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COACHING: TIPS FOR PRE-SEASON DRILLS

The pre-season is a hectic and exciting time for coaches. There are practices to plan, games to schedule, paperwork to complete and equipment to purchase. Yet, on top of all of that, the pre-season adds one additional wrinkle – coaches must be ready to make quick and early assessments of their team's talent in order to best tailor their hockey teaching and the drills to be used.

If you coach at a professional level, your pre-season evaluations include medical reports, scouting reports and player assessments based on highly competitive drills and scrimmages. If you coach at the house league level, especially younger players, your pre-season may involve evaluating more basic player skills, such as whether or not your players can actually skate well. Not only that, you will certainly have some players just learning to stand up on the ice, while others are already flying around the ice and doing some wonderful turns and stops. In that case, you will have to tailor some drills for the less advanced players.

Assessing skating

Skating is the most important skill in the game of hockey. It's where it all starts. If a player does not have balance on their skates, they won't be able to take a shot. If they can't move very fast on their skates, they won't be able to get to the net to score a goal. It all starts with basic balance and then being able to move forward, then turn and eventually – stop.

And of course, it's not difficult to quickly get a sense of your team's and players' skating levels. As soon as they step on the ice you'll be able to see if they can stand, and then create some form of forward motion. From there you can have them skate around the face-off circles to measure their ability to turn. And of course, then have them come to a complete stop. From there you'll know how advanced your players are in basic balance, form and speed.

Here are some drills that will help assess their skating levels:

A slow skate around the ice, skating behind the nets Skate to centre ice, stop at centre, skate back to goal line Skate forward to centre ice, stop, skate backwards to goal line The Figure 8 – Forward skating around face-off circles performing crossovers The Circle Pivot – Forward skating, pivot to backward skating at the top of the face-off circle and backward to forward skating at bottom of face-off circle Skate the Circles. This drill combines a combination of crossovers and turns around pylons. Shown as forward skating, but you can modify the drill to have your team do it backwards Race to puck around pylons placed at the blue line. The winner of the race gets the puck and gets to take a shot on goal

Assessing game skills

Of course, pre-season drills may also include those that can help assess a team's strength in other aspects of the game, like puck control, passing and shooting. These simple drills will help you develop and assess their puck control abilities.

Stationary Passes – Passing while standing still. Here, the players simply pass the puck back and forth, in pairs. Have them start close together, and then have them move back as their ability improves Man in the Middle – Five players standing on the face-off circle attempt to pass to one another as another player within the circle tries to intercept the pass Give And Go Passing – Players skate up the ice, receive a pass and then pass to another player back and forth before driving to the net to take a shot on goal

Assessing game savvy

Your pre-season assessment can also include evaluating your players' "Hockey IQ" – their knowledge of rules and strategies. It's always essential to work on game strategies and positional play as well as skill development. The more the team can play as a team, the more fun they'll have, and the more successful they will be.