Defensemen Development: Building & Maintaining Defensive Posture
How to play big regardless of size
Today, we’re continuing our defensive skating development series. For those who missed it, here’s Part One: Defensemen Skating Development: Keeping Clean Feet.
When it comes to skating posture, there are two common issues:
Feet are too wide, and you have to ‘move to move’.
Posture is too low so players eyes and back angle are down/over
Narrow Skating Base vs Wide Skating Base
One of the things scouts often talk about when evaluating defensemen and their skating is “four-way mobility.” This means the ability to skate and react in all directions (forward, backward, left, and right).
A player must have a great base for movement to achieve the power to move well in all four directions effectively. When a player is too wide in their skating base, they often get stuck on their inside edges and have to “move to move.” The players who have great four-way mobility have one thing in common… a narrow skating base.
Ideally, players want to be in a glide phase where they can access both edges. Here is an example of an at-the-puck defender getting too wide / stuck on his inside edges thus leading the player to being completely unbalanced before being able to recover.
Rather we want to get our feet underneath us in a narrow base.
Keeping Your Feet Underneath Your Weight
We can see that wide feet are an issue. A similarity in many elite skaters is a narrow base where a player’s feet are underneath their upper body.
Here is a simple activity with a marked line on the ice where the skater is recovering back underneath his body after each stride.
Next, we see a kick-back start, again with the focus on keeping clean feet that maintain great weight distribution and allow for great gliding so the skater can easily adjust.
More Benefits of a Narrow Base
Beyond the benefits listed above, another great benefit of a narrow base is that it minimizes the space in the triangle, the space between the toe caps of the hockey skates, and the heel of the stick.
A common issue with taller players is that they get too low and wide, allowing opponents to easily work the space in their triangle. Defensemen who play narrower make it difficult to play through them and make you go around them.
There are times to go low and wide, but those should be intentional. For example, going for contact or poke-check.
Keeping Upright Posture… Don’t Play Small
Defensemen, and skaters in general, mostly look down and look at the puck! Those players are taking in the wrong information. The puck itself doesn’t tell you anything, but an opponent’s body language though can tell you a lot. Ensuring posture and eyes are up is critical for players to take in and analyze play.
Players that don’t take in enough information have the game feel like it happens very fast. Looking around is key to slowing the perception of speed. The better posture, the more a player’s eyes are up and the more information can be received. Players with great posture have the game perceptually slowing down to them.
Posture often is over the toes and reaching. This leads to wide bases and crossing of feet… both which are not what we want to be doing.
With a focus on upright posture (hint, going down an eyelet helps), information can come in and the mind can start processing. Upright posture increases the field of vision naturally to places that give useful information.
Further Reading