Hey everybody, Dwayne Blais here with the NSDA. Today, we’re going to work on wall play. So what we’re going to do is go through a little bit of a progression, going from one drill to the next and adding some different elements to it. But the biggest thing with wall work is the puck is on the wall a lot, or on the boards a lot, and ideally, we’d like our players to be able to pick it up with their sticks, whether you’re working with young kids, older players, or pro players. It’s a skill, and it’s something that we got to get some repetitions on.
- 🏒 Hockey players can enhance their wall play skills, particularly in picking up pucks from the boards.
- 🔄 The drill progression consists of three stages basic skill development, two-on-one play, and a defensive wall pick-up.
- 🚨 Coaches can customize and expand upon this drill to fit their team’s needs and skill levels.
See the PDF below for the diagrams and explanations of the progression, and download and print these to take with you for your next practice!
So the big thing is going through the technique on how to pick it up with our stick, and also working on our backhand side and our forehand side. Having players begin by picking it up with their skate on the boards is totally fine. So coming down the boards and picking it up with their skate, no problem at all.
But this will be a quick little three-progression drill, going from just working on the basic skill into a two-on-one. So what we’ll do is we’ll have players on both sides of the center ice circle like this, and you can go through this quick on the whistle. Once that player kind of reaches the blue line, you can hit the next whistle.
These players are going to come in, you can set them up on the outside of the circle like this, or you can set them up on the face-off dots right here if you want. If you have a larger group and you want to push them back a little bit, that’s fine as well. But we’ll get our players set up opposite each other.
So let’s say we go to the face-off dot or opposite circle, we’re going to take off on the whistle. The first player is going to come around like this, and the first player here is going to come around on this side right here. They’re going to come around; we’re going to have a coach in the corner down here, out of the way, so they’re not going to get hit with pucks. And this coach is just going to lightly rim pucks up the boards.
Alright, as players get older, we can rim that puck harder. We can move our coach over to this side and have a hard rim all the way around. But to start off, just a nice light rim up the boards, and that rim is going to come up, and this player right here has got to come down the ice, pick up that rim on the boards, and then they can finish with a shot.
And as I mentioned, as that player gets kind of around this area right here, the coach can blow the whistle again. We have a second player going on, a third player going on, and now we’ve got a little bit more momentum, more players moving. And the big thing here is, as that player’s coming in, as that player’s coming down the ice, make sure right here they’re shoulder checking, so they’re looking over their shoulder, seeing what’s available, scanning the ice, and then also trying to get that puck off the boards. So getting their body in a good position, not getting too tight to the boards, but staying off the boards a little bit, so they can use that stick to get that puck, and then take it to the net.
Alright, super simple. Get players opportunities to get reps on that, and get them a little bit comfortable with picking up that puck with their stick as they’re coming on the board.
Wall Play Progression Drill 2
So the same thing, the second part of this, we’re going to have our players back on the face-off dots like this, or again could be off the opposite sides of the circle, wherever you decide. Now we’re going to send two players, so two players are going to go at the same time. The first player is going to come around like this; the second player is going to be our shooter, and they’re going to come in. The same thing’s going to happen; we’re going to rim that puck off the boards.
Now this first player’s got to get that puck off the boards and find their shooter right in here that’s coming down the ice. So again, making that quick little play off the boards and then making that pass for a shooter. Now this player right here, as they get better, more experienced with it, you can have them pull the puck off the wall, try to get off the boards, cut back, and hit that player high. You can add some different stuff, under pressure, a third player kind of giving them a little bit of pressure on it.
But really simple, just making that, you know, shoulder checking as they come in here. So they’re shoulder checking, finding out where that support player is, making the play off the wall, moving it to that player in the middle. Alright, so now we got basically a two-on-zero, just getting a shot on that again.
Again, once these players round and get to that blue line, you can blow that whistle, the next two, the next two players will take off and do the same thing. And the third progression of this, you’d have the same thing, players lined up down this side, the same idea.
Drill Progression 3
Now again, you can be creative with this, and you can tweak this a little bit. But now we’re going to add a little bit of a two-on-one to it. So the first player, same start, first player’s coming around here, second player is going to be our shooter. Puck is going to get rung up; you’re going to get it off the boards, give it to our shooter. The shooter’s going to shoot right after that; these players are going to curl down low on the opposite side. And now we’re going to pick up this puck off a rim, going out of our defensive zone. So now the coach is going to rim a second puck around this way. Now these players got to make a play; we got our support player coming in nice and low and helping out. And then we got our third player in line here is going to come out, gap up, and now he’s taking them down two-on-one down this side.
So now we got our player who picked up our rims jumping in the play, and we had a defenseman taking them down two-on-one on the opposite side. So just a simple little rim drill, just working on picking up pucks off the boards, now into a two-on-zero at the net, just getting that puck off the board, so the shooter, and then turning it into a two-on-zero there, a little bit of a defensive zone wall pick up here, and then down into a two-on-one.
So a simple way to kind of work on our wall work but progress through two, three, or four different stages without having to move our players around too much. Alright, try it out, and again, be creative, add whatever you want to it, take out whatever you want. But you can always take any drill that you see and kind of customize it for your team or your group. If it’s a small group, you could do this similar drill structure out of one end, half end, or out of even one corner if you wanted to, just by being creative and coming up with some new ideas.
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