In a 60 minute NHL game, the most skilled players typically have the puck on their stick for a maximum of 1 minute total. That means that players like McDavid, Matthews, Crosby, and Ovechkin will have individual possession of the puck for less than 2% of the game. If we translate this back to the female game, we can safely say that for the vast majority of the game, we’re playing without the puck. So we need to spend time in practices focusing on this part of the game. And when we work on our play without the puck, we’re really working on how to get the puck back to get back on attack. We play defence to create offence.

I think we can all agree that we want to spend as much time on offence as possible, right?
We want to get that little black thing back as fast as possible so we can go score some goals. But sometimes in our eagerness to play offence, we play a little too aggressively on defence, which does more harm than good. You can’t stand around doing nothing, just hoping for the puck to magically end back up on your stick, but you also can’t run around like a chicken with its head cut off trying to get the puck back. Playing well without the puck means playing with a mix of patience and urgency.

In order to get the puck back, you’ve got to disrupt the other team’s offence. And while running a full pressure forecheck like a 2-1-2 or playing tight man on man coverage in the defensive zone might seem to make it more likely that you’ll get the puck back faster, it really depends on how skilled your opponents are with the puck.

Let me explain – pouring on the pressure against a lesser skilled team will certainly disrupt their ability to move the puck effectively. But when you pressure hard against a very skilled team, you run the risk of them picking you apart with crisp passes or slick 1v1 moves. Now that doesn’t mean that you play those more talented teams passively, but you must respect their level of skill and have some patience in your play without the puck.

Let’s use the forecheck as an example to illustrate when we might play with patience and when we might play with urgency.

The 2-1-2 forecheck is a very common forechecking system in the female game – especially at the younger levels. While there are many variations, it typically involves two forecheckers pressure their opponent’s Ds very aggressively, the 3rd forward defending middle ice and the forechecking D pinching down the wall on the strong side. This can be a very effective system to use to get the puck quickly. If your opponents don’t possess the skills and hockey IQ necessary to move pucks away from pressure effectively, you can have a great deal of success with this system. But if they are good at reading where pressure is coming from, releasing that pressure quickly, and coming out the middle or far side of the ice, you’ll find your team giving up a lot of odd man rushes against. Sometimes in your urgency to get the puck back with this hard pressure system, you end up back checking a lot more and playing more defensive zone coverage.

Contrast this with the more passive 1-2-2 forecheck. Without pouring into the details of the different variations of this forecheck, you’ve typically got only one player pressuring the puck carrier hard while the other 4 players stay in more of a box formation on the strong side. The key to executing this forecheck effectively is making sure these 4 players stay above their check. For example, the 2nd player into the forecheck in this system is responsible for defending the breakout player on the wall (which is where many teams make their first pass on the breakout). If this 2nd player into the forecheck is too aggressive and joins our 1st forechecker in chasing the puck carrier, the breakout team will probably just chip the puck past us and get an easy breakout up the wall. When you stay just above your check on the wall, you give the breakout team the illusion of that player down by the hash mark being open. So when they make that pass to the hashmark, you can jump down on your check and force a quick turnover. Once you really get good at this more patient forecheck, you will be able to jump your check earlier and earlier and maybe even start stealing those pucks off the pass. When you first learn the 1-2-2 forecheck, it’s really hard to fight your instinct to chase with a 2nd player, especially if you’ve been used to playing the full pressure 2-1-2 system. But the 1-2-2 system forces the other team to make more skilled plays coming out of their zone. If they don’t move quickly Into open ice or make crisp passes, you’ll find yourself on the receiving end of a lot of giveaways that lead to golden scoring chances.

We all want to play more offence. So we want to get the puck back as quickly as possible when we lose possession. But playing effectively without the puck means understanding when to play with urgency and when to be more patience. Going full tilt, hard on the puck all the time may work when you’re playing lesser skilled teams, but as you play better opponents and move up to more elite levels of hockey, this full pressure play becomes less and less effective.

So learn how to play with a mix of urgency and patience. Forcing your opponent’s to make mistakes and turn pucks over can be achieved both with hard pressure and more passive pressure. Understanding when to be more patient and when to be more aggressive is a key part of becoming a better player and team.

Work Hard. Dream BIG.

Your friend and coach,

Kim

PS – If you’re a coach and you want some more information about how to teach play without the puck more effectively, shoot me an email.

Kim McCullough, MSc, YCS
Director & Founder, Total Female Hockey
www.totalfemalehockey.com