If a shot can beat your goalie from the wall, then your goalie has some 'splainin to do. 

That's why the focus on wall play is more prevalent than ever. Teams are too good at defending, defencemen and defensive forward habits are so dialled in these days, that players on the attack need to be armed with tools to take the puck from a position of relative safety, the boards, into the dangerous area of the ice, the guts. Fortunately there are tips and tricks offensive teams can use to get the puck into the middle of the ice or the slot to dramatically increase their chances of scoring. 

"How do we incorportate those skills into practices?"

One of Kim's drills during her presentation at TCS Live '24 in Ann Arbour focused on breakouts. The number one skill for Kim is scanning - when a centre swings slow and low for a breakout, they need to scan the ice to identify where pressure is coming from. This is a long way from the opponent's net, right? It is, but for me, the attack starts on the defensive zone. There are only two conditions in hockey: attacking and defending. Defending starts in the offensive zone when you don't have the puck, attacking starts in the defensive zone. If your D or centres can get the puck off the boards, in this case the end boards in the defensive zone, it kickstarts the attack and makes offence at the other end possible. You won't score from your own zone, but you'll never get to the offensive zone if you can't breakout properly. 

In Kim's presentation she used a simple exercise to get the puck off the wall, and it was interesting to see some of the challenges the players had.

As coaches sometimes we're guilty of wanting to get everyone involved in a drill. It makes sense, we want to maximize the ice time, but habits like wall play are so crucial to the overall game, the overall process, that it's valuable to take the time to reinforce them in a controlled setting. 

Check out this snippet from Weiss' presentation and view the full video here a membership to The Coaches Site.