Soft “Touch” Passing

For anyone who stopped by here thinking that I’m going to be talking about one-touch passing… Naw, that’s a subject for another time.

What I do want to share with you today are my feelings on the passes players often make to themselves.

– Dennis Chighisola

Okay, just supposing a player is going to push the puck through a defender’s skates, then go around that defender to retrieve the puck on the other side.  Well, I can’t tell you how often I’ve noticed attackers treating that puck rather roughly as they send it, which usually brings about new problems when they go to retrieve it.

The first thing I usually do in dealing with this is to suggest to my players that they are actually making passes to themselves.  I don’t know, but most of the time this approach seems to help in getting them to look at that kind of play a little differently.  Actually, once I get them to realize that it is a pass — and that the pass is to themselves, they tend to pay closer attention to the technique required.

By the way…  Making passes to oneself happens more often than some might think.  It’s required along with nearly all the different dekes or maneuvers players use to get around a defender on 1 against 1′s (as in the drill I described above).  And a pass to oneself is also what’s happening when a player banks a puck off the boards and around a defender.  And so is it a major part of the way I teach breakaways (so see my recent article and videos on “Proper Breakaway Skills“).

Anyway, once that’s established — that the pass is to oneself, I next try to get my players to appreciate that it takes a certain kind of “feel” or “touch” with the puck to make that pass.  In just about every instance, the attacker wants the “pass” to arrive in a certain location.  And in every instance he or she wants the puck to just sit there, nice and flat (not rolling or wobbling around).  So again, the attacker doesn’t want to treat the puck roughly on that pass, but instead one needs to “place it” with a nice soft “touch”.

Of course, talking about the problem only gets us part way in establishing a better touch or feel for that kind of pass.  So, I’ve developed a number of drills to help my kids hone such skills.

Now, as members know by now, I usually had the luxury of both on-ice and off-ice practices throughout most of a year.  And for that reason I’ve had to create drills that could be done in both venues.

The photo on the left shows a drill I created long ago to enhance a number of qualities in my players.  Tumbling — or any gymnastics — is great for athleticism, and it also puts my kids in a slight, momentary state of confusion, not unlike the frequent collisions they have in games.  The reason I initially created this drill was so that my players could learn to find the puck quickly coming out of a roll or spin or whatever.  So — as described elsewhere here at CoachChic.com, I’d have my kids roll and then quickly find a puck that had just been introduced by a coach.  And that drill certainly helped them in the ways I’d hoped.

A little later, however, I expanded that drill to help encourage the skill at hand.  So, take a look at the nearby Gif that shows my players pushing the puck ahead, tumbling, and then having to find the puck in order to perform the next challenge (to either tumble again or shoot).  Go ahead, watch that clip before going on.

Hmmmm…  If you don’t mind watching that clip again, I just caught the first little rascal doing something I hadn’t noticed before, and it’s something that truly does make my point here.    For, as he comes out of his last tumble, he doesn’t shoot his own puck at all.  No, he fires a different one, because the one he brought down the course wasn’t ultimately placed nicely, or where he really needed it to be!

Now, the second sequence hopefully shows that soft “touch” pass a little better.  (You should know that I purposely spaced the tumbling mats the way I did, just so each player had to be pretty accurate in placing his pass.  For — as you’ll see in the second Gif, each pass had better fall close to the right location if the player is going to be able to immediately take-on the next challenge.)  So, watch the next clip and see what I mean.

Now, between the lines, I’m kinda hoping that you’ve noticed how I try to make drills simulate the craziness of our game.  Just in the shown drill, for example, I’ve at least slightly recreated the confused state that comes with falls or collisions, and I’ve also tried to recreate the urgency necessary between challenges.

As an aside, I’ve previously joked in other entries about how the little firing mechanisms in my noggin’ tend to make me think of something new as I’m working at another project. So, don’t you know, I just arrived at a new drill for pass-receiving as I wrote that last paragraph. I’ll be sure to show you that once I breathe life into it. However, just as a hint… It drives me crazy that a lot of my players are too casual about catching passing during drills, and this results in far too many lost pucks during our games. So, why not insert a give-and-go between tumbles (or other challenges) as an adaptation to the above drill? Hmmmmm…

Okay, as for an on-ice application to the above drill…  We don’t often do tumbling on the ice.  So, what I’ll usually do is have by players execute continuous spins down the length of the ice.  In other words, a player will tap the puck ahead, then spin to find and grab it; he’ll tap the puck ahead again, and spin in the opposite direction next, etc.  And, much like the off-ice version of that drill, a player must make his pass with some “feel” in order to have the puck lie where — and in the way — he needs it in order to continue on to the next challenge.

Finally, I hope you also noticed that the two physical challenges featured in the drill examples are drastically different.  With that, I’d like you to appreciate that the rolls or spins (or shots) are purely things that need to be done before or after a pass to oneself.  However, make no mistake about it:  Those passes have to be done with a nice “touch” in order to make the next move possible.

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