Tips and tricks to help you be a better defense player.
How to score off rebounds
Back when I played, there were a lot of skills I didn’t excel at. I didn’t have the quickest feet, I had a very average slap-shot and I didn’t have any fancy dangles.
But I sure was good at scoring off rebounds in tight. I probably scored 80% of my 50+ goals in college off rebounds – or as my dad used to call them, “garbage goals”. I really understood how to pre-load my stick, position my body and read how the puck was coming off the goalie, which allowed me to get effective shots off quickly.
Here’s a drill I used with my team last night to work on scoring off rebounds.
NOTE: This is the 2nd progression of the drill. In the first progression, players shot the puck off their forehand. Here they are pulling to their backhand. Definitely start with the forehand snap-shot version first. There are infinite progressions off this drill – but this is a great place to start.
Here are couple awesome features of this drill:
– The players get a ton of reps – we ran it with 4 players at a time for 8 minutes (it was one of a few stations). Each player took at least 30-40 shots.
– There’s no goalie so you don’t have to wait for them to reset between shots
– It takes up very little space and doesn’t need the crease – you could set up multiple stations of it all over the ice (but your rink would need a lot of extra nets)
– The rebounds are fairly easy to pick up and predictable so you get a lot of successful reps
This last point is an important one because it can be hard to run drills for scoring off rebounds when the goalies are in. As a coach, I don’t really like the idea of telling my goalies they have to give up a rebound on a shot, let alone telling them where to place that scripted rebound. I also don’t love tiring them out in a super repetitive drill with tons of shots either – especially when they don’t have any defenders helping them out.
So if you’re looking to get your players tons of reps to work on scoring off rebounds, without tiring out or pissing off your goalies, this is the drill for you.
Keep Working Hard and Dreaming BIG.
Your friend and coach,
Kim
Kim McCullough, MSc, YCS
Director & Founder, Total Female Hockey
Check out www.totalfemalehockey.com for more!
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