Looking for some coaching advice

[hockeydad 0]

We have just started a new team that will be playing in my state’s middle school league(Grades 6-8). All of the players on the team play in other programs as well but there is a wide range of abilities. We have kids who skate for AAA/AA teams to players who play House. To make things even more interesting, most of the kids do not play together on their ” other” teams (out of 18 kids, we probably have 7 different teams represented).

Unfortunately the initial funding request to the parents did not include money for practices so we are currently only scheduled to play games.

If we could get the $ to hold 2-3 practices, what would you recommend that we focused on from a drills perspective. My first take on this was 2 or 3 practices is probably not enough ice time to work on basic skill development(in addition, most of the kids will be working on skill in the other team's practices). I was leaning to more situational type drills, like working on a breakout, 3 on 2’s, etc that would help the kids become familiar with each other in a non game environment.

Does anyone have any drills or advice that they would recommend for such a situation.

Thanks!

[coryroth24 15]

I too coach a middle school team and have had the same problems in the past as you're experiencing now. Luckily this year, most of my kids are about on the same page. But looking at drills for practices, I mainly focused largely on basic skills drills because you can never have enough of those. From there, you move on to simple 1-on-1, 2-on-1 and so on. You can also split them up into groups based on skill level and work on different things throughout the practice, rotating the players through the groups. The big thing about these practices is letting the kids see who they're playing with and to interfere a little as possible with what the higher lever kids are learning from their club coach's. That's my philosophy at least...

[Neal 41]

I think your bigger issues are going to be team building and getting the kids on the same page in terms of playing the same system.

Luckily both can be helped without ice time. An offsite team meeting would help the kids get to know each other. At the same point you could go through the systems you want them to try and use. At least defensive zone positioning.