Typical Practice Plan Hour length

• Skating/Skills Drills (5-10mins)
• Passing/Flow Drills (10-20 mins)
• Battle Drills/Angling Drills, Odd/Even man rush Drills (10-20 mins)
• Systems (Breakouts/D Zone Postional play/ Forecheck) (10-20mins)
• Small Area Game (5-10mins)

For the first few practices it is important to set up some systems so they know where they should be and where they teammates should be. It will make the game a lot easier for them plus it won't look like just shinny hockey.

Example (Using the practice plan above)

• Practice 1 - Introduce first system. (ie. Forecheck)
• Practice 2 - Review Forecheck. Introduce second system. (ie. Breakouts)
• Practice 3 - Review Breakouts. Introduce third system. (Dzone Coverage)
• Practice 4 - Review Dzone Coverage.
• To finish off some practices especially the first 5 it is always good to have a controlled scrimmage(Blowing whistle and making them stop in their place to correct or enforce proper positioning) to reinforce the play you want to see.

If your practices are longer than an hour then you can add a drill or two on what you think your team needs to work on the most. The drills we chose to use are the ones we use the most with our teams. Each drill can be modified for different age groups and levels to make sure the kids are always being challenged. That being said we use a lot of the same drills with our U11 squad that we would use when we were playing PRO. It may take a little longer for them to get but they still end up getting it. An easy way to keep practices organized is to have proper jersey colours coordinating Lines. You could keep the D all one colour while having different colours for each Forward line. Makes things a lot easier when running any line drills.

Example Practice Plan below and Downloadable Practice Plan Template.