Offensive Hockey: Finding Creative Ways to Improve Vision
Using body orientation tactics to increase vision and create more offense
The concept of puck protection is often framed in terms of getting one’s back and/or rear end into a defender’s hands. But while that may be great for keeping possession, it greatly limits ice vision and the ability to make a great immediate next play.
With this orientation, players have reduced vision and can’t effectively see what is behind them toward the threatening middle ice… Where the puck eventually needs to go!
Rather, players should find solutions to orient their bodies with the goal of having better vision. Players can keep their ice vision and great options available to them in many ways.
Let’s see an example from soccer and then an example from hockey to learn best practices.
Soccer Example
Traditionally a pass would go forward to a player with their back to goal. The only realistic option is to pass the ball back or to the side rather than being an immediate threat.
Innovative coaches and players found a better way to see the play and immediately be dangerous:
Below is Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta talking about this at a coaching seminar. The goal is to immediately progress play and be threatening… to apply pressure and create problems for the defense.
Hockey Example
One of many ideas to get you started on how you could apply this concept within ice hockey is the “back away zone entry.”
It’s an ode to the “Gretzky curl”, where you turn your back away from the net/middle, as the Winnipeg Jets’ Neal Pionk demonstrates below.
Instead, after gaining the offensive zone, watch how the Carolina Hurricanes’ Teuvo Teravainen drifts to the same spot on the ice but opens his body toward with his body open to the middle of the rink.
The defender then must decide whether to give him time or apply pressure. Either way, the attacking player has options and the puck carrier can quickly make the best decision.
This concept can be applied in many other ways to put the advantage in the attacking team’s favor. What can you come up with?
Further Reading