Shooting videos

Professional Hockey Skills Coach Dwayne Blais dives deep into explaining how to improve your wrist-shot. In the video above, Dwayne gives tips on how to make your shot more accurate and powerful.

Tips to Improve Your Wrist Shot

1. Good Hand Position: Make sure that your hands are not too tight together and not too far apart. Keeping your hands hip-width apart is a good distance. 
2. Top Hand (Control Hand): Your top hand controls your blade and stick and will pull back when you shoot. Keep your top hand up.
3. Bottom Hand (Power Hand): Your bottom hand pushes down into the ice to generate force.
4. Keep Hands Away From Body: Keeping your hands away from body will allow you to take a shot with greater force. If your hands are close to your body it is hard to push and pull with your top and bottom hands.
5. Shooting Box: The optimal position for the puck when you shoot is to be about a blade length away from your skates. This will allow you to generate force with your stick. 
6. Puck Position On Blade: Go heel to toe. Back of shooting box to front of shooting box. 
7. Power Comes From Legs: Most power is generated from legs. Get a good knee bend and push towards the net. 
8. Aim With Bottom Hand: Use your bottom hand to follow through and aim where you want the puck to go.

Tips For Shooting At Home:

• It is better to shoot 1,000 pucks the right way than 10,000 pucks the wrong way. When shooting at home, bring your pucks in tight and follow the tips from Dwayne above.

Shooting in stride is a great skill for all players to add to their skill set. The exceptional goal scorers are typically very good at this. The reason it is so effective is that it catches the defense and goalie by surprise. Therefore the shot does not have to have perfect accuracy or be the hardest shot. The quickness of the release is why it is so effective.

Key Point to Shooting in Stride

• Keep puck slightly in front.
• Keep feet moving.
• Shoot mid-stride with weight transferring to front foot.

Ben Eaves demonstrates a Catch and Release Shot. This shooting technique can catch a defenceman and goalie off guard because it can result in a quicker shot release.

Keys to a Good Catch and Release Shot

• present your stick so your teammate knows where to pass the puck.
• the fist touch should set the puck up slightly in front of you so you can lean into the shot.
• strong top hand pulls hard towards body.
• bottom hand follows through much like the snap shot.