Playoff Hockey Preparations 1

I’ve struggled with doing this entry — but only because it’s rather difficult to address the needs of all the different levels of our game within one post. Yet, I thought I might talk a little bit, in general here, about the things I was doing with one of my young teams some time ago. And, while it might not be appropriate for all, perhaps it still can provide everyone some food for thought.

Secondly, while it might seem rather early in the season to address playoff prep, I’ve always felt the more time I have to address such a challenge, the better.

– Dennis Chighisola

I was fortunate to actually have my young AAA Mite Majors skating five practices in a given week.  Oh, they weren’t all traditional practices, because two of them were skill-oriented ADM sessions where I only had my kids rotate to me in a station for about 10-minutes.

Now, I thought long and hard about what I’d do with my players during those ADM sessions.  For several months I’d built-in drills for them that would support (or plant seeds for) the things we’d do in our regular practices (and hope to ultimately do in our hockey games).  So, what I did was to sketch a rough idea of what I planned for the practices, and then I went from there…

I continued a drill that had my forwards feeding a puck from behind the opposition goal to a mate who fired a quick shot on-net.  (If you can picture the Mite level, good passing, a quick shot, and a hunger to bury the puck can really make a difference.)  In our regular practices — where we had more space, the boy behind the net also fed to a defenseman who was sliding into the slot from his point position.

My team — although finishing in third place overall — led our league in the lowest goals-against.  And I think that’s a pretty good sign.  From the season’s start, I attempted to put together and nurture six pretty good young defensemen, our goaler had developed well, our forwards backchecked better than most young kids, and we also possessed the puck a lot with our offense (hey, if we have it a lot, the bad guys don’t — ).  With that, I abbreviated a larger (5 on 5) practice drill in the ADM sessions by having one of my players keep covering another for about 8-seconds (as I held a puck for a possible pass).   All the while I was yelling, “Backcheck!  Backcheck!”  The idea was to connect that drill to what the kids would frequently hear from us coaches on the game-bench.

I also tossed in a quick game of keepaway, sending pairs of kids off in our designated area, all at the same time.  Again, asking you to think about this a bit, a lot of the Mite game is almost a game of keepaway, with the best players holding the puck lots longer than the lesser ones.  Oh, my kids passed the puck to each other — plenty.  But, not panicking and not just throwing the puck away was what I was aiming for with this kind of drill, as well as developing their skills to protect the puck.

Our three more traditional practices that week — one each on a full sheet of ice, on half-ice, and then in one zone — covered most of the basics, from skills to our strategies in each zone.

However, over a few weeks — and especially that week, I focused more on the so-called “little things” that tend to sway games…

I suspected there was one opposition goaltender who could stop our attack if we met during the playoffs (he was a pretty nice little butterfly netminder with a quick right-hand glove).  So, without yet connecting that boy with what I was doing, I hung two targets to the right side of a practice net — one just over where that boy’s pads would be in the butterfly position, and the other up over his blocker.  Both of these were aimed at shooting away from the boy’s quick glove-hand.  To get my kids to focus, I promised to start the line that hit the targets most often during that week.

Over several months, I slowly built-in three offensive face-off plays the kids had become very good at executing.  We had a few goals off these, but more than anything, we gained possession of the puck on most offensive draws, and we had tons of near-misses.  My thinking was that offensive face-off plays are almost like “free kicks” in soccer — it’s especially true with little kids, and not all that untrue with older players.

I also installed a defensive face-off coverage, and this also had the potential of giving the fastest forward on each of our lines a breakaway.  Ya, if there’s a loose puck around the circle, there’s a good chance one of my kids is going to be roaring through, splitting the enemy D, and on his way to the opposition goal.

If you get my drift on those last two paragraphs, I believe that some trick plays will work — in a playoff, and (at least) in the youngest levels of our game.

Believe it or not, I actually built a little powerplay unit over several months, too.  Oh, we didn’t have enough full-ice to really practice it a lot, and I couldn’t expect 8-year olds to really execute like my older guys would.  However, there were two benefits I saw in this:  1) I had some of my best offensive players on the ice (or I had kids in “role positions” where they should do excellent jobs); and 2) I’d also given them a structure in which they should get plenty of shooting opportunities.  On the latter…  Again, not that they were going to execute a basic “umbrella” like older players.  However, just the layout of diggers-for-the-puck, the movement of the puck around penalty-killers, and the placement of all shooters on their “off wings” gave us some scoring chances.

Oh, and since a few powerplay kids had been selected because they fit certain roles well, that left us still a very strong line to come-out right after that unit exited.  In other words, there shouldn’t be any let-down or drop-off in talent right after a powerplay expired.

Not that the above special situations meant I wouldn’t be working on the basics of our system.  Far from it.  We brought our forecheck to a point where we smothered most opponents in their own end for long stretches, and we did a pretty good job of moving the puck out of our own zone.  Honest to God, my young kids even gained the red line, dumped the puck, and got changes on-the-fly as well as most of the older teams I’d coached.  I mean that!

Then, a reflection on what had to transpire earlier in our time together…  For sure, some of the kids often came to the games having been instructed by their moms (or whomever).  I mean, Johnny initially arrived for the games forcing plays and trying to satisfy someone other than his teammates and coaches.  So was there a little (I hate this term) “puck hog” or two in the crowd during our earliest weeks.  A coach has a choice when he or she recognizes such, so I did what I believed to be best 1) for the team and 2) for each boy.  I sat them for a shift or two (which seems an eternity to an 8-year old), and I managed to bring most of them in with the rest of their team.  (God only knows what still went on in the different family cars on the way to our games, but that will be a topic for another posts!)

Well, I guess that’s it for now.  And I hope this sheds at least a little light on the way I view readying for our coming playoffs. Up next will be Part 2.