Continuing on my previous article about learning from soccer drills, I want to introduce a really great warmup game of tag that focuses on fast movement, great passing, and awareness.
In the soccer drill, there are 2 teams of 3 each with their own ball (you can add more balls to the game to make it harder if the taggers are doing too well), and then 2 taggers who are trying to eliminate the team. Cone off an area on the pitch to ensure they don't have too much room to move around.
However, you cannot tag someone if they have the ball. So you must target someone without the ball and hope the ball carrier doesn't make a nice clean to pass to them right away.
In the hockey version, you have the same restraints and I use a little more space since the game is faster.
It's fairly basic as the taggers come in they will want to focus on someone without the puck, but the teams must be working together to spread out and not only pass the puck to those who need it, but to also draw the tagger away so that if a pass is made, they aren't just one step away from the passer.
Communication, speed, and positional awareness are key.
You can play a few different ways, either by tagging one person from a team the whole team is out, or having to tag two people from each team.
I recommend a 30 second time limit per round. Whichever group wins (players or taggers), the losing group have to do something of a "punishment." In soccer, I make them do donkey kicks, while also making donkey sounds. This gets a good laugh.
With hockey players, I try to avoid skating or pushups as a punishment because those should be positives, not negatives, and they don't always make the other group laugh. I try to find something that is humorously embarrassing. Either making them try to do donkey kicks, or maybe even get into a pushup position and try to walk across the ice on their fists (with gloves on!).
Either way, this should be fun the whole time and have them moving and skating hard. It's a great warmup with a lot of hidden lessons inside of it.
