#Itrain hockey forward skating pro#

If you’re on the rink with pro hockey players in the summer, chances are you’re pretty good yourself. So sure, with no coach on the bench, everyone can play a little more pond hockey, where you try to score and stay on the ice for chances both ways. Some players make millions playing 10 minutes a night. Some guys get paid to dump it in and forecheck and hit and get off the rink quickly. To make it, many players have to play heavily coached hockey, and that’s not a brand of hockey anyone actually set out to play as a kid. It’s hockey, and it’s a high-risk game, but that doesn’t mean those risks need to be taken by ankles in August two hours before a tee time.ĭO enjoy some off-season playing-style luxuries. When you wind up from distance with legs in the way, again, you’re forcing the defenders to get out of the way to protect themselves because you’re not courteous enough to do it for them. Shooting through screens is a great way to score in hockey, but that’s not an option in summer shinny until about September, when players are truly ramping it up for camp. What that means is the way they score in-season is they way they try to score in-shinny, which is Not Bright. But, a lot of those people can post a higher number with their slapshot on a radar gun than they could on a standardized IQ test. There are always a couple players who are professionals purely because they have all the raw tools: they’re almost certainly big, they can bomb it, maybe they skate great. Be smart - keep it away from high and mid-net - but fire away. But, in general, you can’t play ice hockey goaltender with a “no shooting for the top corner” rule, so yeah man. Goalies aren’t trying to get hit in the head in the summer. So as long as the one you’re shooting on is at your ability level or higher, let it buck. Goalies don’t wear less equipment in summer hockey than they do in-season.

You’re saying “You be the bigger person to keep us all safe, cause I’m not willing to do that.” If you’re driving a D-man wide on a one-on-one and cutting in hard, forcing that D-man to either hit you or push you into the goalie, you’re using effort as a means of showing others up, because you put them in a position where they have to let you go (or risk injury to you and the goalie). Nobody wants an honest attempt at a net-front box-out from a D-man in these games, as those involve cross-checks and anger and in turn, pain. There’s a fine line between working hard to keep the integrity of the game going, and going in after loose pucks with the intent of winning them at all costs. So yes backcheck a bit, yes defend that one-on-one with some vigor, yes pass it hard and shoot it to score. Not trying results in a meaningless show of going through the motions, miming hockey-like conditions, rather than giving everyone the chance to improve. Hockey doesn’t function that way, or it ends up looking like the NFL pro bowl. You cannot be the “This is summer hockey, it doesn’t matter, so I’m not even gonna try” guy. Cause I assure you, it’s not as simple as “Do your best.” I’ve written about those years before, but this time I thought I’d break it down into five simple do’s and don’ts just in case you, too, should find yourself in that situation. That meant being A) quite bad in that game, and B) being sadly short on the etiquette that comes with participating in those skates. I was a measly junior A hockey player - a pretty OK one, I should note - but I started in that game as a junior player nonetheless. The years all blend together, as I’d skate there many years after, but needless to say the best 20 skaters between the two teams would’ve assembled a formidable NHL team at the time. I first started skating there around 2002, which in Kelowna at the time meant young Canadian Olympians were well represented there, with Duncan Keith and Shea Weber and Dany Heatley and - on the very rare occasion - Jarome Iginla and Carey Price.

#Itrain hockey forward skating full#

At around 19 or 20 years old, I found myself invited to skate in a summer shinny game that was packed full of pros, mostly by luck (I had a personal relationship with one of the players unrelated to hockey).