Defenseman Specific Speed

Hockey is a sport that is played a high pace. It is easy to tell that speed and acceleration are important qualities to have. The faster players are usually the better players. I think that every hockey player should look to increasing their speed.

In our off-season program, each day we perform drills off-ice to help enhance our acceleration ability on the ice. We will have separate days dedicated to linear speed and lateral speed. These are drills that are done to emphasize first step quickness/acceleration. Our linear acceleration drills are done in a straight ahead fashion. Our lateral acceleration drills are going to be done with an emphasis on the crossover step laterally before we turn and run straight. Our philosophy is that all of our players, including goalies, are going to work on getting faster. (Our goalies however will not crossover, they will actually push off the outside of their foot before they turn and sprint on our lateral days).

Recently, while giving a presentation to a group of hockey coaches, the question was asked to me "Why don't you do any backwards work with your defensemen?" Since the coach who asked the question is a former NHL defenseman, I immediately thought he was on to something. Another coach also commented on this (another former NHL defensemen) and gave me the impression that he was thinking "How could you not do any backwards sprinting with your defensemen?"

This conversation sparked my curiosity and I realized pretty quickly that the coaches were probably right. These were 2 different former Stanley Cup winning defensemen who played the game for a long time, and were also men I respect as coaches. The defensemen in our off-season program should do some backwards running. Although we do backpedal in our dynamic warm up, they may need some position-specific backwards acceleration drills.

I am not a hockey coach and I don't pretend to be. However, when I watch our defensemen, there is a lot of backwards skating taking place. For example, when the opposing team is on the attack in the neutral zone, defensemen are skating backwards. Sometimes the opposing teams will chip the puck by the defenseman and he will then have to turn from backwards skating to forward skating to go and retrieve the puck. When I see these types of plays happen, I immediately think of defensive backs in football. It is not uncommon for defensive backs to backpedal for 3 steps and then turn and run. When I watch our defensemen, they take 2-3 backwards strides and before they turn. It will all depend on the gap between him and the opposing player and when the puck is chipped by.

Now, backwards running isn't the same EXACT biomechanics as backwards skating. However, forward sprinting isn't the EXACT biomechanics as skating, but we still sprint on land to get faster on the ice and it works.

As a result, I wanted to come up with a drill to help get our defensemen faster going backwards and turning. We won't be spending a great amount of time on these drills, but these are ways to include some backwards running for our defensemen.

We will add this drill after our linear acceleration drills even though it could be classified as a multi-directional since turning is involved.  We will do 3 backpedal steps and then turn and sprint.  We will do a total of 6 reps where we turn each direction 3 times.