Howie's Warm Up Skating Evaluation Drill

By: Ice Hockey Systems

This drill starts with playersin two parallel lines on each side of the coach between the blue lines.  On the first whistle, one skater from each side skates forward and crosses over around low the face-off circle on their side of the ice and continue to where the blue line and boards meet where they stop and immediately begin to side-step across the blue line.  When they reach the line of forwards they stop and immediately skate forward to the redline where they side step across to the boards, where once again they stop, skate and finally side-step the blue line before one last stop and then crossover the low face-off circle before getting back in line.  Once the first skaters hit the blue line, the coach can blow the whistle and send the next two players in line.  There will usually be anywhere from 3 to 4 players completing the drill on each side of the ice at a given time.  It's a great drill to use to evaluate your player's skating abilities or to start a practice with.  It's also good to have the d-men do the drill skating backwards.