Learn how to run a successful scrimmage, one where your practice goes into action. Then find your gaps and bring them back to your practice.
Scrimmaging can be great. Players love it, it can be a good stress reliever from a tough practice, a bounceback from a tough game, or a favorite tool to use during tryouts.
However, it can also be detrimental and not provide the desired outcome. Often, coaches set up a scrimmage just to keep players busy, or worse, they try to set up a scrimmage with a purpose that is not well thought out.
This happens a lot when coaches put line 1 out against line 4, or a group of A players vs a group of B players. The logic here is the bottom players are going to get a challenge and it will push them.
However, what this really does is allow the top kids to dominate the play and offers no coaching or guidance that actually plays any role in developing the bottom to be able to better compete. The goal is to improve all players, and you don’t necessarily do that through a scrimmage.
A scrimmage should be about seeing your work in practice go into action, and then finding your gaps and bringing that back to your station based practice.
So how do you run a successful scrimmage?
The simplest answer is, scrimmage with a purpose. Preplan your scrimmages, and don’t be afraid to use your whistle to stop play if it’s not going well. While there is a lot to be said for free play, you also have a chance to stop bad habits before they form.
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Positioning
Got a new team and don’t know the players very well? Or, coaching at a younger level and you want everyone trying new positions but aren’t sure who is where on the skill or ability scale? Purposely assign positions for each shift. Don’t let players pick their own or gravitate to their favorite spot.
Don’t over-correct while they are playing though. Evaluate their work and see what the gaps are and how big they are across the team so that you can design future practices that focus on those larger gaps that everyone needs to work on.
This also helps build player confidence for when they find themselves out of position or covering for a player who is out of position. The more you can expose players of all levels to different positions, the better all around player they become.
Match ups
To ensure you’re seeing the players play against the right skill level, or getting the kind of pressure you hope to see, it can be helpful to pre-plan the matchups you have going out.
This can be especially true for tryouts when you may have players of all different levels out there. If you’re trying out kids for an A team, you likely don’t want those most likely headed to a B team scrimmaging them. It won’t be fair for either side and won’t get you an accurate understanding of their skills or ability.
Special Teams
When I am running a scrimmage, I love to blow the whistle out of nowhere and call a fake penalty and put a team short handed. I tend to like to just pull one player off and leave the lines alone. This gives everyone a chance to try PP and PK playtime, especially those who don’t always get it during games. You never know who will surprise you.
You can also control the scenarios here. 5-on-4, 4-on-4, and 5-on-3.
Break Out of the Norm
Not every scrimmage needs to look exactly like a normal hockey game. In a previous article, I highlighted a half-ice game called 3 on the Boards, which promotes a lot of creativity and heads up play.
In the full ice version, cleverly called 4 on the Boards, you utilize full ice hockey, as a 4-on-4 game, with your 5th player being just outside the zone waiting for a pass to activate your next 4.
Start the game 4-on-4 with a faceoff drop, and have four additional players from each team waiting against the boards in the neutral zone. The game is played 4-on-4, but whichever team wins the draw and possession into the zone begins the attack. For the opposing team to attack, they must get possession of the puck and make a pass to the four players waiting in the middle of the ice. Once they have the puck, they can begin their attack on the opposing net.
The same four who started with the puck will remain on the ice playing defense now until they can gain possession and pass to their waiting four players.
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In the end, just like every practice should have a purpose, so then should every scrimmage. Just throwing out 5-on-5 to kill time generally doesn’t give you much to go off other than keeping players busy.
Decide before the practice what it is you hope to uncover with your scrimmage and then design it in a way to ensure the best possible chance to find it.
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