Designing Hockey Drills

One of my all-time favorite coaches in this game was the late, great Roger Neilson, whom I met countless times. I learned a lot from the guy they called Captain Video -- way back when video wasn't even used by most coaches, but the thing I remember best is his saying, "Coaches love drills." Ya, I've come to realize that, and it's a big reason I wanted to do this post -- for both coaches and parents, about designing hockey drills.

-- Dennis Chighisola

Designing Hockey Drills

If I have to warn members about one thing, it's to not just assume that the activity you see elsewhere is going to make a good form of training for your player or players.

I can't tell you how many times I've stood near a group of Mite coaches who were observing an elite level team wow them with a drill, and overhear them telling each other, "I can't wait to get home and try that with my kids!" Oh, man, what a mistake. Oh, man, what a waste of ice-time, and most likely a cause for much frustration for kids who aren't ready.

Nor can I forget a couple of youth coaches from back in my home area of Massachusetts too frequently using a version of baseball on their practice ice. Doing such for 5-minutes at the end of a practice -- once in awhile -- might be barely okay. But just picture how different baseball is from our sport. I mean, do we really want our hockey players standing around for as long as is acceptable in baseball? I don't think so.

As most members know, I've borrowed constantly from other sports, or from coaches in other sports. However, when it comes to designing hockey drills for my guys, I make sure such drills pass a certain test.

Ya, all my drills have to pass my "nature of the game" test, or they have to help my players with the challenges they face during competition.

Please-please-please read the above linked article (or even purchase a much deeper version in my book, "The Nature of Our Game: Ice Hockey"). It truly is the basis for everything we do in hockey preparation -- from skills to positioning to strength work to conditioning to so many other aspects of training. Or, as I joke often, "It's doubtful the hockey player and sumo wrestler would train anything alike."

Whenever I consider designing hockey drills, I can't help thinking back to my favorite college course, Principle of Motor Learning...

I already spent considerable time recently talking about the Theory of (Positive or Negative) Transfer. To review quickly, though, remember that an alternative drill transfers more positively towards the desired results according to how close it is to the way the skill is to ultimately be used.

The different theories tell us everything we need to know to positively develop an athlete's motor skills, and they certainly suggest the best ways for designing and then running hockey drills.

Tops among my favorite ways to design a drill relies on the Whole:Part Method. Plainly, this method calls for 1) studying a so-called whole movement and breaking it into its component parts, 2) practicing and perfecting the parts, and 3) gradually putting those improved parts back together to form a much more effective whole.

I often use as an example the breakout, which can be broken into numerous components parts. As members might recall from my video on "Basic Breakouts", I get pretty detailed in improving things like goalers and defensemen handling dump-ins, the D's first pass, and forwards moving through effective receiving routes.

If you think about it, however, each of the breakout components I just listed requires its own lead-up skills. I mean, you can't perform many of them without pretty good skating ability, most rely on an ability to pass and/or catch a pass, and most involve some puckhandling under pressure. So, you can just imagine how this influences my designing of hockey drills.

Now, although hockey folks today hear a lot about the need to create athletes, I've been doing that for about three decades (or maybe more).

Consequently, every player who has ever skated for me -- since about 1979 -- has learned to skip rope, and most have become really, really good at it. Our game is hockey, though, so my guys have always ultimately become pretty accomplished at jumping rope in their skates and on the ice. Wanting to bring that skill even closer to our game, I had the middle guy in a threesome jump while controlling the stick, and eventually even dribbling or passing a puck or ball.

My players also got pretty good at tumbling -- off the ice mostly, but sometimes on the ice. To make this great athletic skill closer to our game, however, I added a stick and eventually a ball to consecutive rolls. In other words, my kids would push a ball forward, tumble on a mat, and recover quickly to find their ball, dribble some, and then do the same on the next mat.

Talking about using other games in our hockey training, I used many schoolyard activities to help my kids. And I also used them to infuse a little fun into my practices...

Picture, for instance, my kids playing dodge ball, both off and on the ice. Imagine them handling their bodies, and avoiding the balls just as they would a body-check.

To me, tag is one of the best games in the world for developing athleticism and agility. About the only thing I've done differently was to confine competitions to small areas, whether it be on the ice or off. And again, picture it: each player needing to react just like he would in a hockey game, be it in pursuing an opponent or in avoiding being tagged.

Add a puck or ball to a game of tag and you have keepaway. Similar to tag, I usually confined these competitions to small areas. Still, when I've wanted to encourage players to skate to open ice, I'll give the keepaway pairs space as big as an entire zone.

Want to encourage your players to support the puck? Hmmmmm... As I went about designing hockey drills for this, I realized that simple games of 2 on 1 do the trick just awesomely. It doesn't take long for players without the puck to realize they have to move to get open, or to put themselves in a good position to be open for a pass. A coach might have to explain this to some players, but the drill format is really simple, easy to run, and super-easy to oversee.

Then, while I don't believe baseball is much like hockey, basketball is another thing. In fact, get a load of this... I've often had my players run their powerplay -- like 5 on either 3 or 4 -- on our off-ice floor and with a basketball. Within reason, almost everything is the same as playing on the ice and with a puck. Things are a little slow, though, which makes it necessary for movement to be more deliberate and passes to be more accurate.

Aaaaah, talk about passing... I have for years had my hockey players do some of their off-ice aerobic conditioning while passing small balls with the hands. Going back to my days as an athlete, I found that doing something like chasing a ball took my mind off the drudgery of running and running, etc. As a matter of fact, while I watched pairs of my guys run or in-line skate while passing a ball, I noticed they had to do a lot of reaching and adjusting their gait to corral errant passes.

This idea of passing a ball with the hands ended up being an awesome way to teach passing basics to very young players. In other words, there is a need for them to do the very same things while passing a ball with the hands as they have to do on the ice with a puck. There's a need for the receiver to show the passer exactly where he wants the ball, and there's a need for the passer to hit the receiver right on-target. And, a lot like an earlier application, moving off the ice and using the hands forces a different kind of concentration that just can't be attained in traditional fashion.

Now, I once sold a manual called "500 Drills", so you know the above is hardly all the drills I've had in my arsenal. In fact, that book was probably out something like 20-years ago, so you can imagine how many more drills I arrived at in subsequent years. Truly, though, all the drills in the world aren't of much value unless they're right for the given moment. What I mean, is that I see every single practice as being unique. Some of the problems we had a week ago might still be present, but the players are slightly different -- whether slightly better, worse, whatever. Again, each practice is unique, based on where my players are right then. With that, I might be able to fall back on some of the drills I've used over past years. But, believe it or not, I hardly ever did. No, even a drill that was pretty good for solving a given problem in the past usually wasn't exactly what I needed the next time, again because of the uniqueness of things -- of the individual players, and of the group as a whole. And that's what kept me designing hockey drills almost constantly. As a matter of fact, a few years back I asked myself how often I was doing that, and I discovered I was creating about a half-dozen new drills per week.

How do I do it? Well, in trying my best to explain the process...

The first thing is to recognize there's even a problem -- you'd be surprised how many coaches or parents fail to do that.

This next part might be tricky to explain, but the problem area must be recognized within the context of play.

Let's say, for example, that a number of our guys are having a problem handling passes under certain circumstances. That might be helpful to recognize, but it doesn't necessary make a drill. So...

Once I've identified a given problem, I try to think about where my player was typically coming from before the mistake regularly occurred, and then I'd try to envision where the player would be going next -- or what he might be doing next.

And that, to me, has the makings of a drill... In other words, the starting line would be where the player usually comes from, he'd move through the typical problem skating pattern, receive a pass, and then move towards where he'd typical go after a reception.

In wrapping this piece up, let me comment on something I went into some detail on long ago... "How Many Drills Are Needed Over a Long Hockey Season?" came about from what I thought to be a pretty foolish question posed long ago in a social media hockey forum. Hey, what does it matter? The answer lies in how many we need to get the job done right. I also highly recommend my post on "Knowing What To Do Next". I say that because knowing what to do next is often the difference between really teaching and leaving a group of kids in a rut. As a matter of fact, perhaps one of the most important things a coach can do is to know what to do beforehand...

Think about the young coaches I described earlier. They were eager to throw their young kids to the wolves, by giving them fancy looking drills the kids would never be able to do.

Looking at such a drill in another way, though, I wouldn't say that a young team could never eventually do it. No, what a coach would have to do, however, is look at all of the skills that go into such a drill, and then identify all the lead-up drills on the way to the more difficult ones. In other words, look at those lead-up drills as progressions on the way to the more challenging drills.

In closing, this was a fun but difficult post to write. I mean, I'm almost thinking it's impossible to cover every aspect of designing hockey drills. I think I have provided a lot of ideas, though. And, of course, I'm always here to discuss ever more ideas.