With spring hockey in full swing, I have had the chance to watch more youth games from the stands, assessing players and even teams as tryouts approach in the coming months. 

One area of improvement I keep seeing from teams time and time again is passing. Many players play as though they have spent a lot of time practicing passing off the ice, or even on the ice while standing still. Passing to a player in motion, or to open space is few and far between.

Yet, when I see it happen, it’s immediately impactful. 

2 on 0 Back Door Pass

This is a simple station based small area drill that sends two players down the ice making passes trying to create a backdoor scoring chance by moving the goalie out of position. 

As the players make their way down the ice, they begin to create distance from each other and make quick, instride passes, making the play harder and harder to read. While the drill is calls for a backdoor pass, players should be encouraged to make the right shot or pass depending on the goalie. 

This helps create passing closer to the net, creating even greater scoring chances.

As you can see, while this play developed slower, both passes were made in motion to move the puck up the ice, with the goal coming from a short, leading pass to the attacking forward finding empty space behind a defender. 

Cross Ice Passing

While this drill does have players passing flat footed, the skater is the main target in this and he’s getting the pass in motion.

This runs both sides at the same time and sees two opposite forwards leave the blueline and pass to a player directly in front of them. Those two players receiving the pass then quickly pass the puck to their opposing player along the same blue line while the original skaters head deep into the zone, circling out back towards the neutral zone. 

As the third player gets the pass, they will pass back along the same line. Now, the original receiver has the puck and hits the original forward with a hard cross ice pass as that skater then takes the puck in for a shot. 

While this pass did not create a goal, it did create a nice scoring opportunity because the player along the boards read the play being created and moved the puck away from danger to a forward moving towards the zone. 

These simple passing drills push players to find those spaces and have the ability to catch a pass while their feet are moving.

Drills with players standing still teach the wrong habits of catching a pass and making a pass and players then struggle to bring their game to life when they hit the ice.