5 Steps to Plan a 90 Minute Hockey Practice

LinkedIn groups are a great place to share expertise. This post started in response to a question posed by youth hockey coach in Sudbury Ontario.

Wondering if anyone can give any ideas on how they plan a 90 minute full ice hockey practice 90 min long.

I like that you are looking for a standard template that you can then fill in with various drills so that practice flows well and challenges players in a variety of ways. This is exactly what we think about when designing a plan. Here is what I would suggest (follows the flow of a pro practice but can be modified for age specific drills.  If your team is younger than Pee Wee I’d be cautious and keep step 3 drills very basic).  We suggest these 5 steps to plan a 90 minute hockey practice.

5 Steps to Plan a 90 Minute Hockey Practice:

1. 0-10 minutes:  Energizer game, either full ice, or 2 games  (1 in each end)
2. 10-25 minutes: 2 x skate/pass/shoot relatively straight forward drills, getting your full ice skating in, and lots of shots for goalies, from a variety of angles. Make this 2 progressions from the same lines, so you don’t have to move pucks, kids, etc.
3. 25-45 minutes: 2 x 10 minute game situation drills. While the ice is still in good shape and pucks not bouning, you can run 2x 1/2 ice or full ice 2 vs 1, 3 vs 1, 3vs 2 drills.
4. 45-70 minutes: 3 x 8 minute skill stations, dividing the ice into 3. Here you can divide by position, or do drills that combine F and D specific skills. One end should be s scoring drill that can have a goalie focus too. You can use middle ice for stickhandling, agility, skating, faceoffs, etc.
5. 70-90 mins: 2 x 10 minute small area games to finish. One in each end, or all together in one end using both nets, playing game 1, then game 2.

Hope this helps!

1. Small area games resource: www.lgsports.ca/hockey-drills-2-small-area-games/
2. 1/3 ice goalie scoring drills: www.lgsports.ca/hockey-goalie-drills/
3. Tactics and game understanding resource: www.howtoplayhockey.ca