Хоккей. Большинство: вход в зону

Gaining and Maintaining Possession off the Entry

When explaining breakout options to your team, it is important to discuss how the players set up once they are in the offensive zone. Where do they move the puck to get into the formations they have practiced? Many penalty-killing units focus on denying the setup and prepare different tactics to regain possession of the puck once the power play unit is in the zone. Listed here are three ways to ensure that the players are able to set up after a dump-in or clean entry.

1. Reversing the puck. When under pressure as he enters the zone, F1 stops or delays and then reverses the puck back up the boards where he came from. This is successful against teams whose strong-side forward comes down low on the entry (figure 5.8). D1 must get up to the offensive blue line quickly to be ready for this play.

2. Switching sides. As F1 enters the zone, he sees that all four penalty killers are on one side of the ice, so he immediately passes across the ice to F3. F1 will have to thread the puck through traffic, but it may be the only option to get immediate uncontested possession (figure 5.9).

3. Recovering the dump-in. The key to recovering the dump-in is to get all three forwards quickly to the puck. Once the puck is stopped and the forwards are in a battle for possession, F1, F2, or F3 should rim or bank the puck back to the blue line as soon as they get it on their stick. The defensemen should be ready at the corners of the blue line and expect the quick rim pass. The penalty-killing team will probably have three players in the corner for the battle, so this will give the power play time to set up (figure 5.10).