The more you understand the source material before the meeting, the more efficient you can be when it's time to deliver.

Delivering an efficient pre-scout is an artform. There’s a lot of room for personality and passion during these video sessions, but for me the key to the whole thing is creating an automatic response. The best way to do that is to cover the same areas of the game each time. Like most coaches I used to watch an entire game and gather clips as I worked through it. This led to a lot of 3 am nights and feeling like a zombie come morning, and I simply don’t function well enough when I’m consistently sleep-deprived. Rest is a weapon, as John Tortorella used to say, and that’s true for coaches and trainers, as well as players. 

A couple summers back I was working with a coach on delivering practice pre-scouts. I had what I thought was a tight presentation, but by the time I was finished we were looking at upwards of 15 minutes. That’s borderline abuse for the players. They don’t want a lecture that reminds them of the classroom. They want the meat of the message and they want to get to business. I looked for a way to organize the pre-scout so that not only did I have to watch an entire game, but the players didn’t have to be subjected to multiple examples of a team sending one or two forecheckers.

I’ve been guilty of adding extraneous clips in the past because I want to convince the players that I’ve done the homework necessary to prepare them for the opponent. This approach is flawed. You don’t build trust by boring the players with video meetings. You build trust by connecting with them and awarding candy for winning a small area game in practice. 

Besides, if you actually do the necessary homework and you find ample evidence of a particular breakout or neutral zone forecheck strategy, then you can be confident in the fact that you only need to share one. 

Ironically this post contradicts the strategy of keeping things tight and short. But you’re the coach, not the player – the more you understand the source material before the meeting, the more efficient you can be when it’s time to deliver.

So tie up your skates; here are the seven buckets I focus on during the 5-on-5 pre-scout. The buckets are separated into two larger buckets (let’s call them pallets – yeah, I like that, pallets), based on puck possession.

Us Attacking, Opponent Defending

OZFC (O-Zone Forecheck)

I like to start with the opponent in the offensive zone without the puck, which means we’re looking through the lens of our defensive zone with the puck. Ultimately we want to worry more about what we’re doing than what they’re doing, but if what we’re doing depends on what they’re doing, then what they’re doing matters to what we’re doing big-time. Make sense? I think I just wrote a poem. Anyhow, nowhere on the ice is it more important to know an opponent’s strategy than in our own zone when we have the puck on our stick. Are they sending one forward or two? Does F3 protect the strong side dot line? How active is the weak-side D?

NZFC (Neutral Zone Forecheck)

Same rule applies in the neutral zone. We’ve got the puck on our stick and we’re breaking out or through the neutral zone, so let’s have a basic understanding of their forecheck so we can practice our D-to-D hinges or beat their F1 with a pass to the middle. 

DZ (D-Zone) Coverage

Unless the opponent is doing something out of the ordinary, then I won’t spend much time in this bucket. Most teams have five bodies in the picture these days, so I’ll normally find something that actually highlights the possibility of using a strategy preferred by our team. Again, it’s not about what they’re doing, it’s about empowering what we can do to beat what they’re doing. 

Opponent Attacking, Us Defending

Breakouts

If an opponent uses slash support from a winger coming east to west, then we’d like to have a drill in practice in which our defence can practice surfing (keeping a tight gap on the slashing forward). That usually means they’ll have a weak-side D activating, so I’d use that clip to repeat the importance of our forwards reloading above the puck for the hundredth time.

NZRG & Zone Entries

Are their forwards posted up at the bluelines or do they swing low or swing away from the puck? Controlling the neutral zone is a crucial component of the game that’s overlooked often. If you can force your opponent to dump the puck in more often than not, then you’re breaking their possession and at the very least putting the puck up for grabs, rather than allowing them to carry it into your zone (which leads to scoring chances much more often than an uncontrolled entry). Your neutral zone forecheck doesn’t necessarily have to change, but everyone will appreciate the reminder of where their players are likely to be. 

OZ Play

We’ve come full circle here – now they have possession in the most dangerous part of the rink and we’re trying to get it back. We want to prevent dangerous scoring chances, which means it’s helpful to have an understanding of their tendencies. If they’re working the cycle out of the corner on a handful of their goals over the past few games, then it’s a good idea to reiterate the message on your defensive zone coverage.

Faceoffs

I like to start in the offensive zone and work our way back. Do they have a dangerous shooter who likes to set up in a certain spot? Do they have a preferred OZFO win that’s netted them a couple dangerous chances? You don’t want to be that dangerous chance that converts. I won’t often change what we’re doing off a defensive zone win, but it’s helpful to know if the wingers are blowing the zone or if the weak-side winger is dropping below the goal line. On defensive zone losses, it’s helpful to know what their coverage strategy is – man-to-man or zone – so you can exploit that with a cool OZ win of your own.

How Much is Too Much?

That seems like a lot of information to pack into a pre-scout, but depending on your schedule – maybe you’re coaching college hockey and you have all week to work on things, or maybe you’re coaching professional hockey and you have a bus ride and a pregame skate – you can tailor it to fit the needs of your team. Your team might not need to watch your upcoming opponent’s zone entries to decrypt their secret strategy of the middle lane drive, for instance. If you can show a single clip for a certain bucket that’s a lot more powerful than showing three average examples. This is the art of coaching – understanding how much is too much. I’ve made it a habit to write details on my game card so I have something to say during the TV timeouts in the 1st period.

Specific players can sneak into the pre-scout as well. A player I used to coach against, Jesse Lees from Mount Royal University, was such a terrifying factor in every regular season and post-season game that we included clips just to highlight his specific tendencies. He was a defenceman and we hard-matched against him. I still marvel at his skill, which I watched primarily in pre-scout meetings, such as the one I’m describing here. 

Goals: if you’re wondering why I don’t have the opponent’s goals as one of the buckets, it’s because recent goals are placed in these buckets. More often not even strength goals are scored because of a breakdown somewhere along the line above. Scored off the rush? Were they driving the middle lane? Do we need to backtrack with a purpose? Scored off the cycle? Do we need to work on boxing out and tying up sticks?

Eight minutes. If we’re going much over that then the players start to zone out. A typical game day will include special teams meetings and other strategy sessions on and off the ice to prepare, but I remind myself of the purpose of pre-scouting – to get an advantage that helps us play better in all three zones. It seems like the focus is on the opponent, but it’s not. The pre-scout is a tactic to visualize what we’re going to do as we chase success. 

Super secret bonus point to say thank you for using The Coaches Site: I use the same buckets for our 5-on-5 review, too.