The skating drill at tonight’s clinic was an important milestone for me: I wasn’t the last one across the ice in one of the drills. Yay!
So skating drill tonight was goal-line to blue-line forward, then return backward; then the same to the red-line; then the same to the far blue-line. Then to the far goal-line and back, both forward.
It was at the far goal-line that I realized I’d made the turn and there were others behind me. Maybe I’m getting faster .. maybe they just weren’t skating as hard … don’t really care which, I’ll go with feeling good about it either way.
Then we did goal-line to goal-line and back three times … backwards.
I am not not-the-slowest going backwards. I am, in fact, slower than the goalie. That’s right … I’m slower than the guy with 500 pounds of equipment on him.
Also, I don’t turn well backward. How do I know this? Well, since I’m the slowest, it meant that everyone else reached the goal-line and started coming back before I did. (anyone see where this is going?)
I’m doing what I’m supposed to, looking over my shoulders frequently, but I seem to have trouble seeing directly behind me. And when I finally do see him, he’s close and we’re both moving. And I was unprepared to maneuver, so there was a bit of a collision. I went down and he kept going, which was rather disappointing. I mean, if I’m going to go down after colliding with someone, I’d at least like it to be mutual, you know?
The hockey drills were interesting.
First off, we ran an offensive drill with two defensemen and one forward. Passing and shooting while the coach put pressure on whoever had the puck – it’s a bit sad that at three-on-one he still could’ve kicked our asses if he’d chosen to, I think.
So we all line up and the first three go in. After a bit we cycle, so right-defense moves to forward, forward moves to left-defense, and left-defense moves back to the line, while the next in line takes over at right-defense.
This drill uncovered a serious problem I have – I kept trying to walk. At defense, I found myself trying to take steps side-to-side instead of skating. So I need to work on moving left/right by skating instead of thinking I can step back and forth.
For the second drill we line up in two groups at opposite blue-lines, along the boards and facing the far blue-line. First skater from one group skates to the far blue-line and turns, taking a pass from the other group and skates down to take a shot on the net. As he gets the pass, the passer from the second group takes off and does the same, but taking his pass from the other group. On and on.
Of the three times I did this, I missed the pass I was supposed to receive twice – but I’m going to blame the passers. The passes were ahead of me … okay, so that makes it my fault for not skating faster to get them, but still …
The three passes I gave, though, seemed to be on target. I didn’t notice any of the receivers having to stretch too far or really work to get to them. So I’m happy with that, because I’m realistic enough to know that 1) I’m not fast enough to skate with the puck and B) my shot sucks – so my best bet to help the team if I touch the puck is to pass it and it’ll be good to at least be accurate about it.
