Positional D Zone Drill (Transition Drill #1)
This drill was created using HockeyShare.com's Online Drill Drawing & Practice Planning Platform.
Description
Top Left: It involves switching back and forth from puck pursuit to puck possession on each whistle. The concept is to teach quick reaction to each turnover to promote faster decision making and lower transition time from Defence to Offence and perhaps back to Defence. The puck is in the corner with a coach or “passive offensive player†with a second one in the opposite corner and two more on the blue line acting as passive D men. The puck is moved from passive player to passive player with a short stoppage in between passes to allow for D zone re-positioning of defensive players as well as coaching moments to correct certain things. This continues until a 2nd whistle ( Top Right) where the idea is for the passive players to turn puck over to opponents who now have to transition to offense in their own end and get puck moving up ice as fast as they can. Sometimes the turnover can happen low in the corner and sometimes along the wall and even other times high in the D zone. Usually the low turnovers allow us to blow a 3rd whistle to force the players to transition back to D zone puck pursuit again. WE encourage our players to work on breakout options on the transition from Defence to Offence especially on the low turnovers whereby our breakout option to use one of our Defenceman can be practiced during this drill. As we start to breakout the D who makes the pass or the weakside D (one of them) should spring into action and try to leave the zone with the forwards much like we do in our D support Drill where we hot the weakside D with a breakout pass off the wall that is jammed.
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