing surface. The team chasing them goes around the far net, but then only the far cone, entering the zone at nearly the same time, or if they have enough speed early, to create a 3-on-3 game. 

Once the puck carrying team is in the playing zone, they can try and score on the net furthest from them, while the chasing team will try to defend and take control to score on the opposite net. 

If either team isn’t skating their hardest, they will quickly find themselves at a substantial disadvantage as either the defensive team will catch them or enter the zone early, or in the opposite case, the offensive team might be taking a shot before the chasing team is even in the playing area. So while you may have to encourage some speed, the players usually pick up quickly the need to move their legs and make something happen.

When it comes to small areas, apart from just picking drills that challenge their skill and minds, take the time to explain to players why the drill is being done to begin with. Don’t assume they will just understand. 

If you just throw them into bubble hockey, they will follow the rules and play, and yes, with no explanation they will learn to move the puck, but knowledge is powerful and knowing what the coach wants them to get out of any drill just empowers them when they step in to it so they grasp the concepts faster and you’ll see an increase in performance almost overnight.