We’ve all seen it. The Instagram video of a player dangling through a stickhandling device, looping around a cone, lifting up a tire to drag a puck out, and then going in for a shot on the goalie.
They look good, and for all intents and purposes, have a place in player training. Yet more and more I continue to see these kinds of drills taking over at team practices.
And so, to coaches working with their teams, I say this: leave your toys at home.
Like I said, they have a place. Properly used, you can teach some skills at a private lesson with some of these training tools. But the majority of the time these tools do more to make a good looking video than to develop a player or a team.
Too many kids get caught standing in line waiting for someone to go, and what are they learning? These are skills that serve nearly zero purpose in a game.
When was the last time you saw a player lift up a 25 pound tire with their stick to dig out a puck in-game? Or dangle carefully to a few perfectly lined up defensemen? All with no pressure from another player?
I have written in the past about small area games and their benefits, such as drastically increasing puck touches, but another key aspect is that they need to simulate real game situations and teach players to think how they will on the ice.
The toys on the ice don’t create that real simulation, the thinking that goes into those drills don’t translate to a game. They instead translate into how to get that drill right and not getting yelled at by the coach.
I have previously shown a drill called chaos stickhandling in which you litter a section with toys and force players to maneuver around them, keeping their head up before attacking the net.
But perhaps we can teach this same method, with more players in motion and no toys needed?
I ran this drill at a camp with Project Hockey, and witnessed firsthand how players adapted quickly and found ways to not collide, and it needed nothing more than cones (simply to designate lines).
As this drill builds up, you can send 2 players from each line at the same time, and then add pucks. You can have 8 to 16 players moving at once and at a much faster pace and with real moving obstacles in front of them.
Here is the drill live in action with pucks. Players were instructed that just like in a game, they needed to keep their puck. If they lose it, get it back, don’t keep skating away or come back around for it, drop, pivot, grab it, and continue on your way.
It’s not about removing the skill development, it’s about finding a new way to teach it that is more realistic, but also involves more players.
Getting creative with drills will help your players become more creative on the ice. Overstructured drills with unrealistic obstacles create more robots than players.
