My team from last year just won a tournament with top teams from Russia, Czech Republic, Switzerland, Finland and Germany.

They beat the German team from Manneheim, Moscow Red Army, and Sparta Prague. Espoo from Finland beat Red Army for Third and Manneheim beat the Swiss team for 5th.

13 GF and 4 GA in the 3 games. Great result for aggressive hockey.

The owner of the energy drink Red Bull lives in Salzburg, Austria. He is a sports fan and has a soccer and a hockey academy with young players being trained to progress to the pro team.

In hockey they have 2 pro teams the Div. 1 team plays in the Austrian top pro league and the Div. 2 team plays in the National League with 2nd tier teams.

They have a U20 team and a U17 team with players who live in Salzburg and most go to school there. The ones under 18 live in two residences and the older ones mostly in apartments. They train about 45 times a month with on ice, dryland and skating treadmill.

The top pro league has a point system. Last year they could dress up to 60 points for a game. So if u are on the Austrian national team you are worth 4 points. If u played in the NHL or American league 4 pts. They could bring players up and down from the second team until the end of January. The rules have changed a little this year but not that much. In other words there are lots of North American players (Ryan Duncan who won the Hobey Baker 3 yrs ago is there now).

They bring in coaches from all over the hockey world and Pierre Page (Canada) is the head of the hockey program and head coach of the #1 team. Rejo Routsalainen a 2 time Stanley Cup winning Finn and Gene Reilly and American college coach are his assistants. Jursinov a famous Russian coach comes one week a month to do skills in the morning. Mon and Wed with the pro's and T, Th with the U17-20. These teams have coaches from all over the world. All the coaches help with the morning skill sessions and also help each other with the team practices.

The idea is to produce an effective and unique way to develoip elite players. The program is in it's third year. They have never go to the finals in this tournament of European Champions before and this year they won all three games with 13GF and 4GA, which is very impressive.

Page watched hockey all over the world to study the best way to play and has designed an ultra aggressive style that mixes the best from everywhere. It gives no time and space when played properly and always has 4 players on the attack who constantly interchange positions. It is very entertaining to watch.

Paulie that is how the Torpedo was developed. The Swedish team didn't have enough defenseman so instead used centre's. They averaged 11 min. in their end.

It is hard to keep constant pressure if the forecheckers all have to go from one side to the other. By having a midfielder on each side you take away the rim and the D to D to W or C that always beats a hard forecheck when the high F always has to go all the way across the ice.

Cause a turnover in their defensive zone and u get a scoring chance about 25% of the time. Cause one in the nzone and u get a scoring chance about 7-10% of the time. So all these forechecks that trap in the nzone are inefficient.

There are lots of ways to play the Torpedo. I will outline one way.
First you have to think a little differently.

Positions.
-2 Torpedo's or strikers who are always up ice on the forecheck.
-2 midfielders who come back in their zone and are part of the initial attack and forecheck and cycle on their side in the offensive zone.
-1 Libero or defensive defenseman who stays back.

These positions can either be assigned or can be read by the players who simply must be able to count to 5.

In your end you play one on and a box behind with the 2 midfielders and libero deep in the zone.

On faceoffs one of the midfielders either plays one of the 3 forward positions. Some teams have the centre and others a wing.

On a regroup the libero and midfielders fill the 3 low lanes and the torpedo's read whether they can stretch or give closer support depending on how much forechecking pressure. On a controlled breakout they would stretch in 2 levels.

Always have 4 on the attack. If the defenders are all back create a 2-1 on their widest defender while the middle two go to the net and mid slot. Also the weak side midfielder is always ready to go to the weak side for a back door pass or to pinch on a rim. When u lose the puck everyone has to get on their horse and come back hard thru the middle with the first backckhecker giving back pressure on the puck carrier.

If u go to the team play video's done in 2009 you can see the team practicing breakouts and regroups.

It is called Big Ice Hockey because you use the entire ice with width and depth and not just width as we do so much of in North America; though there is a lot of stretching now done in the NHL.

U can also decide whether you want a 2-2-1 kind of forecheck or a more controlled 1-3-1 with the torpedo's in the middle and doing a tandem. So u can decide whether to focus on pressure or contain. If they set up behind the net the 1-3-1 is effective.

This is one example. Another is to take the left wing lock and have the RD and LW as midfielders and the C-RW torpedo's and LD libero. Have the C be the low man in your end.

So whether it is 1-2-3-4-5 or assigned positionsyou can add a lot more depth to the game and constant forechecking pressure.

Pops I hope to implement this system. I like pressure. Here is a diagram.

Quote by: TomM

Page watched hockey all over the world to study the best way to play and has designed an ultra aggressive style that mixes the best from everywhere. It gives no time and space when played properly and always has 4 players on the attack who constantly interchange positions. It is very entertaining to watch.

Can you talk more about this? X/s and Os or any info. Very interested

What would be some basic rules you can put in place for halfbacks to direct how deep they should get in the corner , when they should go down and when they should back off to the blue line, The players I have need guidelines so they can better execute the system.

Coach P7 your 2-2-1 is similar to what I am saying but it sounds like F3 is moving across the ice to the strong side. Which is good and similar to what I call a 2-1-2 with a pinch on a wide rim.

The difference is here.
RW and C forecheck deep on both sides.
LW forechecks deep on the left side and pulls back when the puck in on the right side.
RD forechecks deep on the right side and pulls back when the puck in on the left side.
Left D supports on the strong side point.

Of course if the left D is part of the rush then whoever is back and sees 4 players in front of them stays back. So you have 3 players cycling on each side and someone always going back door. What it does is take away a little more time and space and gives closer support.

http://www.redbullssalute.com/index.1.1.html is a link to the tournament results. They just went on a tour of Switzerland and beat Davos 3-1.

CoachP7 you describe a good high pressure forecheck.

The difference with the one I describe is that the RW and C are offensive forwards. The RD is an offensive defenseman and the LW is a defensive forwards with the LD being a defensive defenseman. The LW and RD stay on their sides of the ice but forecheck deep etc. playing with the RW and C. So they are like midfielders in soccer.

You can't think of the traditional 3 F's in this style.

Like any system it is effective if everyone buys in and understands their roles.

Because all three F's don't have to move all the way across it creates pressure more quickly.

Paul,

As someone who used the Torpedo one year I hope you can benefit from my experience.

Forecheck. I elected to teach the Cougar Pounce that Tom explains elsewhere on this site. Anything else was confusing and we frequently gave up odd man rushes. The major drawback was that we lacked a solid Strong side point position.
I felt that the forecheck was the major failing of the Torpedo system. The only solution I considered was to tell the Librero and one of the Half-backs to assume the defencemen's roles while in the offensive zone. As the half-backs were converted centreman, somewhat unsure of the role, I decided not to. I had a lot of opposition to the implementation of the Torpedo.

Face-offs: The Right Half-back took all face-offs on his side of the ice, vice versa for the Left. I didn't want to confuse things. The Librero always had net front. I also converted a few rushing defencemen to half-backs. They really struggled on the draw. In hindsight, I would have the best draw man take the draw. We were very poor on the draw.

Bench: I changed the Torpedo's. They came in the door and hopped the boards to go out. My assistant Coach managed the Librero's and Half-backs. Librero's used the door for exiting and entering play; half-backs did same as Torpedo's.

Paul, I hope this helps. If you want to discuss further you can email me at pf1flyer@pei.sympatico.ca

Cheers,

Paulie