Thanks for this - interesting to see drills on facebook!

Boston is an amazing place and a real haw-key town. Heck, you might even see the cup there!

Quick question, Tom - how far into the season do you 'script' your practice plan? I'm aiming to coach a Peewee AAA team this fall and will have a lot of 'rehab' work to do with a group that has been on cruise control for a few years. SO, I've put together 5 weeks of practices to cover the fundamentals, some tactics and systems but with a focus on mental development and quick transitioning between the 4 roles you describe so well here. I'm thinking that, at some point, I should start to tailor the practices to our teams needs but don't want to get caught in the 'just reacting to the weekend's games' trap!

Thanks

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Ice Sage, When I start a season I like to put all of the Team Play concepts in right away. All of the skills we practice are needed to be able to play these concepts.

I start every practice with at least 30 minutes of individual offensive or defensive skills or skating skills and often combine skating with puck handling and shooting. We often do passing skills but practice the breakout of power play at the same time.

I think a coach has to touch on all of the individual offensive and defensive skills, plus practice all of the skating skills.

We try to practice Total Hockey where all fo the players learn to skate backwards and do things like the Chocktow Turn and everyone takes both offensive and defensive 1-1, 2-1, 2-2 etc.

This year my team will get 90 minute practices on Tuesday and Wednesday and a 75 minute practice on Friday. We play every Sat. and Sunday. We will do spin on the bikes on Monday. So they get Thursday off. On Tuesday we will focus on individual offensive skills and skating skills. Wednesday we will do 30 minutes of offensive indivisual skill and then focus on individual defensive skills. Friday we will prepare for the games and work on Team Offense and Team Defense.

We will have lots of games and transition games to practice 'How to Play'. The why, when and where. The drills are for practicing the what and how.

The games show you what your players can do under game pressure and you can't ignore them but like you say you can't just teach to correct errors. Your players need to be good at everything and your practices have to cover all of the skills.