Heads up! This story provides practice drills to help your players keep their heads up on the ice.
An almost never ending battle in youth hockey is getting players to remember the game exists more than three feet around them. There’s a tendency to look down, or think about what they can do with the puck, which eliminates their teammates, who are wondering why passes aren’t being made to them. It also invites turnovers as your opponent catches them in their own bubble, unaware of the game happening around them.
While listening to a recent episode of The Glass and Out Podcast with guest Tobias Johansson, the head coach of Norway’s men’s national team, I got an idea. He spoke about a drill idea in which you put every player in the same color jersey, so they have to be aware who their teammates are and more importantly, where they are, not by the color of their jersey, but by picking their head up and looking.
This reminded me of a drill I have used in the past, that went beyond just jersey color. Instead, while everyone is in the same jersey, we add another element: a helmet sticker.
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Heads Up 3v3v3
On a team in practice, you tend to know your teammates well, and if I throw three or four kids on a single team against another team in the same jersey, they won’t struggle for long to remember who is on their team and make those passes to each other.
In this drill, as you can see below, you put all the kids in the same color, and then use color stickers we found at a local office supply store to assign three teams, blue, green, and red. This makes it harder for kids to familiarize themselves with their teammates because there are now six kids on the ice all in the same color.
In the video, the teams are players 1, 2, 3 vs. 4, 5, 6 vs. 7, 8, 9 and you can either let them shoot on either goalie, or assign a goalie to the teams.
The drill usually runs a mess the first few times. But don’t give up on it, over time you will notice the start making an effort to better identify who they are passing to, and ensure it’s the right player and a good pass. Eventually, you will notice a lot more heads up hockey.
2-on-0 Scissor and Cycle
In this drill, we run it out both sides at the same time, one has the forwards down low starting with the puck, the second has the defender at the point starting with the puck.
When the forward with the puck starts, they make a hard pass to the point. Once the defender starts skating down, the forward skates up the boards and they receive a quick drop pass from the defender. Now the defender joins the play down low and heads to the net for a backdoor shot or deflection.
The forward needs to skate out wide, forcing the goalie to square up to the puck, leaving the backdoor wide open. The forward needs to have their head up, ensuring the goalie is moving as far as they need and then hitting the stick of their teammate with a hard pass, even a shot-pass.
The opposite side works similarly, except the puck starts high, then after the players scissor along the boards, the defender needs to be looking up and hitting the forward with a pass up high, then the drill plays out exactly as it did on the other side.
Both sides require players to be aware of where each other is. If either player is not paying attention to each other, the drill will fall apart quickly with no good passes being made.
Chaos Stickhandling
This drill is more of a warm-up drill, and it can be modified depending on skill, age, size, and speed of the players.
On the whistle, two players from each line skate towards center ice where there are cones, tires, sticks, and other obstacles they need to stick handle around. They need to do this with their head up because they are being joined by three other players doing the same thing.
On the next whistle, all four players exit center ice (while the next four start skating up the boards). The first player out on each side goes straight in for a shot on net, while the trailing player must first do a complete circle around the cone at the top of the faceoff circle. This cone is to create separation, giving the goalie time to recover.
This drill usually works well with 8U players because their speed doesn’t run a risk of serious collisions. As players get older and better coaches need to decide if they are playing heads up enough to avoid bad collisions or change the number of players to make more room.
Running this, I have found that players want to be creative stickhandling around the obstacles, but quickly realize they cannot be looking at the ice as they do it.
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