Time and again, practice drills are conducted without any pressure on their breakouts. Coaches instruct their defense to execute plays such as:

• Reverse
• Up
• Over
• Wheel

When you observe the most effective breakouts during games, you'll notice that the centermen frequently plays a crucial role in supporting the play below the goal line. In a game, there are generally three scenarios when attempting to gain or keep possession of the puck so you can smoothly exit your defensive zone:

Red pressure - occurs when the opposing team has possession deep in your zone, or there's a 50/50 race for the puck.

Yellow pressure - happens when your team reaches the puck first in your zone, but an opponent is within 3-5 stick lengths.

Green pressure - the other team is making a line change and might have only one forechecker advancing.

Red and Yellow pressures are typically the most frequent during games. The key to executing a successful breakout under these conditions begins with excellent defensive zone positioning, allowing players to create a bunch of little 2-on-1 situations throughout the zone. When facing Green pressure, the puck carrier must create a 2-on-1 advantage by attracking a forechecker into a poistion that he or she isn't a threat or by engaging the opponent's F1 before passing to a supporting teammate.

Low Defensive Zone Breakdown 

Here is a clip using Hudl to breakdown our Facebook live stream. You will notice we failured to start our break out when we had yellow pressure, therefore, we are in a red pressured situation. As both our players in the corner (team black) overcomit to the puck carrier, and our weakside D failures to favour the strong side of the ice. Once the other teams F2 gets full possession of the puck, he has lots of open ice to fire the puck for a beauti of a goal!

How Do We Work On Creating 2v1's?

Quick Kill To Attack Drill;

Dzone coverage drill, to kill plays and begin your breakout

• coach will spot a puck in the corner
• F1 and F2 from the red team will go and get it
• the defensive team will slid over and attack the two red players (5V2)
• after about 5 seconds, the coach will spot a second puck in the oposite corner where F3 will now attack and F1 & F2 are now out of the drill. Now F3 will have to play against the defensive team will have to adjust to the play in the oposite side
• The defensive team will have to kill the play off of F3, get the puck, breakout, and attack on the two D in the neutral zone

  2nd Quick Improvements 

  In this clip we have two 50/50 races for the puck. The first one are from the two players that start the clip behind the net. Our defenseman reaches the puck first and attempts a reverse bump pass, but unfortunately, our second player isn't quick enough on the backcheck. This situation sets up another 50/50 race for the puck, which turns in our favor. Our defenseman disrupts the opponent's player by separating the puck from their body. Simultaneously, our second player swiftly picks up the puck and initiates our breakout on the weak side of the ice.