Practicing Play Away from the Puck

[Konig von Kuhlem 0]

Does anybody have any tips or drills on how to practice playing away from the puck (catching passes, positioning, etc.) without needing another person to help?

[reaper07 0]

for catching passes, i used to just bounce pucks off a flat cement wall

cheap simple and effective

but for positioning, you cant really practice that stuff on your own. also alot of that part of the game is mental. watch film or get an instructional video?

just my 2 cents

[biff44 0]

Well, I can think of 5 things you can work on by your self:

1) Vision. You need to be able to see the ice. If you can look in one direction but "see" a player sneaking up behind you, you will be ready to cover him instead of being surprised by a back door goal. There are ways to train your vision that are a little bizzare. One is a Brock String--three different colored whiffle balls on a 15' string that you attach one end of to a wall and hold the other end up to your nose. You practice focusing on one color, then switching to another color. You train your eyes/brain to change focus quicker to see potential trouble. There are other things, like a rotating disk with letters on it, to train your periperal vision. Baseball players use these a lot, but it is applicable to hockey too.

http://www.wildirisoptometry.com/brock_string.htm

Bead and string, Vision ring:

http://www.sporteyes.com/vtp.htm

2) just train your self to keep your head on a swivel. Whenever you are out there and are surprised by someone behind you that you do not know is there, make a mental note that you were tricked and did not look around enough. Have a friend/parent watch and tell you if you were seeing players behind you, or oblivious to them.

3) Start Stop drills. Select two points on the ice, maybe 15' apart, and practice skating from one point to the other, making a full stop at each. Make sure you go in a straight like. This helps you to practice starting and stoping quickly. Obviously starting is hard, especially going backwards! But stopping is to be practiced too. If you take too long to stop, you end up not skating for a longer period, but if you can stop quickly on a dime, you skate at full speed right up to the stop point. This is especially important for a forward that has to cover both a point and a half board shooter during a penalty kill. You need to be fast at the start stop, and keep in a straight line. No 180 degree turns at the end as they lose precious time, no S shaped lines, etc.

4) Hockey sense. There are specific ways to play specific situations. Like not getting caught behind the net, knowing when to pressure a puck handler and when to hold back and angle him, when to go from a box to a diamond, etc. The best way to learn this is with an experienced defensive coach. The 2nd best is on your own watching this tape:

http://www.championshipproductions.com/cgi...tml?id=8D2ok93F

Yeah, I know it says Women's hockey, but ignore that, it explains the positioning stuff really well.

5) Catching passes: you and a buddy go to stick and puck time and really wail on the puck sending passes to each other. No whimp passes! Learn how to catch it without it bouncing off the blade. If you can not get it down, try taping the blade, etc. If you still can not get it down, consider a wood stick! When you pass, is it tape to tape? If not keep practicing. When you pass is it wobbling all over the place, or flat on the ice so your buddy can easily control it or one time it (tick: you need to spin the puck to keep it flat). Finally, can you reliably and every time do a saucer pass onto his blade? EVERY time you pass cross ice and ESPECIALLY pass through your own slot, it needs to be a saucer pass! A surpirising enough number of players can not do this, so make sure you are one of the few. If you are by yourself, you can at least practice the saucer pass--pass to a mark on the boards at ice level and hit it every time. Pass forhand and backhand.

[Konig von Kuhlem 0]

Thanks for the tips. I'm already doing some of those drills. Neat vision exercises though. I want to try to learn when to conserve my energy and when to explode wide open to gain puck possession. I can usally predict where a pass is going to go, but many times it seems like my legs can't take me there quick enough. Also I was reading Saul Miller's "Hockey Tough" book and it talks a lot about visualization. Are there any visualization exercises that seem to be helpful?

[biff44 0]

I just read about a study that says youngsters who play a lot of video games have excellent visual acuity! In other words, their brains can scan a scene and "read" all the letters/features at once without really focusing on it. Sounds like exactly what you need for on-ice hockey.

[sc37 0]

Yeah! Just play some NHL 2007, now you can work on your vision and stuff too while playing hockey :D

[Konig von Kuhlem 0]

I'm WAY ahead of you! :lol:

[GSHL99 0]

Make sure your in good condition. A big part of play away from the puck in hockey is just being on the move at speed so when the play develops you can get to where you need to be quickly. When you're out of shape the tendency is to slow down and wait to see what's going on. If you've done that you're already beat by a better conditioned defender.