Youth Hockey Practices and Drills 7, 8 & 9 years old

Youth hockey practices and drills. Hockey practice 2 of 72 during the first hockey season for young hockey players, 7-9 years old.

Youth hockey practice part 1. Hockey skating technique and skills (basic, one foot kicks, stops) and circles (not in the hockey drill / practice drawing)
Youth, Hockey, Practices, Drills, 7, 8, 9, years, Players, Training, Coaching

Youth hockey practice part 2 A. Skating with puck, shot, pick up rebound/new puck, slalom back. B. Skating round the cones. C. Skating round the circles and quick slalom on blue line. D. Stops facing the cone. E. Skate with puck, turns around cones, shot, pick up puck/rebound and turns with puck on the way puck.

Youth hockey practice part 3. A. Passes between cones, shot and rebound. B. Forward and backward skating. C. See above, with puck. D. Skating round the cones. E. Puck on one side body on other, backwards with puck back.

Youth hockey practice part 4. Game in all three zones.

Read more about the first season youth hockey practices and drills here >>

Youth Hockey Coaching Philosophy / Vision – HockeyCoach.se

”Individually skilled skaters and creative players, with team spirit”

Use the time during on ice hockey practices with quality. Create opportunity for development and creativity during your hockey practices. Good skaters have time to be creative and find solutions during the hockey game and ”creative mistakes” can be repaired by good skating…

Taylor, Hall, 8 year, old, young, hockey, player, Ville, Aro, -04
Taylor Hall, Edmonton (NHL), and a 8 year young hockey player.

Read more about the first season hockey practices and drills for 7-9 year old / young hockey players here >> 

Hockey Goal Scoring (Shooting) Drills and Practices

Hockey drills and practices for goal scoring (shooting) are wanted, because in the end this is what ice hockey is about, scoring more goals than the opposite team. In the eBook Hockey goal scoring drills and practices, you will find both theory and hockey goal scoring practices and drills that can be used on your ice hockey practices.
Hockey, goal, scoring, shooting, drills, practices, training

Read more about the eBook for goal scoring in hockey, practices and drills here >>

Hockey – Goal Scoring

The last theme on the International hockey coaching training / education, was goal scoring and goalie techniques. I have chosen to only take the goal scoring part in hockey, to finish up with a similar post I started up.

I wrote earlier about what is important when you practice to score goals in hockey.
– Shoot quickly
– Shoot with precision
– Shoot hard/fast
– “Hide” the shot
– Shoot unannounced

Here are some other aspects, like the distnace from where you are shooting from. This is a picture how the goal and goalie looks like from a longer distnace (if you shoot early).

Goal Scoring Hockey Shooting Early

By moving just 1,5 meter closer the goal and goalie, the free space in the goal is radically reduced, and therefore also the goal scoring opportunities.

Goal Scoring Hockey Shooting Close to Goalie and Goal

Shoot earlier if you want the best odds to score a goal in hockey.

Move in the sight when you shoot in hockey

During this lesson, it was also recommended from a hockey goalie point of view to move in the sight a little bit, you don’t need to hit the post and in, to score a goal in hockey. Shots close to the hockey goalie body are many times hard to catch and you also minimize the risk of missing the goal totally, and then you will definitely not score goals in hockey.

Freeze the hockey goalie

The skill level of the hockey goalies has also dramatically improved, and a technique to improve the goal scoring chances is to “freeze” the goalie before the actual shot or pass to teammate. Freezing means the hockey goalie is totally prepared for shot in first moment, but instead the shot or pass comes in the next moment.
This can be done with a small shot feint, pass feint or other move that makes the goalie believe “OK, now the shot comes”. When the goalie makes a small reaction in the first step, it will reduce the time for the actual save in the next step, either it’s a shot or pass to a teammate who will shoot. GOOOOAAAAAL….

Norwegian Hockey To The Top

The most impressive presentation during the hockey coach training, was the Norwegian one. So good content and fantastic presentation by Roy Johansen (National hockey team coach) and his colleague from Olympic coaching team (Olympiatoppen).

Roy Johansen Norway Hockey Roy Johansen to the left, Dan Hobér to the right.

Norway started their development by thinking of, what are the best teams / nations doing? What does the best hockey player do, what skills do they have, and what skills are they masters of?

Then they continued with working with their own team identity, who are we? What can we be best in? What can we control? Can we chase the other team all over the rink?

As an output from this, Team Norway could get some answers and identify areas to focus on. The key area was the answer to the questions, What can we be best in? What can we control?

We can be physically prepared. Therefore they – Created a physical training development stair, with defined levels of, what is world class. – Started an “Ironman” competition for all players and teams, that is run before the season starts. – Defined their way of playing hockey – Defined team values, or valuing words to describe wanted behavior within the hockey team. – Set goals short and long term

Team Norway Hockey, Victory over Latvia during World Championships 2012

“Extreme goals – Requires extreme process” /Team Norway

To be continued…

Ice Hockey in Denmark

I will continue with the learnings from the hockey coaching training, I attended during the World Championships in hockey. Next up Denmark…

Per Bäckman the head coach of Denmarks national hockey team and Esben Nedermark GM Danish National Hockey Team started their presentation, with talking about how small sport hockey is in Denmark.

Denmark hockey team and coaches, From right to left, behind the bench, Per Bäckman, Tomas Jonsson and Esben Nedermark.

Danish hockey has:
– 4400 registered players
– 16 teams
– 24 indoor rinks

While there are:
– 5000 hockey officials/referees in Toronto
– 296818 licensed football players in Denmark
– 5800 badminton players in Denmark
and 6000 Floorball players

Still Denmark is in the highest division in hockey, I will altough also talk about Norway, they have done an impressive work, with small or similar resources (6700 registred players!

What have Denmark done then?

One of the focus areas have been to have short and quick attacks, if you have not scored after 15 seconds you can give the puck to the other team, like the Norwegian national football team manager “Drillo” Olsen once said.

The Danish team have also been working with tactic and the discipline to stick to it, teambuilding, social environment and technical skills (opposite to Norway). What they are not good in regarding the national team coaches, is the physical part, they are too weak. The hard practicing culture is not there…

About the future…

Regarding the future for Danish hockey, Per Bäckman was quite negative, “we are at the top now, we will not get better, and we will not get more players or rinks, we need to take care of what we have now and try to maintain that.”

Wrong attitude…

In my mind totally wrong attitude, you will always need development and try to recruit new players and develop the game, players and teams (like Norway, coming in later post). When you think you can not develop or are satisfied, you will start your stagnation and to roll down the hill you are climbing and be eliminated in the end!

Denmark hockey and floorball Danish Hockey a good story (name of the presentation) – They have done a good work, but it will not last for so long, with the attitude I have described above…

“You have totally different view on game system and tactics than Sweden?” “Yes, I can not understand, why you would chase another players on the ice for 60 minutes” /Per Bäckman

Skating, Stick Handling and Decission Making

I continue with some valuable things from Dave Smiths lecture, from the international hockey coaching seminarium.

He talked about the complexity in hockey, you need to skate, do stick handling and take decissions, which is not possible if you haven’t automized some of the skills or moves. If your skating isn’t automized, you need to focus on that and loose stick handling and good decissions (or you do stick handling and loose your movement / skating)

If you don’t have good automized skating skills, you will have problems with the game. 1. Quick and fast feets / skating (coordination skills)
2. Good stick handling skills will automatically give you more time on focusing on the game itself and to make good decissions during the game.

Test the footwork and coordination skills

You can test these coordination skills by a simple hockey off-ice practice. Let your players run standing on the same spot, add stick handling and start to ask them questions. Do they drop in speed or have problems performing these two things together, then you know you need to work extra either on footwork / skating or stick handling. Below an example from the stick handling and puck control eBook found on this page >>

Hockey stick handling excercise / drill / practice

Repetitions are the magic ingredient in hockey practices, 10 000 Hours – 10 years

A number of studies have shown that it will take ten thousands of hours to become a master of what you are doing or 10000 repetitions to automize a skill. This will apply for leadership, professional hockey players, floorball, work, hobbies etc. Each of us has the potential to master what we are doing, but it will require time, 10000 hours, or about ten years, if you really want to be the best in whatever you do. But too many of us don’t commit to the things we are doing, well enough, but we still hope to be the best or recognized, sometimes we give up too early, wondering why we never become the best.  “I was a great talent, when I was young…” Ever heard that?

Hockey Goalie Trainer or Goal Scoring Coach, Part 4

…Hockey Goalie Trainer or Goal Scoring Coach, Part 4. In hockey, one of the teams in Sweden on elite level (HV 71) has created their own shooting center to improve the goal scoring and shooting skills… This is more common in USA or Canad, but quite unique in Sweden.

Speed Shooting Hockey during World Championships
Speed shooting, outside Globe Arena, during World Championships in Hockey.

Most of the teams also have special practices for the hockey goalies, during the weeks or months, but this hockey team also have special practices for goal scoring.

During this hockey shooting or goal scoring practice, the rink is divided into two areas, one for the offensive hockey players and one for the defensive players. Each zone has four hockey drills running at the same time.

Hockey Forwards

1. Skating in from the border “Shoot in the middle of the step”
2. Pass from one side, shoot directly at the other post
3. 2 vs. 0 – rebound – Shot from defensive player
4. Goalie freezed in right position, player tries to find the spots to score goal, by looking at the angle of the puck (or eye of the puck).

Defensive players

1. Pass vertically and a shot.
2. Pass from corner to a defensive player skating towards the goal, shot.
3. Pass from the “pocket” (along the border), and shot.
4. A forward in front of the goal hold the stick up from the ice for shot on goal, or on the ice to make the defensive player to shoot for stearing the shot.

So, what if, we would put in as much effort as in training the hockey goalies, to score goals and improve the shooting skills in hockey, we would have really good goal scorers and snipers in many hockey teams. Maybe we should also focus on hockey goal scoring coaches / trainers?

This is the end for this theme, will be starting up a new one…

Hockey Goalie Trainer or Goal Scoring Coach, Part 3

…Hockey Goalie Trainer or Goal Scoring Coach, Part 3 Looking at goal scoring, shooting skills and hockey practicing focus, you could say that much of the focus is today on, taking rebounds in front of the goal and creating a mask, traffic or wall in front of the hockey goalie to reduce the visibility, when the shot comes.

This will be important in future, but increased training focus will need to be on shooting skills and in scoring goals, with different types of shooting techniques like:
– Wrist shot
– Snap shot
– Slap shot
– Backhand
– Shooting unannounced and in movement sideways
– To be able to shoot with the weight (centre of gravity) on both feets, left or right (the foot that is in front).

“In NHL the shots will not come through if you don’t shoot fast and quick” /Dave Smith, NHL officials health and wellness coach

If you want to see some examples from hockey you can watch Alexander Ovechkin and Phil Kessel. Ovechkin example, start at 00:44, goal scoring skills in practice.

Topic to be continued…

Hockey Drills, Practices and Coaching

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Hockey drills and practices for youth (initiation level), novice, atompeewee, bantam, midget / juniorsHockey drills for skating, passing, stickhandling, shooting, goal scoring, goalies, 1 on 1, 2 on 1, 2 on 2, 3 on 2, 3 on 3, warm up, game situations, break outs, off season, dryland… Explore Swedish and Finnish hockey coaching, the best of two worlds!
Hockey Coaching drills and practices eBooks

Hockey Practices and Drills – Hockeycoach.se

To explore the different hockey practices and drills on HockeyCoach.se, use the menu above or to the left. There you will find:
Free hockey drill samples
Hockey drills for 6-10 year old players – Youth hockey drills
First season hockey practices for 7-9 year old, or young hockey players
Hockey practices for 9, 10 and 11 year olds
Hockey skating drills – Hockey Camp
Hockey offensive plays and break outs (named complementary hockey drills)
Hockey goal scoring practices and drills (theory and drills)
Hockey game situations
Hockey game to hockey drills on practices
Hockey Practices 1
Hockey off-ice / off-season training and practices
Visual hockey player training
Visual hockey goalie training
Hockey Leadership – The Mourinho Way
Hockey body language – The Mourinho Signs
Hockey player path – the red thread through hockey practices

Free Hockey Drills and Practices – Download Free Hockey Drill Samples

Free hockey practice drill samples are also added on the page for easy download, free hockey drills and practices >>

 “We were lucky…?? Not when you are talking about my hockey players”