Hard work is required to get the puck, then skill takes over.

This isn’t hard. Except when it is.

It isn’t complicated. Except when it is.

For coaches, teaching simple offensive zone principles like the forecheck or cycle isn’t difficult — just get there first and get the puck, what’s so hard about that? Mentally, it’s not. Physically winning a race and putting your body in harm’s way? From a player’s perspective, it is hard. It demands work, and there’s no substitute for work ethic.

The game is played at its best when we keep it simple, when we design tactics that are easy to understand and leverage the unique skills of individual players. Aggressive hockey players who are determined to win races are rewarded with puck possession.

That’s where the skill takes over.

So in essence, the harder a player works, the easier the game becomes. See? It’s not complicated at all.

People say you can’t coach offence. I don’t believe that.

What I do believe in is a consistent set of plays and options that players can utilize in the offensive zone. In other words, free-spirited hockey between teammates who are on the same page in any given zone, in this case the offensive zone. Being over-complicated in a near position-less offensive zone scheme results in a lot of sizzle, but not a lot of steak.

So let’s stick to the basics for now. Once you’ve got a foundation in place, then you can branch off into strange new worlds.

And there’s nothing more basic than your forecheck, so let’s focus on getting the puck back before anything else with the help of a few examples from my team, the Winkler Flyers.

Get there first on the forecheck

A couple weeks ago, I wrote about the situations in which you might need to dump the puck in the zone. I’ve got certain advanced analytics I like, and some I don’t — one I fully believe in is the advantages to carrying the puck in the zone. But since the other team might not let you do that, it’s good to have a recovery plan.

However, whether you’re running a 2-1-2 or a 1-2-2 or some other fancy forecheck, it doesn’t matter if you don’t have players who can win races and get to the puck first.

Win your races, we say all the time. Get to the puck first and then skill can take over. But that skill has no chance of seeing the bright lights unless you’ve got the work ethic to take you there.

Watch the weak-side forward, Ian Tookenay, pick off the goalie’s pass behind the net. He gets to the puck first, and then it’s game on.

The next one is a bit of a fortunate bounce, but you create your own bounces with speed and aggression.

Griffin Leonard places the puck into a good space, nice and slow, and the defenceman behind the net is forced to make a play under extreme duress as two large mammals come bearing down on him. The forecheckers are working as hard as they can, and even if they don’t have perfect habits all the time (look at the sticks flailing in the air), the result is still in their favour because of the process.

So what do we do once we get the puck? If we can’t immediately deposit it into a yawning cage, then there’s work to be done.

This next clip will bridge the gap between forecheck and offensive zone possession. The dump-in isn’t great because it wraps hard to the goalie, but we still get the bounce because the first player is determined to get to the puck first. And everything that follows is a result of that effort.

Skill takes over.

Board work and close support

So we’ve got the puck, now what? A while back I heard Todd Woodcroft, then of the Winnipeg Jets, current head coach at the University of Vermont, talk about first-touch escapes, and it stuck. I don’t even remember the terminology I used before, but first-touch escapes is what we use now.

Get to the puck first, escape, and the zone will open up. Your defence, other forwards, the cycle, a net attempt — a common tendency of forechecking players is to keep skating in the same direction when they retrieve the puck. That’s fine, but hammering your edges and escaping that makes life much more difficult for defenders. It’s hard for the puck carrier too, but as we’ve learned, the harder you work, the more room you get for your skill to take over.

The sequence of events that leads to a goal for the Flyers in the following clip:

• A won race, possession gained
• Switching sides behind the net (a focus of ours)
• Another won race
• Close puck support followed by a giveaway, followed by a retrieval, followed by a near giveaway 
• Another retrieval, a shot, a retrieval
• A cycle, followed by excellent puck protection and a cut to the middle of the ice
• A wild shot off the glass and a rebound in the back of the net

Get there first, and your skill takes over.

Watching this clip again, I still don’t think we’re great at first-touch escapes, but I’m the coach, I wanted them to score 10 seconds earlier than they did. You can always get better. You can always work on the process. Mastering a skill isn’t a result or an achievement to be unlocked, it’s a process you borrow every day.

In the clip above you see some bunching — three orange jerseys on the puck. Not ideal, but it happens when you want to support the puck.

Winning puck races is easier when you know a teammate has your back, which is exactly what happens here:

Close support is only possible with possession of the puck, possession of the puck is only possible by winning races.

Shot recovery

One more clip on puck recovery, but let’s start involving the D so they don’t pout.

All of the analytics in the world (telling us the vast majority of goals are scored in front of the net) won’t mean squat if you don’t have players with the courage to get to the net. An important component of possession is trusting that you’ll get the puck back after giving up possession.

We’ve already seen it with soft chips and dumps, but the same rule applies when you’re shooting the puck. Watch the net presence in the clip below, and then watch how many times an orange jersey recovers the puck after a shot.

And another o-zone change!

Each player in the offensive zone is playing fast, they’re not over-handling the puck, and they’re communicating. If there’s an open teammate they’re moving the puck and getting to the front of the net.

Most this relates primarily to the forwards — later on I’ll write about involving your D in the offensive zone, but for now, it’s clear to see that the D are willing to get pucks through from the point because they know there’s traffic and they know we’ll work hard to get the puck back.

Context matters too — the opponents are exhausted, but that’s a product of the process too. It’s hard to defend when you don’t know what the other team is going to do.

Puck possession isn’t an exclusive indicator of having the puck on your stick. As we’ve seen, giving up possession to advance the attack is a useful tool in generating offensive zone time. Switching sides, creating rebounds, chips, and shooting the puck are all examples of giving up possession.

But you know what? If you work hard enough, you’ll get the puck back a lot, unless of course it goes in the net. If you work hard enough, you’ll get rewarded. If you work hard enough, your skill will take over.