Assistant Coaches Corner Blog - All about Drills

North Bay Trappers assistant coach Paul Davis shares some practice tips that may help your hockey team during the season. Check it out!

Good day and welcome to another instalment of Assistant Coaches Corner with you host Paul Davis. Today I would like to discuss two more keys to an effective practice. They are the development and implementation of appropriate drills. Since drills are the primary tool coach has to help players practice and perfect important skill techniques therefore good drills are extremely important.

To help players improve their individual skills and team play, select the most effective drills and place them in proper order within the practice plan. The following is my suggestion for a common and effective teaching progression to help you choose and then implement drills into your practice. Pick drills that focus on each area in the order I have provided. Remember drills focusing on basic skills and fundamentals should be at the beginning of practice as they are most important. As I had said earlier in one of our sessions young players starting out should focus more on the basics, skating, puck control, passing and shooting. While older players or advanced, you can choose drills that develop offensive and defensive zone play, power play and penalty killing strategies.

Here is a common teaching progression:

• Skating
• Puck control
• Passing and receiving
• Shooting
• Checking
• Goaltending
• Breakouts
• Regroups
• Offensive Zone play, defensive zone play
• Power play and penalty killing
• Face-offs

Do your best to clearly explain/demonstrate the drill you are using to work on a skill and you can give them instruction on how to perform the drill during the practice before each drill and during say a skills practice.

After demonstrating the skill the players should practice the skill immediately and try ti keep it simple and brief when explaining. It’s also a good note that the players like to know how they are doing in their efforts to learn the skill so provide positive feedback during and after the practice. As the players practice the skill you and your assistant coaches should give feedback as well as correction for the skills. I’ve found that feedback should be positive, emphasizing correct movements and helping the players correct or refine incorrect movements and in turn that the players learn more quickly in a positive environment. The drill used for practicing the skills should be challenging and as game-like as possible, if there is a large difference in skill level within a team you may want to match players of similar skill levels in practice. Here’s a couple drills below give them a try and let me know how you do?

Any questions or comments feel free to contact [email protected], thanks and have a great day!