Basic Hockey Drills

Now, for the normal sequence of events that needs to take place correctly without players running into each other goes like this... 

If the puck is in skating lane #1, which it is, the Left winger (L) in this lane passes the puck back to the defensemen in their defensive zone and the winger comes back into the defensive zone to puck support and moves one lane over to his left, which will be lane #2. 

The next player in lane #2 who is the center (C) will move from that lane, into the defensive zone to puck support and then move into lane #3. 

This means that Right winger (R) in lane #3 will move from this lane, move into the defensive zone for puck support and move all the way over to lane #1. 

Now, the key is to keep your feet moving and not stop in your skating lane and wait for the puck to come to you. Chances are really good that you will not get the puck because you are at rest and that if you did get the puck...your a dead man anyways. So keep your feet moving. This is why you change lanes within the neutral zone during the regroup. 

Have you ever heard of the old saying..."Don't stand on the railroad track because you might get run over?" Same thing applies here! Keep your feet moving at all times....don't stop! 

Now, if the puck is in lane #3, then the winger in that lane would pass the puck back to the defensemen at the bottom of lane #3. Then the winger, in this case it would be the right winger (R) would then move one lane over to his right into lane #2 and the centermen (C) would move one lane over into lane #1. This would mean that the left winger (L) would move all the way over to lane #3. 

The pass back to the defensemen is the key. By having two wingers (R and C) move in the direction of the "D to D" pass, this gives the defensemen two opportunities to connect with either puck supporting wingers. 

Now, please keep in mind that during the swing (during the puck supporting) "the player without the puck goes behind". Remember that the winger that passed the puck back to the defensemen, has precedence when it comes time to this rule. 

So what's next..."Timing is everything!"

Weaving is the art of moving and changing skating lanes as you advance the puck through the neutral zone on the attack. Each forward is responsible for a skating lane or neutral zone lane coverage. If you have the puck in the neutral zone and you move into one of your team mates skating lane, then that team mate needs to move into your lane that you just left. Why? 

If you both are in the same skating lane, it makes it easier for the defensemen on the other team to cover both of you at the same time. However, if both of you change skating lanes in the neutral zone during the attack, it adds another dimension to your attacking game and it makes it harder for the defensmen to read and react to the changing play as you weave in and out of skating lanes. 

Now, the main rules you need to follow while performing this weave goes like this... 

If you have the puck and you are moving towards a different skating lane, then your team mate should automatically adjust his path to enter your skating lane by crossing behind you, thus avoiding the open ice collision. 

You will notice that the left winger (L) has grabbed the puck and made the pass back to his defensemen on his side. Because he was the initial puck carrier and the puck is now in the regrouping mode, the "Player without the Puck goes behind" rule still goes into effect. 

You will see that the right winger (R) has moved behind his team mate on the regroup. Now, this path of crossing is directly proportional to the direction you are attacking. As you can see from this picture, the attack is moving from left to right. 

So what's next..."Each player is responsible for a skating lane!"


 

1. Puck support to minimize or reduce the distants between the pass!
2. The player without the goes behind!
3. Each player is responsible for a skating lane.
4. Timing is everything.
5. Move to open ice across skating lanes and stay away from the boards.

When you are trying to regain control of the puck in the neutral zone, one of the first things you need to think about before you touch the puck is how to regain control of the puck without giving it away and once you do have it on your stick...then what! 

Too many times I see the player grab the puck and try to advance the puck into the attacking zone, but fail and send it back to the other team's defensemen. You might as well just pass him the puck and save yourself the time. 

Now, the first think you need to do is grab the puck and send it back to the defensemen in your defensive zone. Question: How many player on the other team are standing next to your defensemen in your defebsive zone if the puck is in the neutral zone? None! This is why you pass the puck back to your defensemen and then regroup. 

Now, once you pass the puck back to your defensmen, the next thing you have to do is Puck Support. 

What is puck support? Puck support is the action where you reduce the distance between the puck carrier (defensemen) and the receiver (winger). In order to do this, once the puck has is passed back to the defensemen, the winger needs to skate towards the defensemen to close the passing distance. 

This is very critical. If you stop or stand in that skating lane, the odds are really good that the defensemen will not pass the puck back to you because you are standing still. This make it easy for you to be attacked. This is why you must keep your feet moving at all times. 

However, you must have a plan of action on where to go and what to do, once you pass the puck back to the defensemen. No, it is not a free for all and no, hockey is not spontaneous as some might think. 

If you want to win games, you have to have a plan. If you want to loose, then make it spontaneous and everyone can do their own thing. Odds are really good, when the final buzzer will go off and you will have a zero in your win column. 

So what's next..."The Player without the puck goes behind!"


    

 

If you were the hockey players that has the puck on the strong side, you would always want to exit your defensive zone towards the weak side. 

This would mean that if you were in the corner, you would want to take the puck behind the net towards the weak side and exit the puck up the weak side. 

The reason why they call it the strong side is because all of the players on the other team are on the puck side hoping to block the puck from coming out of the zone...hence it being known as the strong side. 

This means that there will not be any attacking players on the other half known as the weak side. This is why you would want to exit the puck on or towards this weak side. 

Now, when you are going from one half to the other, you need to follow the next basic rule. 

This states that the "Player without the puck...goes behind!"

You see, most coaches come right from work to the rink. A lot of times they just don't have the time to draw up a practice plan for their practice the night before. 

This is why Pass the Puck started 10 years ago. To help coaches with their teams. Today, you can jump on the site and download any drill that you see on the site free of charge. 

All you have to do is just sign up. Yes, if you are looking at this page, you are already a member. But that we would like for you to do is send this page to a friend. Copy and paste anything you would like to send to friends. 

Don't stand on the ice wondering what drill to do next. We have this already set for you. Just go to the link that provides you with our 25 week coaching planner for both full ice and half ice practice plans. 

This way when you are at work, all you have to do is just print it out and take it with you.

I told him some day he would get the chance to hold up the cup, if he decided to make a choice between the Cup and the Wii. I told him that he would have to make a commitment to his craft and this meant early mornings, long weekends and an investment in time and money. 

Not everyone who does these things make it to the NHL. Only the ones that stand out from all the rest will make it. You can have great stick handling, powerskating, and passing skills. However, the great skaters are the ones that make it. And I am here to tell you that there are a lot of great skaters that never get the chance or get looked at. 

So in order for you to actually make it...you will have to stand out and stand out from all of the rest. USA Hockey has over 250,000 registered teams. This means that there are about 12 players per team maybe more. If you take the 250,000 times the 12 players, you will have 3,000,000 players all trying to make it to the NHL. 

But we didn't even include Canada, Russia, Finland...etc. in this computation. So what are the odds that you will make it? Trust me when I tell you this. You will have to work extra hard in order for you to make it in the NHL. If it possible? Yes, it just how committed you are to the undertaking. How bad to you really want it? 

You can want it really bad, but are you truly committed! Are you willing to give up the things that you want in order to get the final result? Yeah, only time will tell.

The hockey coach has all of the kids lined up on the goal line and little Johnny is goofing off. Then when it comes time for the hockey drills, little Johnny can't do them because he wasn't paying attention to what was going on before him. Or, I see and hear this all the time... 

Coach, can we scrimmage? My general response is..."How can you scrimmage if you can't skate!" 

You see, 80% of ice hockey is skating, and 80% of skating is...Balance. This means, that if you want to make it to the pro's, you have to be a better skater then the rest. In fact, you will have to stand out from all the rest. This is how you make it to the pro's. 

But the major problem that you will face is the amount to commitment you will have to do to make it to the pro ranks. Which might mean, you will have to do things other kids won't do! Instead of going to the movies with your friends, you might have to shoot 1500 puck in the backyard. This might mean, that you will have to go to bed early to get ready for practice tomorrow and not stay up later to watch that favorite show you've been dying to see. 

When the hockey coach has you doing dry land hockey conditioning, do you do each drill like it should be done, or do you just go through the motion? Do you do what little Johnny is doing, just getting by not paying attention. Or, do you actually give it all you have, each and every time? 

Which means, if you practice great, you play great. If you practice like you don't care because you are tired, because you stayed up too late the night before, then you are on your way to a great career in the men's beer league in your local town. 

Then you will be sitting on the bench "kibitzing" to each other about how life was when you were young and that you could have been a star, but it didn't happen for you because of one reason or another, all a while making excuses about this and that. 

How do players become professional hockey players? They stop making excuses and did things that other don't want to do...plan and simple! 

Lets get back to the "Standing out" portion of this rant. To stand out from all of the rest of the players that are trying to make it into the NHL is simply one thing. Are you ready? 

This is how you stand out from the rest. Because skating is 80% of hockey, everyone in the free world is trying to work on their stickhandling, their checking, their shooting. Yes these things are important. But skating, is what will make you stand out from the rest. 

Trust me when I tell you this. If you can skate forward, and spin 360 in the air to miss a check, land back on your feet and still have possession of the puck when you land, you are on your way to greatness. 

Yes it can be done...I have seen it and now this player is playing in the NHL. Do you think this players learned this over night? Ah...no! This player did things most players don't want to do. 

I have players right now, that don't want to do 360 spins in the air because they think it's turning them into figure skaters. Some will do it, other will not because they say it's stupid! 

So which one do you think will be the pro? The one that takes the risk and does it, or the one that is afraid to look funny in front of his friends because he has an image to up hold? 

This law states that..."How you give it, doesn't necessarily mean you will get it back the same way you gave it!"

Ouch, what the heck does this mean?  Have you ever been driving down the street and all of a sudden you get a flat tire, then looked up to the sky and shout..."WHY ME!"

Does it seem sometimes that bad luck kind of follows you where ever you go?  You know, walking through a door and then stub your toe on the furniture!

Have you ever walked into the store, bought some items, get home only to find out that you picked out bad ones!

Ok, how about this...

Have you ever gone into the store, and just before you walked into the store, you found a five dollars bill sitting on the ground? Did you keep it or did you return it to the front counter? 

Ok, what about walking down the street and someone handed you something that turns out that later down the road it worth something? 

You see, "What you give, is what you get, what you get is 10 folds over, but not in the way you gave it." 

So how do we make this law work for our game? If you go to hockey practice and you're in line getting ready to do the power skating drills, the hockey coaching drills are some times the same old thing.

Then the next thing you know, you are just going through the motions not realizing you are stuck in the same old rut, practice after practice. The next thing you know...you want to quit. So now what? How do you get to the point where you can understand that 10,000 hours is a long way aways andthat you have to get started...now. 

Well, it start with you. It starts with...what you give is what you get. If you give a good pass during your passing drills, you'll get a good pass. Example: When you get a crappy pass from someone, do you send it back the way you got it? Nope, you go into the locker room after practice and chew out the player that made the crappy pass. 

You get it! What you give is what you get, what you get is ten folds over, but not in the way you gave it. 

If I am driving down the street and out of no where someone flips me off, it doesn't really bother me because I know what he's going to get...maybe a flat tire, I don't really know. But I'm not going to loose energy worrying about him. 

My mom always said, kill people with kindness. What are they going to do to you, be nice to you? What's wrong with that! For me, I tell my players to skate as fast as they can, all the time. Be present in the moment all the time. And above all...have fun.

Now, what do you think you are going to do? Hit him while his head is turned? Yeah, probably not. Chances are really good, is that you will hit him harder then he hit you and you will probably hit him ten times as much as he hit you. Why? 

You see it pretty simple. When people feel that they have been wronged, they dont' get even...they get ahead. Even would mean an eye for an eye. But for most people they don't want to get even. They want more because they felt wronged. So they will give it back, more then you gave it. 

You see, this is a great law of nature. So you see, if you give love, chances are really good that you will get it back 10 folds over. Ok, so how do we apply this to your game? 

Why do you think pro hockey players are where they are in live, because it was given to them? Nope! No, because they did things no one else wanted to do. Hockey conditioning comes in all forms...physically, mentally, and spritually. 

You have to become the best hockey player you can be which means a lot of practice. It takes 10,000 hours of practice for anyone to be really great at what they do. Some of the finest professionals practice twice a day, 7 days a week. 

Let look at this for a second. 

10,000 hours! If you practice 1 hour a week, that's 10,000 weeks or 129 years to get really good. However, most of us don't have 129 years. We would like to get this done within your life time. 

So, if you want to be the greatest hockey player ever, with great power skating, stick handling, and great agility, you will have to go to hockey practice more than 1 time a week. In fact, you would probably have to do hockey practice at least 5 or 6 times a week, maybe sometimes twice a day. 

You can't become a great hockey player by sitting at home on the couch playing video games. You will need to invest 10,000 hours to become a professional hockey player. 

Yeah, what you give is what you get, what you get, is 10 folds over. If you give a little you get a little, if you give a lot you get a lot...same law! 

Do you want to make it where hockey is a career and you get paid an insane amount of money to do it? Then invest the time in your hockey skill development, in your hockey skating, in hockey intruction and you will get 10 folds back. 

"For every action, there is a equal and opposite reaction!"

The Law of Cause and Effect is pretty simple. 
It states..."What you give, is what you get!"

If you give love, you get love!  If you give hate, you get hate!  You generally don't see where you give love to someone and you get hate.  Does it happen...Yes.  But this is the next entry in the blog, so you will just have to wait  Trust me, you will like that one.

The Law Attraction is so simple that if you test the law, the test results will always come back the same.  Try it, and you will see what I mean.

The cool thing about this law is that it works with anything and everything. 

Remember is a couple of blog entries, I talked about relationships. So here's an example of this law at work in your relationships. 

If you have hockey practice and you are working on your power skating, if you just go through the motions of skating and you are not work on how to improve hockey skills, then the chances are really good that your hockey skating skills will not improve. 

However, if you are 100% paying attention to what you are doing in the technique, chances are really good that your scoring will improve because of better skating skills. 

Lets look at the relationship you might have with one of your hockey team mates. Let say you are in the locker room and you tell one of your team mates that they suck at passing and they should work better on passing drills. 

How do you think that player will feel? Do you think that you will get a nice complement back from him. Do you think it would sound something like this... 

"Why thank you for your constructive criticism, why don't you go "Bleep" yourself!" 

You see, what a great law this is. It kind of helps us stay in check. 

Ok, so what's the second law? 

Ah, so here comes the law that I like the best! 

It goes something like this... 

The Law of Attraction: "What you get is ten folds over."
 

How committed are you to a certain task?  Remember, we can have relationships with inaninate objects.  So, how committed are you with the relationship that you have with your ice hockey?   Yeah, right now you are saying...goooood!

But how committed are you really?  How far do you really want this to go?  The level of commitment is directly proportional to how far you want to go.  Remember, the difference between a Pro player and an Amateur is only 6 inches between their ears.

The other thing that make Amateur's into Pro's, is the level of commitment.  

You see, professional, whether they are hockey pro's or professional in their careers, Pro's do things that most people don't want to do or won't do. 

Oh, don't get me wrong, most people can do it.  It's just that they have made a conscious decision not to do it. One of the things that keep people from getting ahead in life are those nasty little mental walls the they run into. Then you hear them justify the reasons why they didn't make it. 

So here's a question. Is it ok to fail? Yes! We can't all be pro's. But what if that's what you want to be? Did you know that there are over 250,000 USA Hockey registered teams and probably just a little more in Canada. That means there are about 3.75 Million hockey players playing in the USA at one level or another. 

The odds of making it to the Pro hockey level is like you getting struck by lighting. However, can it be done? No, I didn't say that you go stand outside in the rain to prove me wrong. 

It's just that to make it to the NHL, you will have to stand out from all the rest.  In order to do this, you will have to do things that the average hockey skater will not do. You will have to put in long hockey practice hours. 

To improve your hockey skills, you will have to increase your hockey training. Anyone can have basic hockey skills. But pro's have exceptional hockey skills because they put in the extra effort...they did things other hockey players didn't want to do. 

Example: 80% of hockey is skating and 80% of skating is balance. But most players only want to play with the puck. Most players only want to scrimmage or play games. Most players don't want to work on hockey skill development. In fact most players hate hockey practice. Getting kids to do hockey drills, is like pulling teeth. 

So how committed are you really? What is it going to have to take for you to get to the next level? How much heart and drive do you have? Are you willing to do things other hockey players won't do? When other players are just going through the motions, are you going to follow them or are you going to put in the extra effort to do it right? 

Are you willing to stand out from the rest or are you afraid that the "others" will make fun of you because you're not marching to the beat of their drum? 

How much heart do you really have?

Ok, so what's a wall?  A wall can be physical or mental.  Anything that keep us from moving forward in life is considered a wall.  Let's talk about this for a few seconds.

Lets talk about physical walls first.  Generally they are made out of bricks and mortar and when you run into one, depending on your skill level, it might hurt.  Are hockey boards walls?  Yep, when you run into one....it hurts.  However, time after time, we find ourselves running into mental walls that actually feel physical in nature and they sometimes hurt just as bad.

So what's a mental wall? 

A mental wall is just at the point when you start making excuses to yourself, so you can convince yourself, to give up and stop moving forward to get what you want out of life.

So how do you over come these mental walls?  One way is to take a deep breath and just do it.  This is the easy way...you just do it!

However, sometimes we just can't get up enough energy to...just do it!  Now what?

This is where you need a support staff or buddy that will help you over this mental wall.  Now, this support person needs to be the kind of person that will tell you to keep going and don't give up!

You do not need a person in this roll that will agree with you and your pain.  You need a person that will tell you to shut up, stop crying and move your...

We all reach these type of mental walls everyday of our lives.  How we deal with these walls or choices, will determine our success in life.

Can you have a relationship with a friend? Yes, that pretty easy to understand. But can you have a relationship with you car? Yeah, you see guys rubbing wax all over it all the time.  So, If this is the case, they you can have a relationship with just about anything, is this correct? 

Oh, what about women? Can a women have a relationship with their shoes? Hell yes you say. I know a young lady that has hundreds of pairs of shoes and each pair is placed in a plastic box with a lid and a picture on the front so she can't tell what's in the box...get it! 

So you see, we can have relationships with inanimated objects. Now here's the brain teaser.  Because of our attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors, we actually treat each relationship the same. Why? Because we don't have any choice, we are programmed to respond each and every time because of our beliefs...get it. 

Example: How you treat you car is the same way you treat all of the other relationship you have. Ouch, that's pretty tough isn't it. If you have a bad relationship with your car, you better check to see what kind of a relationship you have with: Your Boss, your Mom, Your Dad, your room, your school work and yes...your hockey equipment. 

Ah, no this is not a psychoanalysis on your hockey equipment bag. It is to show you the relationships we have with things that come into our lives. Kind of like the Greener Pasture Theory, why was the guys new back yard, now turning bad? Why, because the things that he learned in the past (attitude, beliefs and behaviors) allows him to treat things that way. 

Have you asked yourself when someone is being rude to you..."Man this guy's a real tool!" 

Why? If someone is being rude too you, you automatically put up sometype of guard or defense. But in reality, that person is just a reflection or a sounding board of our attitudes, beliefs and behaviors. One of the ways you over come these relationships is to ask yourself..."Is this true, and am I really like this?" If you are...change! If you're not, then understand that this is a life lesson and move on. 

When is it time to leave a relationship? That's right...when it is working! Yeah, but if it working, why leave? If you leave a relationship when it not working, you take all of those new attitude bagage with you into the next relationship. 

So how does all of this apply to hockey? 

What kind of relationships do you have with your teammates? Your coach, your skates, your equipment? 

Ok, what kind of relationship do you have with yourself? Do you do or make the extra effort during practice? When the coach has you doing starting and stopping drills all the time, what kind of a relationship do you have with your coach or with yourself, then? 

This is when the things start getting tough. These tough moments are know as "Walls". Even though they are mental in nature, they are still as real as the physical wall. 

Next blog...Climbing Walls!

I would be a better hockey players if I played with this guy and not with that guy! Or, my son doesn't like these players you have placed him on the line with and I was wondering if you can play him with these two players. 

So, I like to explain this GPS to my players in this way... 

So you have this house that you and your family's been living in for the past 10 years. When your family moved in, the house was immaculate. Beautiful paint job and a backyard to kill for, everyone in the neighborhood wanted to own your house. 

Then one day, as you are lounging out by the pool with the flowing waterfall and you noticed that the water in the pool is turning green and you have a couple of bald spots in the green grass that is now turning yellow. The bushes that were new when you got there are now dead and brittle. 

However, last year you looked over the fence at your neighbors yards and it was far from being a "Resort" yard like yours. So this time you peek over the fence and noticed that the guy put in a better pool and a nicer waterfall and he even put in a putting green. Plus, the putting green has lights so you can play at night. Wow, now this is the yard you've always wanted. 

Then you look back at your yard and can only dream or wish that someday, you would have the yard that all the neighbors wanted. 

Then one day, the house next door went up for sale. Now your life long dream of having the best yard has finally come true. 

So you buy the house and move in. After four or five month of sitting in the lounge chair, you decide to check out the guy who bought your house and laugh at the yard you once had...the green pool, the dead bushes, and the burnt grass. 

So you peek your head over the fence and noticed that the guy fixed all of that stuff, put in Palm trees and added the putting green and an above ground fire pit and a hot tub with a built in flat screen TV. 

So you stand there with you mouth wide open and your eyes about to pop out of your head that the're starting to hurt. So, you turn back to look at your yard and you noticed that the pool is green, a couple of bushes are turning brown and the dog has chewed up areas of the putting green. 

So you start to go into a panic to try and understand why you are back in the same old boat as before. "Why"...you ask! But you just can't figure it out. 

Life will throw these things up in your face like this as you go on from day to day. This is why they call it a Syndrome! 

Why are things the same? Why do these things always happen to me like this? Why does this always happen to me? 

Well, one of the things that we didn't think about is the first lesson you learned in this blog and that was, our view of life is made up from our attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors. 

We carry these things (attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors) around with us through life, like baggage. Then we go from relationships to relationships, we take this baggage with us into each relationship, not understanding why things always turn out the same. 

Ok, so lets look at relationships!

All the time we can see out, thinking that they can't see the real us, while in fact they can. We do the same routine in life, day after day and it all looks the same, year after year. 

Why? Because we look at life through this doily image that we hold up in front of us and It has the same old pattern year after year. 

You can see those type of people in life. They complain about the weather, their job, their dog...their life. It even sounds sometimes like an old Country Song..."their dog got run over because their brakes went bad on their pick-up truck!" You know...("if it weren't for bad luck, I'd have no luck at all.") type people. 

So where do you start? How does one get over all of this stuff in life and get back on the smooth road? Well, if you take this doily image that we are holding up in front of ourselves and turn it a half of degree to the right or left, the image that we see now through this doily has changed. 

This is called an attitude shift! Is it really this simple? Yes, it's just that simple. Once you have an attitude shift, you will see life differently then you have before.  It's just a matter of making the shift. 

When someone tells you that you are stupid, or dumb, or you don't know the difference between a hole in the ground or a hole in your head, don't get mad, just do a shift. 

So ok, if having an attitude shift is so easy, why do I feel like pulling the Larynx out of that guy's throat? Ah, the answer...Karma! 

Remember, there are more rules and skills we will be helping you with for life. By the way, for some, hockey is life!

Let peer pressure work for you!  When I first started coaching hockey, I had all the players stand in a circle.  Big mistake! 

One time, a player that was behind me was mocking me and doing a little dance.  You should have seen the expression on the faces of the kids in front, they were holding back like deer's caught in head lights.

However, I could see past the kids in front of me and see the guy behind me dancing in the reflection on the glass.  The only problem was...the kid that was dancing, was the captain of the team. 

I pointed over my shoulder while looking ahead and told him that I had eyes in the back of my head. So, I had all the player get down and give me 50 push up's except for the captain. 

The captain stood up and kept cadence by counting off.  When we were done, they all hit the showers in the dressing room.  I never had a problem with them again.

I learned to place the players on the goal line and have them count off 1,2,3 from left to right...right down the line.  When running your drills, have the one's go first, then the two's and the three's go last with the goalies.