Reply To: Statistics – Used for critical area’s on the ice

Good stuff Dean and Kai and Rookie Coach.

Juuso says that hockey is now a puck position game rather than a puck possession game. It is very important where you turn over the puck. The red zones just inside and outside of each blue line are critical areas. If you lose the puck here it usually catches your team going the other way and gives them a outnumber situation.

I recall a presentation where it was stated that in the NHL the average time a player has the puck is around 2.5" and the team possession is about 4.5" before a turnover or a loose puck situation. In the same presentation it was stated that in the average game a team is on offense 35% of the time, defense 35% and the puck is loose 30% of the time. So those numbers have to be considered when you plan a practice. i.e. "the team that wins the most loose pucks, usually wins the game" as Juuso says.

I didn't know that Bjorn had moved to Fort McMurray. If his wife is still coaching skating in Edmonton that is a lot closer than Quebec. I think Brent Devost is starting a new Edge Sports School there as well.

If you win an offensive 1-1 then you have broken a system; especially one like I use that creates defensive 1-1's all over the ice and doesn't have extra players back like on a 1-3-1.

In Bjorn's presentation he compared hockey to tennis more than to soccer because you constantly go from offense to defense to loose puck situations and in these situations you are always switching between the 4 game playing roles and as Dave says from being one of the first two players who are 'in' the game and the other 3 who are away from the puck and 'reading the game.'

I kept track of the zone entries for the Flames vs St. Louis game in the 3rd period and by my calculation they crossed the offensive blueline with the puck 4 out of 20 times and dumped and chased the other 16 times. They obviously believe in the North-South game which nullifies skilled players who don't excel at the 4th line game.

So coaches have to decide whether they will allow the players to read the situation and make the right decision or simply decide the situation with a one size fits all solution.

In Salzburg there was s Sports School from Ontario coming to play the U17 team. I knew the typical Canadian philosophy of 'dump and chase and hit the chicken Europeans' would probably be their game plan. So we did a lot of transition games where the offense simply dumped and chased to get the defense ready for this style. We also worked a lot of D to D reverses and quick ups. Of course they came with the dump and chase game and after the second it was 9-3 and their coach was worried if we played the third the game would get out of hand. We agreed if it got stupid we would stop it. Nothing much happened and it ended up 12-3. I tell this story to stress that if you have only one option on offense it is not very difficult for the other team to adapt and beat it.