Practices

[prenny207 1]

practice is much more important than games for skill development... AT ANY AGE!!! at my practices, i stress skills, an conditioning. yes they are peewee and that stuff is the focus, but then we do team play drills, and then may have a few minutes of controlled scrimmage with stopages if they are not doing the plays correclty.

as for the debate, does scrimmage make your team better... from my experience... NO. last team i coached with went to nationals 3 straight years, and won two of them... we never had full out scrimmages. just small area games usually 3x3 and again, controlled scrimmages for a few minutes.

a team i played on for 4 years, i watched deteriorate after a new coach came in and thought that scrimmage was the way to get better. yes we lost a few players due to graduation and what not, but we were a nationally competing team at the beginning, and nowhere near by the end. no team type drills, no game situation drills. ruined the team!

[NuggyBuggy 0]

I can't find the source article:

http://www.canadianwatchdog.com/article030616.html.

[mack 44]

I'd put them about about 60/40 in favour of skills. Skills are a necessity obviously, but you also have to learn how to apply them into game situations. I've seen too many practise all-stars become useless in games because they didn't know how or just couldn't apply anything into a game situation.

[jjtt99 0]

I'm think more practice than play leads to better player development...BUT the practices require planning, structure and motivation, which comes from good coaching.

If my options are lots of games vs. stick and puck time by myself, I'll opt for the games.

If my options are practices with good coaching vs. lots of games, I'll opt for the practice.

[BK 0]

We have 2 on ice and 2 off-ice a week. 1 is a team workout and the other is a pre-game weekend dinner with our coaches and their families. We are expected to work out on our own, but we are on our own. We don't have any facilities other than the workout room on campus. We do have a personal trainer, but nobody on our staff is paid, so we have found it hard to get a hold of him.

[sonsplayhockey 0]

Yea but at a certain age, you stop learning the things and you just start getting better at everything.

Playing games works great because you can work on the things you need to improve on.

Im not saying we are pro's at the game, but what else do we need to learn? If its crossovers? no, shooting skills? no, passing? no

we have already know how to do all that, but we can practice it in game situations

Do you think the teams in the NHL spend more time practicing or scrimmaging ? I'm sure those guys all know how to do the things you described better than your midget team does.

I've only seen the Caps practice twice.

They mostly did situational drills. 1 on 0, 2 on 0, 2 on 1 etc.

They did some skills where they skate around obsticles.

Lots of passing and little down time. At least 4 pucks active at all times.

Like air force jet pilots they discuss things off the ice then run the drills to apply them and master them.

I think you have to blend the scrimmages with drills and skills.

Take a 40 year old beer league guy like me. If all I do is games, I'll never learn much. I have to do clinics, stick and puck, pickup and combine that with games. No one activity will make me better (except maybe more caffien before to play harder and more beer afterwards to forget how bad I played)

With little kids (10 and younger) its a mix of everything. We typically will do Line drills, small group drills, cross ice scrimages and full ice scrimmages. A good coach I think will think about what the weak points on the team are and remember to work on those weaknesses.

[Ogie 0]

One of the biggest challanges I think coaches have when working with high-school, bantam, peewee ages, is that the parents (and the players) want to *play* hockey. So the practice to game ratio is all jacked up. Parents don't like to pay for that practice ice time. And the result of this is evedent in the level of play. Oddly enough, a high school football team practices every day of the week to prepare for one game. But not for hockey, which is by most sane accounts a much more difficult sport.

Also, i think a lot of coaches don't plan their practices to involve as many players as possible. Someone earlier mentioned watching a Caps practice and seeing at least 4 pucks going at once. That is a rarity in most youth programs. For practice, you should be doing just that--practicing. It's the only way you get better.

[ThePurpleCobra 0]

During our Varsity High School practices(4 days a week 5 am) we first to warm up do full ice drills that warm the goalies up then we do alot of situational stuff like, breakout, forchecking, man down, power play and then we play DINO at the end of practices. And oh yeah.... Miracle Sprints(not every practice)