I have found in my time coaching that the defense are often told their sole job is to stop goals from happening. In doing this they play particularly passive and almost retreat to their net front when faced with Neutral Zone rushes surrendering the Blue Line without much of a fight and looking to only protect the house. This drill is designed in a way to encourage intense competition in practice between your Forwards and Defense while helping the defense to learn habits to be aggressive through the Neutral Zone. It also doubles as a way for Forwards to work on routes from their breakout to zone entries with speed. My players love this drill and consistently ask for it in practice, so much so it is used as much to teach as it is a reward for hard work and good play during the season.

I broke the drill up into multiple parts because it being all on one drawing can be super confusing as seen above.

Part 1

In the image below you can see how the players are set up. If you want you can set the lines up with your game time line combinations in mind, otherwise just send players to repsective start positions.

1. F1 and F2 start with a simple 2 on 0 with the coach feeding whom ever they want the puck. Players have free reign to be creative to score quickly, though it needs to stay "shoot out style" traveling towards the net.
   1. I like to have my goalie here chase down the rebound if there is one and pass it to me on the wall as a mini stick handling practice while the rush is going the other way 
2. D1 is stepping out and beginning to establish their gap in the Offensive Zone
3. After the shot F1 and F2 swing with their momentum and recieve a second puck from coach to initiate a 2 on 1 rush

Part 2

This is picking up with the initiation of the 2 on 1 rush

1. F1 and F2 are attacking 2 on 1 trying to score while D1 is reading their gap and playing the 2 on 1 looking for opportunity to create a turnover
2. After the Rush goes by D2 and D3 are both jumping out to begin establishing their gaps in the OZ for the next 3 on 2 rush

Part 3

After the shot resolution on the 2 on 1 rush

1. After the shot F3 takes off behind the net and looks to establish a rush with F1 and F2
   1. You will see a Red route off of D1, if you feel the forwards are slowing up too much you can add D1 as a backcheck option creating a 3 on 3 situation through the NZ instead of the standard 3 on 2. Otherwise D1 goes back to the line
2. D2 and D3 look to manage their gaps communicate and disrupt the attack through the Neutral Zone
3. Typically we let the rush play out along with a ~20 second 3 on 2 in the zone or until the Defense clears

*Make sure to flip the corner of the ice the forwards are rushing out of for the 3 on 2

Key Points:

• Aggressive Play by the defense looking to contest at the blue line when possible
  • Identify bad/mishandled passes as opportunity to pressure
  • Read passing lanes and keep tight gaps
  • Gapping starts in the Offensive zone
• Forwards need to be focusing on attacking inside out through the Neutral Zone
• Timing is important here, I often see Forwards blow the zone and passes get picked off because they are taking bad routes or too far ahead of the play once they swing
• Talk about your preferred zone entry habits and routes

Looking at this you may think that is all well and good but how are we incentivizing the habits we wish to see? We implemented a scoring system seen below. Then to add to that scoring system my 16u Defense (Players can be creative in their own right) appealed to my philosophy that the defense are supposed to be offensive too. They came up with a way for themselves to get opportunities to score too via breakaways which hopefully will make sense below.

Scoring System is as follows:

• 2 on 0
  • No Points Earned
  • Can take .5 or 1pt for missed shot on net if desired from Fwds
• 2 on 1
  • Forwards
    • 1 pt for a goal
  • Defense
    • 1pt for a takeaway before a red line, opportunity for a breakaway chance
      • 1pt for a goal on the breakaway
  • OR
    • 1pt for a takeaway before the blue line or forcing forwards offside, NO breakaway chance
  • OR
    • .5pt for denying a shot on net
• 3 on 2 (or 3 on 3)
  • Forwards
    • .5pt for a shot on the rush (Coach Discretion)
    • 1pt for a goal
  • Defense
    • 1pt for a takeaway before a red line, opportunity for a breakaway chance
      • 1pt for a goal on the breakaway
  • OR
    • 1pt for a takeaway before the blue line or forcing forwards offside, NO breakaway chance

**Scoring Note: You can also grant the breakaway for any disruption in the NZ as a way to help start developing this habit of contesting pucks then as they get better you can start to make it tougher by adding the Red/Blue Line stipulation

There are a couple variations we run with this drill one includes a double regroup before the 3 on 2 rush. We have manipulated the scoring system and come up with creative ways to keep the drill fresh and engaging, it is all about what you want to enforce and capture as the point of emphasis.