(upbeat music) - Welcome back to another short shifts episode. We got 10 minutes on the clock. Jeffrey J. Hulovecchio has no idea what the topic is gonna be. I'm really excited for this one today though. Jeffrey J. Hulio, you ready to rock and roll? - Hi. - All right, here we go. I wanna talk about transition defensively. I wanna talk about transition defensively. We have the puck, we turn it over. We have the puck, we shoot it. The other team gets possession. I want to talk about what is really important when we are going from offense to defense in the game of hockey. Ready, set, go. - Where are we turning it over? In our D zone, in the neutral zone, in the offensive zone. - Let's go, neutral zone. Since that's what every coach loves to talk about is turnovers in the neutral zone. - I would say after you turn it over, the first thing you gotta do, turn your stick back towards your own net. First things first, like let's order of operations. Get your stick facing your net, going back down the middle of the ice. Just trying to make it harder for them to make seam passes. Make them make a sauce pass if you're in the lane at all. Maybe you knock a puck down. I can't tell you how many pucks I broke up passes or it goes off your stick and then it turns into a grenade and it's not just an easy offensive play. Just because when you turn, you moved your stick quickly back the other way. And if all five, well, if three out of the five guys, 'cause the D men are gonna be facing forward, the three forwards are doing that. It's three more sticks that make up three, let's say it's three feet each, nine more feet of ice that they can't just freely pass through. So first of all, get your sticks going back the right way. Second of all, sprint, sprint back. Don't watch, sprint, not standing up straight, not cement legs, boots not moving on the train tracks. Move your friggin' feet, right? Every millisecond that you get back quicker is gonna be a harder play for them to make, whether it's hitting a trailer or hitting a guy across two on one or anything like that. So move your feet, number three, talk to each other. You have to identify, where am I going? Am I the first guy back? Am I going back hard, straight to the house? Like, what is my job? And that's obviously gonna be dictated by whatever your team's defensive scheme is and planning when you come through the back check. But basically everybody wants you to come back to the middle to protect the house first and then disseminate from there and talk to your D. D should be talking the forwards because the D can see the whole play. They can see what's behind you even, the D men on the other team coming up the ice too. They can be pointing, hey, you take him, I got him and things like that. So you gotta be talking, stick, move your feet, identify, communicate your identification, who's going where and get back hard. Those are the first few things I would say off the hop right away. What else? - I love that. Well, first thing I wanna point out is for all the coaches listening, I asked the question and what does Vex come back with? It wasn't structure, it was habits and details. If you wanna be really good in defensive transition, you have to be really good at the habits and details. It's once that puck is turned over, you stop, you put your stick back and you take three heart struts and then you talk, you know, like take away, get back through the middle of the ice first. Like those are, those things are so much more important than any structure that you're gonna have, right? So I think that's, as I was listening to you, that was the first thing that came to mind is like, as coaches, so many times when we think about defense, we think about like structure, but like really the habits and the details come first before the structure. If you can get those right, then you're gonna be good. - Specifically that one that you just said, stop three heart strides. I don't care where you are on the ice, stop three heart strides. If you can make that a habit in your game, like it will change so much of your game. It will change so much, 'cause I used to loop even on the penalty kill, you know, when I was younger and I didn't understand it and I'd go up at the guy on the point. Instead of stop stick pressure, come back quick. So now I'm in a better position as I'm, you know, eyes up, making a decision, taking in information, but instead of watching and then moving, first thing, bang, stop stick, three heart strides back. It will literally allow you to play way more offense, 'cause you will just be in a better defensive position. - And you'll get all the time. Yeah, all the time. I don't think I started really doing that so second year juniors, maybe third, probably second year juniors. And then that's-- - You were playing for Hastings, it was definitely-- - Oh, 100%. - 100% else you had been in the stands. - I was, I wasn't standing first here, so the second year I started doing that. But that was the rest of my career. That was turnover, even offensively, you know, whatever. Like boom, stop three heart strikes. It will change your game. Coaches, hammer that, players, listen, I'm telling you, make that a habit. - Yeah, all right, so I have a couple things here. One, I'm gonna talk more specifically towards youth hockey coaches, and the other one is a little bit more specifically to like higher level type. So when we talk about youth hockey, one of the things that I hate when youth hockey coaches talk to kids about managing the puck. I hate that because like I wanna encourage kids to make plays, make plays, make plays. However, there's a caveat to that. And this is something that I think is really important to communicate with your players. If you want me to trust you in making plays and making mistakes, I have to trust you that when that happens, you're gonna back check your butt off and being a great team defensively in transition. That comes before I'm gonna give you the green light to really be creative, right? It can't be one or the other. It can't be one or the other. If you're so defensive and you don't allow kids to make plays, they're not gonna get any better. But if you give them carte blanche to make plays and there's no repercussion, you know, if there's no work to get back to remedy it, then that's a recipe for disaster as well because then all you're gonna do is play defense because where do you turn a lot of pucks over when you're making plays? It's in the neutral zone. So like as a coach, I think the best way, and I'm not saying this is right or wrong, but the communication of what you're trying to accomplish, I think is really important here, make plays. I want you to make plays. I want you to be creative. I don't want you always dumping pucks in. But if I'm gonna allow you to do that, you have to work hard on defense. I will take away your ability to be creative and make plays if you're not back checking. Because if all we're doing is turning pucks over, that's not fun to play either 'cause we're just gonna be playing defense all game, right? So I think that like, that give and take, and that's how I would communicate it, like, hey, do it. But when you do it and it doesn't work, I gotta know that I, are you there? - Oh, there we go, lost you for a second. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and I love that. And guess what, you gotta practice that with the younger ages. You gotta build that into your transition drills. Quick whistle, turn over, everybody sprint back, stick. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. You know, like just build that in. And that could also be part of your quote unquote, conditioning in practice. Now you don't gotta line guys up on the line, make them hate life and hockey. And it's just part of it. And that's something that we did in Omaha too. - You know, it's a great way to get in a little conditioning to also do this mentality in your first couple drills. If you're doing flow drills, after you shoot the puck, you have to stop in front of the net and then you have to sprint back to your line. - Yeah, yeah. - Right? It's a simple and easy way to do that. Now you're getting a little bit more conditioning. And that's a bagger, especially like if you're doing a drill that there's some tempo, there's some pace to it, and then you gotta stop, and then you gotta sprint back to the line. Like your heart rate will get up doing that for sure. - I think that's probably one of the smartest things that I learned from Hastings. I mean, I learned so much from him, obviously about details in hockey, but we did that every single drill, three years in a row. Every single two-on-ones, anything. The whistle blows, the drill's over. If you're at the net, you stop, and we called checking out, and you have to stop and sprint back through the near blue line. Not to the line, to the near blue line, no matter where you are near blue line. And that also just reinforces that habit. Oh, turnover, bang, stop, go. Stick, chase it, you know? And we're the most in shape team, third period team, you know, every single year. - Yeah, yeah, I love that. And then we got a minute left here. So the other thing I wanna talk about is more for like the higher levels, and that is how quickly can you get back into your defensive structure? So I talked to Barry Smith, right? Barry Smith, one step in Stanley Cups as a coach. She's a mentor of mine, and we talk about this a lot. Like once that puck goes from your hands to the other team's hands, how quickly can you get back in your defensive structure offensively? How quickly can you get into your support, into your spots of support? And defensively, how quickly can you get back into your structure? 'Cause at the end of the day, you talk about offensively, we wanna go north, we wanna go quick, why? Because we wanna do that before they can get into their structure. Well, if we think about that defensively, the quicker we get into our structure, the less they're gonna be able to counter you in transition because you're in your spots. When you're in your structure, it's so much harder, right? So much harder to create anything offensively. So yeah, I love like, I think the defensive transition is such a big part of winning, and such a big part of development when you're younger. Like, man, you know, how hard is it to play against teams that are really like this? There's nothing worse with your men. Share the show. Share the show. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)
On today’s SHORT SHIFTS episode, Toph wants to talk about defensive transition and what’s most important when going from offense to defense.
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