Russian Circle Passing
January 2, 2010 by admin
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Contributor: Dennis Chighisola — Whitman, Massachusetts, USA
Drill Category: Skating, Passing, Pass Receiving, Attacking and Defending
Drill Description:
Comments: This is perhaps one of the most versatile drills I have ever used. In it’s basic form, Russian Circle Passing is a great up-tempo drill that includes fast skating, great puck movement, and any form of attack on net a coach chooses. Better yet, CoachChic.com members will be treated to numerous variations of this drill that include all sorts of offensive and defensive match-ups (please see the link to drill variations down below).
Benefits:
Again, this is a great up-tempo drill that incorporates fast skating, the need to provide good stick targets, and the need to connect on passes as receivers move through circular patterns.
Running the drill:
- In the basic set-up, skaters are lined-up along the boards and behind a blue line on both sides of the ice.
- The drill begins with one player skating (without a puck) around the center face-off circle and providing a good stick-target for the first player in the other line.
- The first player in the other line hits the circling player with a pass, and the pass receiver then continues on to attack the goal in any way the coach prescribes (either shooting or deking the goaltender).
- Upon making a pass, a player leaves his or her line to circle and receive a pass from the other line.
Obviously, this drill should be run so that the players circle to the left (as shown), and then to the right (by just moving the lines to the opposite side boards).
Click image below to see a short video on the basic drill. (CoachChic.com members may click on this link for numerous other Variations on Russian Circle Passing.)
At our home rink, the freshmen high school team refer to this as the “Hurricane Drill”….
Ozzy, I actually garnered the main set-up of that drill from an awesome Soviet hockey book about 30-years ago. (I couldn’t read a word, but at least the diagrams were universal!
)
Coach, I ran this drill last night with my Peewee team and it worked out great. It seemed simple enough as I explained it to them but challenged the minds of the players once we got started. I used it to continue to work on our passing issues and our shooting. I forced the players to take a shot at the top of the face-off circle after entering the zone to work on a powerful wrist shot.
Great to hear that, Curtis. And, you know, with kids in that age group, watching them skate through the pass patterns is a good way to check whether they’re giving steady stick-targets or not, especially on their backhands.
[...] Drill Category: Skating, Passing, Pass Receiving, Attacking, Screening, Deflecting, Rebounding and Goaltending Please first see the basic set-up of this drill as described under the free Drills section. For, from that basic format, some really awesome offensive and defensive variations have already been shown. (Click here for the basic drill, “Russian Circle Passing“.) [...]