These four breakout drills will ensure that in the chaos of a game, your team is prepared for nearly anything.
Previously, I wrote about steps for teaching a breakout, and looked at some basic youth hockey drills that helped reinforce a strong breakout.
Now, as players start to get older, get better at the basics, and also continue to face teams who are increasingly able to counter a basic breakout, it comes time to start introducing new elements.
And, like in many of my previous articles, I want to teach these concepts with a lot of repetition, and not a lot of standing around. To do that, I broke these drills into four small area games.
Drills created with Hockey Coach Vision.
Warm-Up
The drill uses a small station, and you can use it to warm up players before going into the breakout to get them reacting to catching that pass from the defender. You can also rim the puck up the boards, which makes them work on retrieving that puck in motion. You can run this on both sides, or one, and get them quickly in the breakout mindset.
Choices
In this drill, three players enter the zone in order of defence, winger, center. The defender goes behind the net and picks up the puck and makes a pass to the winger on the boards while the center drives up the middle. That’s the basic version, but in the video, you will see three different versions run.
In the second and third, a coach adds pressure making the defender or even the winger make a new decision. In one scenario, just skipping the wing and going to the center work. In the final one, you see the winger gets it, but realizes they are well covered and sends it back to the defence who finds the center open.
Not in the video is the ability to have the two forwards clear the puck and turn around and enter back in on a 2 on 1 drill.
5 on 5 Build Up
In this drill, it starts with a 5 on 2, the yellow team in the drill is playing in the defensive zone, and the two red players are forechecking. The object here is much easier for yellow which is to execute a clean breakout.
Once they do breakout, they will pass the puck to one of the players in red standing at center ice. That player dumps the puck in, and the yellow team will not try and break the puck out on a 5 on 5.
The drill starts w/ the fundamentals of the breakout, and then adds an immediate game-like situation, causing them to work harder and faster about what to do with the puck.
Bonus: 2 on 3
In my recent article on teaching complex defensive systems, I used this 2 on 3 drill. While it was used in that scenario to work on defensive structure, the drill ends with a breakout. Why it’s back here now is because it’s important to spot how your drills can be used to teach multiple things at a time.
One day, we may use this drill and talk about defence, while another, we’ll talk about the breakout.
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 blueline. For the offence, try and score.
Challenging your players once they understand the drill is critical to their development. Once a drill or system is well understood, begin teaching those creative ways to problem solve with them. Allow them chances to make different variations.
This will ensure in the chaos of a game, they are prepared for nearly anything.
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