In a previous article, I wrote about the process in teaching my team puck movement on the power play and finding lanes, and how my team at the time found success through this process.
Drills created with Hockey Coach Vision.
A few years later now, I still use these drills to teach and reinforce these same habits, but have developed beyond them when necessary, especially when I have found my team struggling on the power play.
We’re not getting a lot of good chances, and while we’re not Pittsburgh Penguins bad (as of writing this they are 0 on their last 33), but we’re not getting the goals we should be, and even giving up a few short handed goals along the way.
A few of these drills I have touched on before through various small area games, and drills to help better a teams performance.
A staple that has been great in building off the PP/PK Box Drill is the Power Play 3 on 1 passing. This is a station based drill that gets the players moving and finding lanes, but this drill, unlike the PP/PK Box Drill, has a shot involved.
PP Passing:
You can also open up or close with a game like the Back to Back Power Play drill, which is two 3 on 2 games happening with cross ice passes that activate the teams power players versus penalty killers.
These drills do a lot to reinforce the good habits a power play needs, but the one thing the players need after all of that is confidence. Feeling as though you can execute the power play habits your team has set, but not being able to score diminishes that confidence leading to more mistakes and a loss of those habits.
To do this, I modified another popular drill with my team that we have used to help players build confidence moving the puck, called High Low, but in this case, we call it High Low Power Play because instead of two mini 1 v 1 games, we have two mini 2 v 1 games.
Players are confined to a high or low position drawn on the ice with a marker 2 forwards high, 2 low, and 1 defender high and 1 low. Players can shoot at any time, but can utilize their teammates whenever needed to create a good scoring opportunity.Defenders are trying to simply clear the puck, or have the goalie cover it.
I like to set these drills up over the course of a month to really drive the habits home, and have then repeated often in that time, and then bring them in regularly throughout the season when I see any sign of trouble and think the players just need a little recalibration.
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