Coaches must create a sense of game-like urgency into every drill and practice. Find out how.

Creating a sense of urgency in drills during practice is a unique challenge for coaches, and players. Creating urgency may be one of the most important components of a coach’s practice plan. We want our players to skate fast on every drill, hit the net on all shots, and make and take all passes. Coaches can motivate players to have urgency by giving them objectives on all drills, use competitive drills, tell them to get missed pucks, and to skate fast on all drills just like they would in a game.

Give Players Goals or Objectives for Most Drills

An example of giving players (forwards and d-men) an objective for a drill is to encourage them to hit the net on shooting drills. We can tell the players we want them to focus and hit the net on 3 of 5 shots or 7 of 10 shots. Or on a forecheck drill tell the defensive players their goal is to force a bad pass and the offensive team to make a good pass.

We can think about designing drills that have a “winner” of the drill. For instance, a shooting drill with one side counting how many shots hit the net compared to the other side. Keeping in mind that goalies get a lot of shots during practice, and we can design drills that have meaningful shots on the goalie. When former NHL goalie Glenn Hall was the goalie coach for the Calgary Flames, he counted how many shots goalies get over multiple practices. He counted between 300 – 500 shots and indicated this may be why goalies get over-stimulated with shots during practice and do not try as hard as they can in practice.

Competitive Drills

Use as many drills as possible that have players racing, battling, backchecking/forechecking, angling, and skating hard for the puck.  This means we need to design most drills to be as game-like as possible.

For instance, on a neutral zone re-group with the d-man looking for an open forward to make a pass. Allowing the d-man to re-group and make a pass with no forechecking pressure does not make the d-man to be urgent with skating and making a pass, and is not game-like. To create urgency, add a forechecker to the drill to put pressure on the d-man to make a quick, accurate pass. This kind of pressure creates urgency by the d-man, the forechecking forward, and the forwards needing to get in the open for a pass in the neutral zone.

If the drill is a 1-on-1 puck battle in the corner, it is, in and of itself, urgent. But what happens when the d-man or the forward wins the battle and gains possession of the puck? If there is no forechecking pressure on the d-man then an urgent drill turns into a non-urgent drill. Likewise, if the forward wins the puck battle and goes to the net to take a shot. We need to add a second player to put pressure on the d-man who is trying to make a break-out pass or to put pressure on the forward as he or she tries to take a shot.

Hitting the Net

The ability to hit the net in practice appears to be hard for young players. Which raises the question, are players unable to hit the net because the goalies (or shooter tutor) are so good and cover the net so well, or are players just ripping the puck with no thought about hitting the net? It could be that players are shooting as hard as they can with no thought of accuracy. Therefore, there is no urgency to shooting if there is no motivation to hit the net or consequence to missing the net.

One way to increase urgency is to incorporate goals and objectives on shooting drills, as is mentioned above. Or we can develop a constructive punishment for not hitting the net, or the goalie, or the shooter tutor. We do not want to, and never should, use push-ups for missing the net because we never want to use exercise (something that is good for players) as punishment. Therefore, other forms of motivation to hit the net are such things as:

• Players must sit in the penalty box for 30 – 60 seconds for missing the net.
• Players must sit on the ice in the ref’s have circle for 20 – 30 seconds for missing the net.

We also encourage the players to take velocity off the puck to be more accurate, and teach them how to shoot for accuracy.  The difference between shooting for velocity and accuracy is when shooting for accuracy a player does not roll his or her wrists. A player will be more accurate keeping the stick blade open rather than pointing the toe of the blade at the net by rolling the wrists. Watch how Mario Lemieux shoots to score the winning goal at the 1987 Canada Cup. Notice Lemieux’s blade stays open without rolling his wrists.

We can also tell players that every drill starts with skating or a pass, and ends with a shot on goal. Hitting the net is a significant part of every drill, and if a player misses the net, he or she has not done the drill correctly. This would be called a “Yes/No” response – “Yes” he or she did the drill correctly, but “No” he or she did not hit the net – 50% correct on the drill. Moreover, if a player misses the net, we tell the players the play continues until someone gets the puck, takes another shot, and hits the net. In other words, the drill is not finished until there is a shot on goal. We can also tell players that shooting at the goalie is not a bad thing. Getting a shot on goal is very important. In fact, we can practice passing off pads (POP) to get a rebound to get another shot on net.

Continuing a Drill after Losing the Puck

Continuing a drill after losing the puck (and getting a different puck) is the most non-game-like way to practice there is. This is all-too-common for players to do in practice.  One could argue that a player who does this is exhibiting one of the following behaviors:

• They are embarrassed for losing the puck or not being able to receive a pass, so they get a different puck.
• They are trying to disguise losing the puck by continuing to skate hard and thinking the coaches may not notice the loss of the puck rather, the player is skating fast.
• The player may think there are so many pucks on the ice, why bother stopping and getting the real puck.
• The player has no sense of game-performance urgency and does not practice the way he or she plays.

Watch Nathan MacKinnon’s urgency in practice at 1:15, 1:59, and 2:04, when he loses the puck, he stops, gets the puck, and continues the drill, just like he would in a game.  Also notice he takes 17 shots and hits the net 12 times (70%).

The way to motivate players to stop and go back to get a lost puck is to tell them on the first day of practice that continuing a drill without getting a lost puck will not be tolerated. And, if a player does this in practice, there will be practical and symbolic discipline for not going back to get the puck.  Show the team this video of MacKinnon.

Conclusion

It is a common cliché, but there is truth to the saying “We play the way we practice.” Coaches must create a sense of game-like urgency into every drill and practice. Rules of practice can be implemented on the first day of practice. For instance, a rule could be to always stop to get a lost puck and never keep skating to get a different puck. Another rule is that we want players to hit the net at least 3 out of 5 shots.  Practical and sensible discipline can be implemented for breaking the rules of practice to give players accountability.