Reply To: Warm up on ice before the game.

[Paulie]

Iceman,

How are you?

Great post. This is an area where I believe we coaches have "dropped the ball". I too would like to hear other responses.

I like to get the Nervous System fired up, so I start my team with a couple of quickly happening drills.

First, we do what I know as the Moosejaw passing Drill :

Three players on the circle at (1) Top of Ring, (2) Hash Marks against Boards, and (3) Hash Marks Middle Ice. The remaining players (4) are lined up in corner.
To start (4) passes to (1) and replaces him; (1) passes to (2) and replaces him: (2) passes to (3) and replaces; (3) takes the puck (between position (1) and position (2)), clears the blueline and returns for a shot on net.
The skill level of the team will dictate how quickly this drill flows. I do it out of both corners, therefore shooters must sort themselves out so that the goalie is getting the one shot at a time. Thirty secs to one minute is plenty for this.

Secondly, we move to a little "He takes my ice, I take his ice" flow drill:

Players in corner, one player (X) at top of ring. To start (X) skates the ring from middle to boards. The next player in line must move sideways to the mid ice, then skate up ice through the face-off dot before passing to (X), who is traveling up the boards.
(X) clears the blueline before turning back for a shot on net. The passer becomes (X), turning back toward the net and skating the ring. Again we do this out of both corners, so players shoot and join the other corner line. A minute and a half is good for this.

These two drills really require that the players pay attention. It works their skating, puck handling, passing and receiving, and requires that they get their head up when coming in for a shot. Now because these two drills only give the goalies shots from the middle, we'll do a quick drill that has them moving from side to side before going to a two vs one exercise.

Hope I've explained them suitably. Give them a try!

Paulie