Reply To: Raising Practice Tempo

[Tony]

Thanks for your thoughts. We are a lower half travel team in our age group (half our team is playing up an age group). We played Silver Sticks this past weekend
against top teams in our age group. Skill and tempo of play were our two biggest deficiencies.

The skill deficiency was not a surprise to the coaches. We spend 75% plus of our practice time on skill development. We run many stations, SAGs
and competitive drills. My older son, who plays Bantam major on a higher end team, skates practices as a student coach. We have 4 coaches on
ice who skate the drills as well.

We seem to be losing tempo in our practices of late which may be due to seasonal issues as you have pointed out. They are running the drills
correctly. I may need to lower the work portion of the work to rest ratio for some drills. This may allow them to work harder during the drill.
The players are tired after the practices but not exhauted. We never run dryland before practices and have switched to skill work.

They are definitely improving individually and as a team.