"Hello, Canada, and hockey fans in the United States and Newfoundland." - Foster Hewitt
Welcome back to another journal entry of our stories about shooting instruction and our journey to build a second location coming soon!
One of the things I need to do to grow Slapshot Alley is share my experiences of coaching with my new coaches that I have hired. Teaching shooting has not always been easy. At BASE Hockey I saw coaches come and go all the time. It can be a grind and if you aren't aware of some issues and how to correct them, teaching shooting can be frustrating. But I have figured out everything and now it is a rewarding job to teach kids who struggle and get them ripping shots into the top corners.
Correcting the SLICE
The hardest part of teaching the hockey shot is correcting the slice. Many players have this habit. When I was a kid, I had this habit. It's very difficult to correct once you have it. It's like a reflex and to correct it, you need extreme focus.
Yesterday, one of my regulars came in. Marcus is 7 years old, happy and has a great attitude. He listens to me and executes whatever I tell him to do. He is very coachable and I'm always happy to work with him.
So he starts to warm-up his shot and the shots were slipping. Every shot. He was "slicing" his shots "into the woods". The term for the "slice" is from golfing when the golfer hits the ball and it starts going forward, but then spins and ends up flying off to the side... usually into the trees. The hockey slice is when the blade opens up and instead of pushing the puck in a straight line, the blade goes on a diagonal angle and the puck rolls off the blade from heel to toe and it will miss to the side or just skip along the ice.
Marcus started at Slapshot Alley last summer and he learned how to correct the open blade in two lessons. Here is a photo of his first and second lesson:
So Marcus learned how to correct the slice. Here are the focus points that we taught him:
Tilt the blade to "cup the puck"
Press down to keep the blade strong, and prevents any twisting
Bend your knees to create a "closed" blade angle cupping overtop of the puck
Lean forward to get overtop of the puck at the release point (if you're leaning backwards, the blade will eventually open too much)
Rotate the wrists quickly at the release point
Slow down if you can't control it
Gradually get faster as you start to improve
The player doesn't necessarily need to focus on all of these things, but it's good to work on them one at a time for a couple of weeks and then over time with enough repetitions, the magic happens and the slice disappears.
However, if the player is young and immature, it is easy to revert back to old habits if they are not focusing when they practice. It's a good idea to teach the parents what the issue is too so they can keep an eye on the player at home.
Correcting the slice is definitely the most common issue for shooting technique with beginners, so I will do a series of journal entries on correcting the slice because we see it everyday and it's always awesome to see someone figure it out.
Later Skater
Coach Andre
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