Something we could do?

Would anyone be interested in a discussion where we hammer out some strategy and have some diagrams to look at of things like, forecheck, power play setup, pk, breakout, faceoffs? I know I tend to as of right now just head for open ice, and this leads me to run into others when things get hectic. We all know what we're doing, so I don't think it would be hard on us to implement some things. Let me know if you want me to post some stuff, thanks guys your input is appreciated.

I think we definately need to discuss some general strategy and some set plays. The last 4-5 games I've played I've noticed that too many pucks are being thrown into the middle and getting picked off.

For that reason, here is an image of the ice for people to draw up plays, so we can discuss them and then bring them to the practice ice to test out.

Here's a play I think is fairly effective off the rush.



Let me explain this play. First, each coloured circle represents the player position on our team. The black lines are passes, the orange lines are the routes players take after the passes.

In this play, either D-man passes the puck to the center who is going up the middle. Either winger will be skating on their side towards the offensive zone. The center at this point has two passing options depending on who's open (let's say in this case the right winger). The cneter passes it to the right winger who gains the zone. At this point the center skates a parallel route to the right winger. What this will do is:

a) the right winger skating down the boards will draw the LD of the other team towards him to cut the lane to the front/back of the net.
b) The LW of the other team will back-check
c) The C of the other team will skate down the middle to cut off the pass to the center of the ice.

At this pont, the RW stops, which will draw in the opposing teams C, LW and LD, and open up a passing lane to the center who is following late on the play. The LW will skake to the net. The center receives the puck and now has a lane to the net where they can shoot (The other teams C, LW, and LD should be to the right side of the center, and the RD and RW should be covering players on the left side) or set up a down low 2 on 1 with our LW.

Fifty, we should get those who are going to be primarily on Handfulla together and talk some strategy tonight. I think we should also start posting in our forum so we don't take over Mouthfullas forum. We should also start to talk about who is going to play where on a regular basis so we can practice in those spots and get used to each other. I think this would help a lot and keep the winning streaks long and the losing streaks short. See ya tonight

I like that break out play. King had a solid one too that he, JTime, Garbage, and myself worked on in a practice when I was playing RW. I'll try to draw it up it's pretty simple and involves a D-Man joining the rush and a Winger covering. I think we need to play together a bit though, the chemistry between 50 and Irish is pretty solid but I'm fairly unfamiliar with all of you. I also started playing awful as the night wore on. I think our biggest problem last night was too many turnovers which I was pretty guilty of, but I know alot of times I turned it over it was because I was hesitating on where to pass or whether or not I wanted to dump. From now on I'll probably just send it down low when I'm even starting to overthink the situation.

DaM1lkMan596 wrote:

I like that break out play. King had a solid one too that he, JTime, Garbage, and myself worked on in a practice when I was playing RW. I'll try to draw it up it's pretty simple and involves a D-Man joining the rush and a Winger covering. I think we need to play together a bit though, the chemistry between 50 and Irish is pretty solid but I'm fairly unfamiliar with all of you. I also started playing awful as the night wore on. I think our biggest problem last night was too many turnovers which I was pretty guilty of, but I know alot of times I turned it over it was because I was hesitating on where to pass or whether or not I wanted to dump. From now on I'll probably just send it down low when I'm even starting to overthink the situation.

When in doubt, dump it. I think that is something we could change, I know I could, sometimes we try to make too many passes to get into the zone and we either turn it over or set someone up to get smushed by the other teams defenseman. There's no shame in dump and chase hockey, I would rather they have to fight through the neutral zone on our terms rather than force our d-men to defend unnecessary odd-man rushes.

Power play setup we could use to calm us down, whoever is more comfortable being the pivot man on the point between the D should take it, I just used the colors as a reference.

Here we cycle as normal but with the goal of setting up one of these one-timer opportunities.

Great ideas. Ive found that using practice mode is the best place to do a walkthrough and hash it out. We can even go 5 on 5 together and throw some d in the mix for a better visual

This is kind of a fun defensive zone face off breakout. A bit of trick play that I've used with Chicken by accident a few times. Worse comes to it it's a clear out of the zone.



It's called the "Alley Oop"

- Basically you need a left handed D-Man at the back end of the face off.
- Centerman wins it back and D-Man skates it around the back of the net (skating indicated by black lines)
- RW takes off up the boards
- C and RW head to their usual breakout positions (This will help open up the play for Irish's breakout above) if the alley oop isn't open
- D-Man launches a lobbed puck toward the opposite boards looking to hit the streaking RW (Orange line indicating the pass)
- RW takes it in to zone and has options to bring it in deep to start the cycle, go hard on net, look for the C and LW crashing.

This is more of a desperation play, works well against teams with aggressive D-Men, you can also substitute the RW with the C on PK situations to use as a clearout/break out play to maybe catch an aggressive PP Unit off gaurd.

I should also mention, the LD moves back into the RD position for a reset option if nothing's open.