I love to bring a good competitive atmosphere to nearly all my drills, and this race really ups the competition among the players.

It’s a pretty basic setup where each team takes a side of the ice. You have a defender at the top of the circle, two forwards on the hash marks, a puck on the goal line, and another forward on the nearest offside faceoff dot. 

A coach is at center ice with more pucks. 

On the whistle, the defenders race for the puck with their feet pointing up the ice to avoid cheating and making bad blind passes. At the same time, the two forwards mimic a breakout by swinging low and opening up for a pass.

The defender will pass to the player along the boards, who will take a few strides and pass to the forward in the inside lane. Finally, that forward passes to the player on the faceoff dot. That puck is now officially dead, and the players on the dot are out of the play.

Whichever team makes a pass to the faceoff dot first wins the race and becomes the offense. The coach feeds a puck to them, and they take off into the attacking zone.

The losing team becomes the defense and must race down the ice for a 3-on-3 battle. The coach can let that battle run for as long or as short as they please before starting the next race.

This drill is a favorite among players and coaches because it works on breakouts, passing, speed, zone entry, and in-zone battles for both offense and defense.

As always, the players want to win, so they take it seriously. Bad passes and puck throwaways cost them, and they work harder to minimize those mistakes while keeping their speed up to win.