DT – Transition Game Presentation – IIHF Seminar – Wahlsten – Jursinov
Two IIHF Hall of Fame coaches, Russian Olympic coach Vladimir Yusinov and Juhani Wahlsten of Finland show various transition games to coaches at an IIHF coaching symposium.
Coaches in Europe tend to use more transition games than we do in North America. It is the natural progression from a drill with many pucks and the play ending artificially. Transition games use one puck and you play out the situation until a goal, frozen puck or a breakout pass and the play goes the other way. Players join during the rush and give either active, passive or active and passive support. You can basically create any situation you want to work on and the coach is free to coach instead of being like a traffic cop blowing a whistle. Simply talk to the players when they return to the line-up without stopping the play.
It is a total mystery to me why transition games are not a key tool in running effective practices with most NA coaches.
Practices in general look quite different. Less whistles and more player decision when to start the next rep. Practice in block or units of 5, more games and transition games. Generally more decision making and puck handling. Another thing I have noticed in my many trips to Europe is that in NA players practice offense working on defense and in Europe a lot of defense is learned while the team is working on offense. So we tend to practice defense a lot more and passively learn offense and visa-versa, if you get my drift.
DT100, 1 – 1 Passive Support D Join Rush and F Backcheck-Juuso, Jursi
DT400 – 2 on 1 Yursi-Juuso IIHF
DT400 – 3 on 2 Jursi-Juuso IIHF
DT100 – 3 on 2 with Passive Support – Juuso, Yursi
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The full description and diagrams are in the attached pdf.
'The Game is the Greatest Coach'
'Enjoy the Game'