Reply To: How many drills?

[Tony]

Wow great stuff! Thanks.

Brief background. I probably read Tom's book 6 years ago and implemented cross ice hockey in our association at that time, well before the ADM, from my association board position.

I have an older 99 by son whom I coached. At that time I was hypersensitive about standing in lines and we pretty much played all games.

I since have backtracked and now take more time to teach with my younger sons 01 team. I spend more time teaching skating, stickhandling and team play techniques.

I use Tom's 3 player roles when teaching the game to my players. I keep it very simple.

EG Tonight's 80 min practice we had about 13 skaters and 2 goalies.

Goalies warmup in one end while we skated cross ice with pucks holding inside edges and outside edges. 1 legged stride work and then two cross overs each direction cross ice. All with pucks.

We then skated the dots with pucks fwd, bwd, transition from fwd to bwd stopping on dots, tight turns around dots. Shot at end of drill.

We then skated 3 circles out of each corner finishing with a 1-0 shot. This is a continuous drill with no lines.

As a cool down, we broke into pairs and practiced shooting off a pass into the boards all around the rink.

We remained in pairs and passed back and forth until the whistle and then played a puck protection 1 v 1 around each faceoff dot in the rink. Players get a point for possessing the puck as it crosses the faceoff dot.

Then we ran wisconsin 1-0 working passing in a dynamic situation. We changed to 1 v 1 from the same wisconsin formation.

We followed it up with some 3 man weave full ice.

We broke into stations in each end. 1 station was a 5-0 break out 3-2 breakin the other station was 1 timer drill skating the circles and receiving passes from both corners.

We then played an SAG of 2 on 2 nets back to back simulating lots of centering passes and moving without the puck.

We played a cross ice break out game of 2 on 2 where 1 player had to take the puck behind their net and complete a pass before the center line on a turnover. Other team had to skate behind their net on loss of possession.

We finished with a game of 2 on 2 in the offensive zone where each team had a defensemen and all shots had to originate from their point. Forwards must stay below top of circles and could tip or score on rebounds. Emphasized defensemen moving to open lane to receive pass and walking in puck shooting with head up.

Losers of the SAGs do pushups or laps but I always give losers a shot for redemption. Practice is round 40% SAGs.