I have a pet peeve. I hate seeing coaches jump into drills for "their turn" or when they feel the need to show them how the drill is done right. If they can't get it without a demonstration, it's time to rethink that drill. 

I get it, there are times when you're short on kids and a line is missing someone, or you're going with an individual kid to help them understand their role a bit better, but as coaches we don't need to be demonstrating a drill.

Let kids try, let kids fail.

Explaining the drill

Best case, explain the drills before practice to your leaders on the team. This doesn't work at all ages, or with all teams, but it's a great way to have people ready to demonstrate and get their own rep in. 

When possible, avoid a whiteboard, I am not a huge fan and kids mostly have a hard time following. But you don't have to necessarily go to yourself to explain their role. As kids line up for their drill or get ready to go, explain what each person is doing and then let them go.

Did they get it wrong? Stop them, explain what happened and either let them go again or send the next kids. 

Intensity

If you're players are not going through the drill with enough game-like intensity, that's our fault as coaches, not theirs. Your drill isn't naturally pushing intensity, so why would they fake it? 

Drills should bring out competitiveness in every rep, if it's not, then change the drill. 

Drills shouldn't need that much explaining. In fact, reconsider "drills" to begin with

Too often we come up with, or run drills that require too much explanation, telling a kid where to go and when, what move to make, and how to make it.

Throw this idea out. Box drills should be used as sparingly as possible or not at all. Open your practices up. 

Use constraint led practices and games. Give the players a goal, and then a constraint (example: you can only shoot the puck on net if you've skated or passed it to a teammate below the goal line), and leave the rest up to them on how to get there.

Too many steps or instructions coaches out the creativity and creates robots on the ice. They need to be able to adapt to changing situations, not suddenly start looking for the cones to skate around or ensure they do the same pivot every time. 

The game is fluid and never the same, make sure your practices are the same.

We all love hockey and we all love getting involved, but practice isn't for us. If we demonstrate the drill, they are going to copy what we did because they think that will make us happy. We aren't creating out clones, we are striving to make something better.