This is the handbook we used for team play my last two seasons with the U of Calgry Dino men's hockey team. Not much has changed in the game. It was the mid 90's and you could still pin a player and hold him a few seconds to stop a cycle and put a stick on players and screen them to hold them up in the neutral zone. Everyone also collapses a little deeper into the slot now and teams swarm when an attacker is facing the glass near the boards. The rotations are basically the same in the dzone and the forecheck.

I was coaching with two former NHL defensemen; so it was a great learning experience.

Good drills Peter. Here is an article that Kevin Sullivan just sent me about why the Swedes are developing such well rounded hockey players.
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NHL teams striking it rich with Swedish pipeline

By Fluto Shinzawa | GLOBE STAFF OCTOBER 20, 2013
ARTICLE

Detroit’s group, which includes Henrik Zetterberg (above), is the most significant concentration of Swedish talent.

The NHL’s sharpest general manager acknowledges he does not know the why behind the matter. The who and what, though, are as clear as a Windex-wiped pane of glass to Ken Holland.
The who are the Swedes. The what is the high-end Swedes’ superlative style of play in the NHL.
Nobody has reaped Swedish dividends more than the Red Wings GM. Nicklas Lidstrom is one of the NHL’s five best all-time defensemen. Tomas Holmstrom was once the league’s premier net-front presence. The odor of Holmstrom’s pants remains stuck in goalies’ nostrils.
The current Swedish core of Henrik Zetterberg, Niklas Kronwall, Johan Franzen, Jonathan Ericsson, Mikael Samuelsson, and Joakim Andersson helped convince fellow Swede Daniel Alfredsson to choose the Red Wings over the Bruins this past offseason. The Wings have ex-University of Maine standout Gustav Nyquist and fellow forward Calle Jarnkrok developing (or baking, to use a Holland expression) in Grand Rapids, Detroit’s AHL affiliate.

The efficiency of the Stockholm-to-Detroit transport system makes the proposed Keystone XL pipeline look like a 3-year-old’s ditch at the beach.
Detroit’s group is the most significant concentration of Swedish talent. There are others who play like Zetterberg and Kronwall: Henrik and Daniel Sedin (Vancouver), Nicklas Backstrom (Washington), Erik Karlsson (Ottawa), Niklas Hjalmarsson (Chicago), Loui Eriksson (Boston).
In less delicate times, the joke around hockey, especially among their neighbors in Finland, was that the Swedes carried themselves in a certain way. The Swedes, naturally, parroted an equally crude stereotype of the Finns.

But the hallmarks of today’s Swedish DNA are undeniable: committed work ethic, high-level skating, and processing power to rival the National Security Agency’s best spy gear. Off the ice, they are pleasant, approachable, and gentlemanly. On the ice, they play with precision and ruthlessness. “They’re really good competitors,” Holland said. “It doesn’t matter how hard the going gets. They don’t back off. There’s always an exception to every rule. But for the most part, they play hard. They go to hard areas. They’re respectful of the game. The ones that work their way through the system — through the Swedish World Junior, the Swedish national program, play in the NHL — they all can skate, and they’ve all got hockey sense.”

The Swedish identity reflects the Wings’ philosophy. Holland wants smart players. Coach Mike Babcock demands his players to think the game correctly. Hockey sense is one of the primary traits Holland seeks in his draft picks. Director of amateur scouting Tyler Wright and director of European scouting Hakan Andersson target high IQ.
Andersson, who is based in Sweden, has a track record of late-round thievery. The Wings picked Zetterberg in the seventh round of the 1999 draft. Ericsson was a ninth-rounder. Franzen (third round) and Nyquist (fourth) were also steals.
The Wings are not alone in identifying and selecting draft-eligible Swedes. In 2013, 23 Swedish players were selected, third most after Canadians and Americans. The Bruins drafted two: Linus Arnesson and Anton Blidh. Peter Cehlarik, their third-round pick, is from Slovakia but has played in Sweden since 2011-12. In 2011, five Swedes went in the first round: Gabriel Landeskog, Adam Larsson, Mika Zibanejad, Jonas Brodin, and Oscar Klefbom.
In Detroit, the Swedes’ contributions have produced the NHL’s hallmark of consistent excellence. The Wings last missed the playoffs in 1990. Among their last 22 iterations, four won the Stanley Cup. Last season, despite the departures of Lidstrom, Brad Stuart, and Jiri Hudler, and season-long injuries to Darren Helm, the Wings took Chicago to overtime of Game 7 in the second round.

Under Holland and Babcock, the Swedes’ smarts have led to seamless integration. Holland believes the hockey brain develops at younger ages. If a player arrives in the NHL without smarts, he’s behind the curve, like an adult struggling with a foreign language when a child can learn it far quicker.
“We can make you stronger,” Holland said. “But I think a lot of the instincts of the game, you either have some of those instincts by the time you’re 12 or 14, or you don’t. If you don’t have hockey sense by the time you’re 14, you’re not going to get it when you’re 18. Something’s going on where these young players have hockey IQ.”

Landeskog, Colorado’s captain, hails from Stockholm. But Landeskog is as North American as a can of Coke. As a 16-year-old, Landeskog first played for Kitchener of the OHL. The Avalanche drafted him No. 2 overall in 2011 following his second season with the Rangers. Landeskog’s English is perfect.

But Landeskog plays with the hockey IQ ingrained in Swedes of his generation. Landeskog recalled that as early as when he was 10 years old, coaches didn’t emphasize games. Instead, Landeskog’s coaches stressed good, fun, instructive practice habits.
“When we grow up, when we’re practicing back home, we do a lot of game-type situations,” Landeskog said. “You learn how to play and think the game. I think Swedish coaches are really good at coming up with drills that create game-type situations in practice. They shrink it down. There’s tons of in-zone types of games. Lots of give-and-gos and stuff like that. You learn that part of the game early on. I think the coaching aspect in Sweden has been really good. That was how we got good at it.”

Landeskog helped Sweden win the 2013 world championship and will likely make the 2014 Swedish Olympic team. Landeskog’s Detroit countrymen, the Sedin twins, Karlsson, and Henrik Lundqvist will be the lead dogs. On the big ice in Sochi, Russia, the Swedes will be among the favorites.
Because of their hockey sense, Swedes are the game’s geeks. These days, nerds rule.

If there was a rule that you could only use one drill, that drill would be the 3 on 3 Attack - Defend - Rest (Perry Pearn)

This game allows the coach to focus on the attack or defending deep in the zone. You can play this game in situations from 1-1 to 5-5. It is a great rotation to practice specialty teams if you have 3 lines because it gives the players some rest and they alternate between pp and pk (one F would leave the zone) The defenders have to clear the zone with control of the puck. With situations over a 3 on 3 I would move the resting players back to the far blue line.
Description:
1. Players line up within a stick length of the red line if you have 2 groups or only ½ ice; otherwise behind the red or far blue line.
2. Four players attack Four defenders.
3. Defenders must carry the puck out of the zone before passing to team waiting team mates.
4. Three new players attack vs the original offensive players.
5. Keep score, implement skill (only forehand passes) or team play rules (goals originate from below the goal line)

Kevin Sullivan sent me this article and there is a link to an article Dean has on his website.


The Lima News (Ohio)

December 3, 2013 Tuesday

SECTION: NEWS_LIFESTYLES

HEADLINE: Yes, kids are stars on the playing field, but can they do a push-up?

BYLINE: Nancy Cambria St. Louis PostDispatch (MCT)


ST. LOUIS - Eric Lay, the head trainer at Mary Institute and St. Louis Country Day School, loves to see student athletes succeed, but he and fellow trainers aren't always impressed with fastballs or hat-tricks.

They're more concerned about whether the athletes can do a decent push-up without their body undulating like a worm. Can they do leg lunges without flailing their arms, wobbling or falling to one side? Are they able to touch their toes? Pull up to their chin? Can they shuttle back and forth?

In a nutshell, trainers want to know whether these kids really know how to properly and safely move, and later, can they add strength to those established movements?

It's all part of a growing push among trainers and others in fitness fields to get schools, parents, coaches and kids back to basics with physical fitness. Instead of focusing primarily on acquiring fitness through organized youth sports - an exploding business with many well-meaning but poorly trained coaches - they want parents and kids to refocus and acquire proper movement skills beginning as early as kindergarten and progressing all the way through high school.

If it sounds like a throwback to gym class, it is. Those movements first emphasized in P.E. - skipping, lunging, twisting, jumping, stopping and starting, to name a few - are the building blocks of high-performing athletes and the key to enjoying all sorts of recreational activities that encourage lifelong fitness, said Larry Meadors, a former national high school strength and conditioning coach with the National Association of Strength and Fitness and author of a paper urging "physical literacy" among youth.

But yet, "For some ungodly reason we've skipped teaching fundamental movement," Meadors said.

"We all learned the alphabet, and as we learned the alphabet we learned how to put two letters and then three and then four to form words, and pretty soon we had a word, a sentence, a paragraph, a chapter, a book. And you should apply the same things for athletics."

In an age where kids have seemingly endless opportunities to play sports outside of school, all-around good movement is not always something Lay says he sees with seasoned middle and high school players. That particularly can be the case with specialized year-round, single sport athletes. Often he'll see unbalanced movement, out of whack from years of kicking with one leg in soccer or pitching and throwing on a softball or baseball team.

Those physical fitness deficits can lead to injuries. That's because the kids do the same thing over and over again, and coaches and organizations can have little emphasis on proper training beyond a few sometimes misguided skills drills.

"Parents want their kids to be physically active, and sports is an option. So a lot of people think, if my kid is in a sport, that takes care of it," Lay said. "Sport skills are great, but there has to also be some training in fundamental movements."

Meadors, a retired 50-year educator who runs a conditioning program in the Burnsville, Minn., school district, said he's seen a significant decline in movement skills in kids over the past decade.

"I have 11th- and 12th-graders - 16-, 17- and 18-year-olds - that have the same absolute movement skill deficiencies as 6-year-olds do."

Part of it is due to a decline in physical education in schools and a more sedentary lifestyle. Yet kids also face problems in competitive youth sports, where they learn a limited regimen of movements basic to the sport but may lack other critical movement skills to help them fully succeed.

"A sports skill is only a sports skill, it's part of the game. But there is a ton of stuff the human body does above those skills that hone that performance," Meadors said.

Youth sports in several metropolitan areas is exploding at a very early age with increased competition, seemingly unlimited options to play and pressure to compete in a single sport, year-round. It has led to a rapid increase in injuries even before middle school.

More than 3.5 million kids 14 and younger are treated annually for sports injuries, and the numbers are increasing. More than half of all youth sports injuries are preventable. In about half the cases, the injuries are associated with overuse, often linked with the growing trend of children specializing in one sport and playing year-round.

In a paper published with the National Strength and Conditioning Association, Meadors said musculoskeletal injuries in youth are the result of overall low strength levels, incorrect landing mechanics, incorrect deceleration techniques, ligament looseness, muscle tightness, overly developed quadriceps, and over-reliance on a particular limb. These essentially are tied to poor conditioning and a lack of knowing how to move properly in a variety of fitness situations.

Many kids simply don't know how to properly slow down and stop when running. Others can't land a jump properly, he said.

Meadors has developed a list of appropriate of movements to learn and perfect from kindergarten through middle school. The list is extensive and progresses as kids develop and grow into their adult bodies.

Nationwide, though, few kids are getting formal conditioning training. A survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows only 3.8 percent of elementary schools, 7.9 percent of middle schools and 2.1 percent of high schools nationwide provide daily P.E.

Meadors said movement deficits and injuries are roadblocks to developing lifelong fitness. And Lay cited research that suggested teen female athletes who suffered an injury in high school were more likely to have weight problems later in life.

Add to that the high percentage of youth athletes - about 70 - who drop out of sports by high school because of burnout and you see a sedentary lifestyle that contributes to obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease.

Meadors says all he asks for is a greater conversation among schools, parents, coaches and kids to identify the big connection between proper movement skills, lifelong health and true athletic performance.

At this point, in the midst of intense game schedules, coaches lack the time to learn proper conditioning or incorporate it into limited practice schedules, he said.

"When we get to the point of 3.5 million kids injured in a given year - that's the fourth leading health risk by the World Health Organization. There's something wrong about that," he said. "The media loves to hit on the sedentary side and the link to obesity in kids, and that's a real critical issue. But so is misuse of kids in sports and the mis-training of children."
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Check this one out too! It is also going on my website!
Dean

http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/metro/is-it-really-a-good-idea-for-kids-to-play/article_2e072908-c2d2-5616-8a77-69a1a88f2386.html

I used a dril l got from this site this past weekendI, I calledl it 2 Jokers behind the net with my U10 Atom team. I have been trying to get the kids to create offence from behind the oppositions goal.

What a great drill! I used two coaches as the jokers, and the kids really seemed to get it. They had a lot of fun with this drill and were creating triangles down low. Both sides scored some amazing goals! Thank you Tom!

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Peter, good to read that the site gives you practice ideas.

Last night at practice we played a game where you had to pass to the point to go onto offense. It was 4-4 at one end and 5-5 at the other. Both teams had 2 pointmen as Jokers who had to shoot or pass. Jokers were allowed to check Jokers so they had to get open and then move with the puck so they could get a shot through or else make a pass.

I had former NHL player/coach Rich Preston at last Fridays practice and he also played a game with Jokers. It was 3-3 low and each team had on Joker who had to stay on their own half and be within a few yards of the blue line. To go onto offense you had to pass to your Joker. Players changed on the go. It is a good game to practice low zone coverage and the low attack.