02/01/10 – Dryland Practice Plan
02/01/10 – Practice Plan
02/09/10 – Practice Plan
02/11/10 – Practice Plan
02/16/10 – Dryland Practice Plan
02/16/10 – Practice Plan
02/18/10 – Practice Plan
02/23/10 – Dryland Practice Plan
02/23/10 – Practice Plan
02/25/10 – Practice Plan
02/27/10 – Dryland Practice Plan
02/27/10 – Puckmasters Practice Plan (Defensemen)
02/27/10 – Puckmasters Practice Plan (Forwards & Goalies)
02/28/10 – Puckmasters Practice Plan (All Players)
03/02/10 – Practice Plan
03/04/10 – Practice Plan

1) Drill Start – If the drill starts on the goal line, make sure your players feet are completely behind the goal line. Don’t allow cheating in any of your drills. If a player cheats 5 feet on every drill repetition 20 times during practice, for 50 practices a season, that’s almost a mile of skating the player has cheated his/her way out of!  Little stuff adds up.

2) Drill End – Just as starting is important, finishing is just as important (if not more). If the drill finishes at the blue line, make sure your players don’t stop skating until after they have crossed the blue line. This habit reenforces not letting up. Letting up early can lead to sloppy play or even injury. If you’re running a more advanced drill that finishes with a rush to one end, have the players hustle back to the red line on the whistle ending the drill. This will help players naturally get in the habit of hustling back – hopefully for a backcheck during the game.

3) Quick Starts – When beginning a drill, force your players to execute a proper quick start. The degree to which they are able to execute the quick start depends on their age, but it should still be reenforced at all age levels. Making this a habit in practice will help your players transition this into the game.

4) Stop in Front of the Net – Too often, drills are run at a tempo that forces players to “get out of the way” quickly to try and keep as many players moving as possible. While it’s good to have players moving, don’t force your players to abandon a rebound in front of the net. Give them time to stop in front and play their rebounds. As the goaltenders get better, more and more shots need to be scored on rebounds – give your players time to work on this during practice. Try making a simple rule for all your drills – after you shoot, you must stop in front of the net and look for a rebound.

5) Carrying the Puck – If a drill begins with a player carrying the puck, make sure they start with it on their stick instead of pushing it 10 feet in front of them. If you force them to practice their quick starts at the beginning of the drill, and also carry the puck, you’re forcing the player to improve his/her explosive abilities with the puck.  Also, if the drill involves a tight-turn around a cone, don’t allow your players to chip the puck to the side of the cone they’re turning and pick it up – force them to carry the puck all the way around the cone.

1) What is your goal of running the drill – meaning, what skill/tactic are you focusing on
2) Age of your players
3) Talent of your team
4) Can you teach the core skills necessary?
5) What type of tempo are you looking to get out of the drill?
6) Review the drill after practice w/ your coaching staff

What is your goal in running the drill:  If you don’t know what skill or tactic you want to work on, how can you begin to select a drill?  Take the time to plan what skills you want to develop in your practice before you do anything else!  If you’re short on ideas, look back to your games and think about what your team struggled with. No matter what level you’re working with, you can’t go wrong with basic skill instruction and practice!  As Brian Burke said at the 2009 USA Hockey Coaches Symposium – “Get a power skating instructor, the Leafs have one!”  If NHL players still focus on skating techniques, there’s no reason not to focus on them at the youth level.

Age of your players: Are your players physically and mentally capable of performing the drill?  Children develop at different ages – if you’re trying to run a drill the players cannot physically do, both players and coaches will become quickly frustrated.  For example, to properly perform a quick start, a player must have adequate leg strength to allow for explosive steps on the toe of the skate blade.  Many players don’t adequately develop this strength until they are approximately Peewee age.  This isn’t to say proper technique shouldn’t be introduced so they understand the mechanics, but it needs to be understood that Mites most likely will not be able to fully execute a proper quick start.

Talent of your team: While some of the drills posted here are very simple and short, many require a specific advanced movement in order to get the most out of the drill.  Coaches need to have a realistic view of how much talent they are dealing with.  The drill will not go well if you’re asking players to do something in which they lack the fundamental skills to execute.  Analyze the drill and figure out the prerequisite skills needed before you throw any drill into your practice plan.  An example of a simple drill to run, but difficult drill to execute correctly is the Quick Crossover & Shoot drill.  This drill is dead-simple to run, but requires players to be able to: cross over, receive passes in-stride, shoot in-stride, and keep their head up.  If your team struggles in one of those categories, it may be best to find a drill that first focuses on those skills.

Can you teach the core skills:  When you introduce new drills into a practice, it is often times to address specific skill deficiencies.  If you as a coach are uncomfortable teaching the fundamentals behind the skill, you need to find someone who can teach it before you try to run the drill.  This may sound obvious, but I’m always amazed at the number of coaches who run simple skating drills, but cannot properly explain the techniques behind them.  Take, for example, a tight-turn drill.  If your team is struggling with them, you’ve got to be able to articulate the technique so players can make the proper adjustments.  Coaches need to understand some of the following if they’d like to make a positive change in the player’s technique: weight distribution, edge use, proper foot placement, shoulder position, head/vision, torso rotation, and accelerating out of the turn.

What type of tempo are you looking for:  If you’re looking to keep the tempo high in practice, you will want to lean toward drills that are shorter and explosive so you focus on executing them at top speed.  If you’re looking to create more of a “flow” practice with rushes and long ice passes, look for drills that stretch the ice out and finish with a rush against defenders.

Review the drill:  Now that you’ve run your new drills, go back and discuss what worked and didn’t work with your coaching staff.  I’m not ashamed to admit there are drills I’ve tried once, didn’t like, and never ran again.  Sometimes there will be trial and error involved when implementing new drills.  Before you scrap a new drill though, talk it through to see if a simple modification could make the drill “work” for your group.  Don’t just take the drills straight from the website (or a book) and expect them to work 100% every time – adjust them to fit your level.

I believe one of the most important things a coach can do is properly plan each practice prior to the session and share the plan with the other coaches/helpers on the ice with him/her.  Think of a practice plan as a one-night goal setting map.  If you don’t know what you’re trying to accomplish, how will you ever know if you are successful?  A good tempo doesn’t necessarily indicate a “good” practice. A good practice is only achieved when players make progress on whatever skills or systems the coach deems it necessary to work on that evening.  Think of it this way – when players start a game, they all know what the goal is!  Everyone understands they want to put the puck into the opposing team’s net, and whichever team does it the most will be declared the winner. Scoring the goal is the goal. It’s easy to tell at the end of a game whether or not you were successful – we keep track of these goals on the scoreboard!  When you run a practice, the target becomes much more subjective, but without a target, you’ll never know if you’re on track.

So how should you approach planning your practices? I believe there are some core concepts one must take into account each time in order to effectively plan practice.

1) Know your practice & game schedule: Before you can plan your practice, you’ve got to know some basic things about your schedule.  Did you just get off a 5-game tournament weekend?  Do you have a game tomorrow? Is this your first practice of the week after a day off?  These are a few of the questions you need to ask yourself before you even think about planning your practice.  As coaches, we’ve got to realize what our players are capable of and what their overall energy level should be entering the session.  If you just played 5 games over the weekend and you’re practicing on a Monday, you should probably expect your players to be a bit more tired than if they were coming off an off-day.

When my players are tired/banged up, I look to spend more time on full-ice flow and system-related concepts rather than short intense “burst” drills.  I also try to keep the drills pretty simple – if you try to get overly complicated with a tired team, their chances of messing the drill up become greater…which can lead to frustration from players and coaches alike.  The full-ice flow drills let them make some passes and get the legs moving without being over-exerting.

2) Know what your team needs to improve: Now that you know your schedule and the types of drills you want to run, it’s time to analyze what things need to be corrected. Did your team really struggle on their defensive zone coverage?  Was the power play not clicking?  Were the breakout passes not tape-to-tape?  Take time to think about the areas you need improvement on, and analyze WHY the team struggled with them.

3) Recognize the skills involved (helping find the “WHY”): If you’ve decided your team needs work on a particular systematic scenario, you’ll need to break down the system and figure out what skills are necessary in order to properly execute.  For example, if a team is struggling with breaking out, a coach would need to recognize the number of skills involved with this seemingly simple scenario.  In order to successfully break out, players need to be proficient at the following: stopping, pivoting, passing (both giving & receiving), accelerating (quick starts), handling the puck, communicating, and reading the ice.

Spend time on developing the necessary skills.  Don Lucia, head coach of the Minnesota Golden Gophers D1 Men’s Team, had a great quote in one of the videos I posted earlier: “If you can’t do it technically, you can’t do it tactically.”  He’s absolutely correct.  If a right wing can’t stop with his left foot, he is going to have a hard time being in proper position to catch a breakout pass at the hash marks!

4) Pick the right drills:  Figuring out which drills to use can be one of the most challenging portions of planning practices.  If you  know what you’re trying to focus on, this process is greatly simplified, but will still require some serious thought. Before you can pick any drills (warmups included), a coach needs to be aware of the age & talent level they are working with.  Coaches need to have a realistic grasp of what their players are capable of – without it, there will be frustration.  While it’s good to use new drills, there is much benefit in running drills your players are familiar with.  Repetition is the mother of success – if the players don’t have to think about the pattern of the drill (ie – they’re familiar with it already), they can better focus on the skill at hand.

5) Use high-tempo warmup drills: The first two or three drills you run set the tempo for the entire practice. These should be simple drills your players are familiar with – little to know setup time is ideal.  Get their heads into it right away.  Last week I wrote a whole topic on the subject: How to approach warmups

6) Communicate the plan with your coaching staff:  I can’t stress this one enough.  Having the entire coaching staff on the ice knowing the plan will go a long way to ensure everyone is focusing on the same key points.  Without this, players may inadvertently receive mixed messages from different coaches.  If you can’t get the rest of the coaches an entire practice plan in advance, at least clue them in on the overall concept and key points for the session.

7) Evaluate the practice:  What worked? What didn’t?  How can you improve? Practice evaluation is arguably the single most important part of a coach’s practice plan. This portion will also help you plan your next practice by knowing whether or not the team successfully accomplished the goals.