First Day - On the Ice

First day is all about FUN & Safety. Generally speaking, I wanted to get a sense for the kid’s abilities so I had a better idea what kind of drills to plan for week 2 and beyond.  Started out with basic movements during the warm-up (stick over their head, touch toes, knee touches on the blue line, jump the blueline, etc.) 

Priorities of the Day were ...

Learning kids names, ensuring proper equipment and comfort.

 

Checking mouth & neck guards; Length of stick (up to chin)

Reminding kids that gloves are worn at all times while on the ice.  I made sure they understood that if they needed help with the water bottles or their mouth guards or something else that the coaches were there to help them. There was no reason for anyone to take their gloves off.

Demonstrate and practice a proper hockey stance.  Some kids did not know how to hold their hockey stick. 

Told them they needed to take a knee when coach called them over.  No standing or skating around the coach. With kids this age, someone always spontaneously just falls over while standing in a group, usually taking a couple of bodies with them. 

Drills for week 1 concentrated on skating forward & stopping, making tight turns, backward skating and very basic skating with the puck.  We played cops & robbers a few times.  First the adults were the cops who had to catch the kids (no one allowed to skate outside the blue line) and put them in the net (jail). They always love this game.  Then we did the reverse with the kids the cops and the adults the robbers.

Scrimmage for last 10 minutes of a 50 minute practice.  We divided the rink into 3 cross ice games.  We had 4 real hockey nets from the rink on the ice for two of the games, and I brought along two pop-up nets from soccer for the third game.  I thought the soccer nets were a better alternative to pylons being used for a net.