Ice Hockey Coaching Blog

Hi Hockey Coaches! You might have noticed we have updated the framework for printing practice plans, and after many requests, we added back the Grid Printing Format.  We made these updates based on our 2022 member survey along with all of the coaches that took time to write in and provide us feedback over the past year. Below we will explain the highlights of the...

The Team at IHS would like to thank the hockey community for all of your support in 2022. We are so very grateful to all of our members, associations, contributors, partners, and anyone who took the time to reach out to us this past year. Our objective at IHS is to create content and tools that inspire coaches and players around the world. Below is a list of the most popular practice plans,...

Kendall Coyne Schofield, the captain of the USA Women’s National Team, and a Player Development Coach for the Chicago Blackhawks discusses the benefits of a Battle Practice Day. Kendall explains how her teams at Northeastern College, and the USA Women’s National Team utilize different formats of a Battle Practice Day. Northeastern College created a year long competition...

Below we give examples of 7 different hockey drills and small area games that utilize face-off circles as boundaries. No cones, boards or barriers are needed! Use the ideas below and create your own drills with our drawing tool! Join Hockey's Premier Coaching Resource Sign Up Today 1. The Circle Warm-Up Series The Circle Warm-Up Series is from NewEdge Hockey Development. Utilize...

IHS for Associations is excited to announce our newest feature: Association Sharing. With this new update, any piece of content created by a coach in an association can be shared with the entire association with a click of a button. This will allow for easier collaborations across your association and encourage coaches to share what has worked well for them with drills, practices, systems...

The Importance of Using Progressions Progressions should be an integral part of your practices and development model.  When using progressions in practice, you can start with a very simple skill or concept that players can feel comfortable executing.  From there you can build on the skill by adding decisions and layers that puts the skill into a game-like scenario. This will allow you...

2022 Member Survey Thank you for being a member at IHS, we hope you had a great season! Member feedback has always helped us improve the IHS experience. We would be incredibly thankful if you could take 2 minutes to let us know how we could better serve you in the year ahead. Thank you in advance for your time and feedback! If you ever have any questions you want to ask us directly...

Start practice with drills that warm-up the body and mind!  In the article below, we give coaches 9 examples of warm-up drills that encourage players to keep their head up, and make decisions, which will help them develop their on-ice awareness. General Warm-Up: It should be noted, it is always recommended that players engage in a general warm up before jumping right into any...

This article was written by TJ Manastersky, Assistant Coach at Union College. The first principle of coaching is to help someone get from where they are, to where they want to go and to arrive safely. The word, “coach” comes from the Hungarian word, “kocsi” Kocs is a small Hungarian village that is known for building horse drawn carts, called “kosci”. These carts took people between...