Great Skating Drills for Defenseman
M2Hockey.com and HockeyShare.com provided us with great some great drills to do with defensemen at practice, these drills will help both your offensive and defensive skills.
Defensemen Hinge Play
In this video, we are going to talk about the hinge play for defensemen. Before this can be done, we need to put a lot of emphasis on defensive support. Your defensive partner should be around one hockey stick length behind and giving you a clear target area. This makes it a lot harder on the fore checker to intercept a pass. So the hinge play is fairly simple, when I make my pass backwards to the defensemen, he will then go forward, it’s my job to return behind to give him proper support, so if needs be, he can get a pass to me easily. This is done when you have an aggressive fore checker putting pressure on you, and it’s an easy way to get the puck from one side or the other very quickly and take advantage of space.
Defenseman Puck Movement Agility Drill
In this video, we are going to show you a neutral zone drill that works on agility and making passes in the middle of the ice. So the drill is going to start with the defensemen quick starting with the puck, going around the bottom of the circle, opening up right away and making a pass at the player on the wall. From here, he is going to make a defense turn, receive a pass from the player. At this point the forward is going to cut across the middle and I will need to give him a center ice pass. It’s important to keep your head up here in order to see the ice, and see were the forward is going to be.
Defense Agility 'W' Drill
In today’s video, we are going to show you a quick drill to work on defensive agility. First of all, the cones should be setup in a W pattern. From here you will have to skate to the first cone, do a half pivot, open the body up and accelerate forward with a quick step. Furthermore, you will go right into a defense turn, do two cross overs backward and finally finish off with a forward pivot to go. We will do this drill with three variations, one without a puck, one with a puck and one with a pass in the middle.
