How to Improve Drills and Design Effective Practices

This site has hundreds of great drills and there are countless great ones out there but the question is; are they teaching or practicing what we are trying to accomplish?

Most shooting drills practice only the first shot. The shooter goes down, shoots and then back to the line-up. The goalie gets square, makes the save and then gets ready for the next shot. This may be ok in the first few minutes of warm-up but is it helping shooters score and goalies control the rebounds? Probably not.

The most important play after the save is who gets the rebound. Good scorers follow their shots and get second shots or are the first one to loose pucks. Good goalies control rebounds by either freezing the puck or directing it to a safe area or if they are really good to a teammate. A better way to do a shooting drill would be to have the attacker follow the shot for a rebound then get the first rebound if it is in the scoring area. This would cause the goalie to put the puck to a safe area or freeze it.

On situation drills like a 1-1, 2-1 etc. the defender has to box out the shooter and player going to the net and take their stick. Allow the play to continue until the puck is frozen, in a safe area or in the net. A practical way for a coach to do this is to give an appropriate time limit to each rep so the players can make the rush and then complete the play. This will help develop the skills like following the shot, boxing out the shooter and taking the stick, the goalie controlling the rebound.

The same principle applies to progressing from situation drills to transition games that only use one puck. After working on the situation in a drill progress to a transition game where the next players give passive support and the defenders pass to them to start a new rep. Then teach offensive and defensive support by having the players come into the zone and cover a player on defense and support the puck on offense. There are lots of transition games examples on this site. A few of the better ones are done by the former Detroit coach Mike Babcock where they do a continuous 2-1 and then continuous 2-2 which end up being a 3-3 and then a 4-4 at each end.

You can add a dump in to work on the forecheck and breakout or regroups to work on neutral zone offense and defense. Transition games can also be cross ice both teams shooting on the same goalie at one end.

Hockey Canada brought Erkka Westerlund a two time Finnish Olympic coach to write a booklet on transition games and make a video. He did a great job of this but I seldom see transition games used in practices, this is too bad because they are the most realistic practice activity besides full ice game. Transition games are basically changing on the go to create whatever situation the coach wants to practice.

It is like when I went to school and took French for 3 years and we only learned how to say words, spell them and write sentences but we NEVER SPOKE. It was a very poor way to learn French and when I went to Paris last year I could say thank-you and please and one word or short phrase but I couldn't converse or understand when they spoke. We have to be careful that our practices are not just part-part-part all of the time. Humans learn in patterns and practice activities have to compliment how we learn.

Horst Wein, a famous international soccer/football and field hockey coach worked with clubs like Barcelona and reverses everything. First they play a SAG with a rule like all passes must be made with the non dominant foot. This is to create a 'need to know' and then after the players have struggled with the skill they do 'corrective exercises' that help players learn to pass with that foot. Then they play again with the same rule. The concept here is that now the players are doing the corrective drills to solve an 'actual problem that they have which is How do I make non dominant foot pass.' This automatically involves the learner and isn't just another drill to fill up the practice time. It also incorporates 'whole learning' because it begins and ends with the 'GAME'.

So creating a need to know, doing corrective drills, engaging the learner, incorporating everything into game situations and making drills as game like as possible are all important components in developing players who can succeed in regular games.

My son suggested I should post updates on Twitter about a year ago, so I followed his advise and have an account where I put the updates from this site. https://twitter.com/coachy_tom I also post on LinkedIn.

Here is a pdf. of the posts since I started.

The last month I have focused on cleaning up all of the video files of practice ideas that accumulated over the last two years. I had a few hundred that needed a title and to be converted. They are now in the Video section of this site and most have been put into the proper category A-B-C-D-E-F-G-O-T and T1 to T4. The next stage is to post them in the forum with description, diagram and video link. It is a lot of good material.

Mike Hartman has agreed to be in charge of hockey for the AAU organization and has asked me to help him with the on-ice material. I have put a few thousand hours into this site, so it will be an easy transition to become a resource and coaching mentor for them.

I have sent the 32 GB coaching disk to one coach in Manitoba. To order one you click on the DONATE button on the right side of the homepage. The amount of international coaching material in incredible. Basically the drills from this site. 1000 pdf.'s of drills. 1600 drill video clips, diagrams and about 10 GB of bonus material not on the site. There is nothing else out there in any sport that remotely compares to this resource.

When I taught PE I would always be looking for coaching material. The athletic council would decide to add a sport i.e. Wrestling. I have never wrestled and didn't take it in college, so I would be searching for films or books to help me out. When I started coaching I had the players knowledge and would try to remember what we did at Bemidji or in junior. My practices left a lot to be desired. I attended lots of seminars and got a great understanding of team play and fitness training but didn't have a great data base of practice ideas.

I have been collecting things for many years and learned how to use various inexpensive tools to put them in the present format. I have a lot of trouble understanding diagrams when there is more than one step to a drill, so the pdf.s have a description, diagram AND video demonstration. Even I can catch on. Dwight was kind enough to set up this site so coaches with a half decent internet connection anywhere in the world can click on the link and see the drill inaction. The USB makes it easy to create practice plans by opening the pdf. copy and paste the description and diagram onto the TCWhiteboard Word practice template and then save it as a pdf. which can be sent to your assistant coaches, players etc. and kept as a record.

Everything in hockey must be learned. All the other sports have a natural transfer from running and using your hands. In hockey instead of the back and forth movement of running you stride to the side. You are on the ice with a thin blade, you carry a stick instead of use your hands. If players don't get the proper technique when they start and practice inefficient technique then they get 'really good and being really bad.' Some learn from playing and modelling good players and some from direct instruction. It is usually a combination of both.

The idea of the site is to help coaches use drills and games to run the most effective and efficient practices possible in order to teach kid's the proper way to play, be creative and 'Enjoy the Game.'

Hey coaches good to get back to the site. In my research over the past weeks i didn't find much stuff about: defensive schemes, offensive schemes, power play stuff, etc., and was wondering where would i be able to find some good stuff on strategies of the game. I noticed there are a lot of drills and games and other great things that i can use once i get on the ice but not a lot about the actually game planning and strategies themselves; do any of you have any links to posts about strategies of the game that i can read?

To Tom,
I didn't find that post you were saying unless it is the post about practice formatting; if it was the practice formatting post i did enjoy seeing what the practices brokedown into so thank you for that. If my post doesn't work again i would like to resolve the problem anyway we can.
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If u use the search function and specify Forum u can find many postings on team play.

Search this. Team play handbook
Tom

A coach ()

I went to thecoachessite.com conference last year and it was the best conference I have attended.

It is pretty high level material with mostly NHL coaches speaking and the small presentations in between the feature speakers were also good.

They host it at the U of British Columbia beautiful and situated along the Pacific Ocean. I stayed in student residence which saved a lot of money then rented a bike on-campus and rode along the ocean a few hours each day. My plan is to go again this year.

Here is the info.

http://thecoachessite.com/2015-hockey-coaches-conference/

Here is a transition drill that i use to teach the defensive triangel, DZC and overload basics + fast break out after the turnover

One bad defensive habit I have seen with my players in the past is chasing the pass instead of coming off their check and beating him back to the net. This behavior can be reinforced by a lot of odd man in zone drills if you don't stay on top of it. Even with midgets, we are often having to remind our players not to chase the pass. Something to keep in mind.
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I agree. The puck is a magnet for a lot of players.
Tom

Quote by: TomM

Jay Bouwmeester was the only NHL player I saw do the following. He world skate back and see that his partner had the puck carrier and then he would turn and skate backwards and look up ice for the next offensive player. This way he could see everything coming toward him. Of course he would keep his head on a swivel to check what was happening with the puck carrier. I am going to teach my players to do this so the identify their man early. We will try some walk through s.

If the situation is 2 v 3 (where the 3 is our D1, D2 and F1 who is backchecking). We teach that when F1 reads the play as 2 v 3 he/she should turn into backwards skating and pick up the trailer.

Kai
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Good to hear from you Kai.

It makes sense to face the play and find who you man is instead of having things happen behind you that you don't see.

The last two practices I have been working on getting my 13-14 year old boy's team to face the play with the puck move it to an open player quickly then go for a return pass, skate hard to open ice when the get the puck. It is a struggle to get them to play with good habits like these when they have never done them before.

Who are you coaching this year.

Tom

Coaches this is a coach discussion thread. If you want to reply go to the bottom of the post and click on Post Reply. If you want to post something new do the same thing at the last post of the thread and it will start a new topic discussion.
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Tom,

Can you recommend some good games that would help our Pee Wee's with the following scenario?

Transition from O to D, then back checking into DZC.

In particular, our team is struggling in DZC when the attacking players have all collapsed low into the scoring area and they may have two players cycling the puck below the goal line. We need to do better job of picking up a man and tying up sticks.

For these kids it's a different scenario than defending when the attacking teams's D men stay high. That's the typical DZC we've practiced so far, but the game isn't always played like that at this level.

We played the first place team in the league today and lost 3-1. Two of the goals against happened during times of confusion in front of our net.

Thanks.

Tim