Stick handling drills that can improve your game!

We have all witnessed great hockey players as they show off their mastery of countless stickhandling skills and control the puck from side to side and from front to back around their entire body while manoeuvring past opposing players and eventually the goalie. If you have ever wondered how to improve stickhandling and add speed and control to your game, there are several tips that you can work on with the use of the stick handling plank, the on and off ice training tool that will take your hockey skills to a new level.

Hockey players can use the stick handling plank to improve their technique, precision and skill and develop a great set of hockey hands. It is most important when working through stickhandling drills that you maintain soft hands. Use your top hand for maneuvering the puck and the bottom hand for shooting and passing. By practicing these stickhandling drills, you can practice and learn how to improve stickhandling and take your skills to new heights by passing the puck side to side from your forehand to backhand under the stick handling plank.

Use alone or attach several stick handling planks together with couplers that are included in your kit to create your own custom configurations. Pass the puck through the obstacle course as a stickhandling drill that will sharpen your ability to work the puck around in a real game situation. You can easily link two planks together in a “T” shape to practice your figure 8 puck handling and control the puck in a forward and backward motion as well as from left to right. This move improves your stickhandling speed and precision in a variety of different positions so you can maintain puck possession in different areas of the rink.

Speed and accuracy in your stick handling is the way to open your game so every time you practice these puck handling drills that become the game skills, make sure you are working on moving the puck faster and faster. You can then begin to practice your puck handling drills with your head up to increase your ability to feel the puck with your stick and develop quick hands. For an added challenge, perform these drills with a partner to force yourself to be more aware of your surroundings.

At only two pounds, it’s easy to take the stick handling training aid anywhere as the best on and off ice hockey stick handling tool. The plank sections measures 2′ long, are made strong and sturdy so they won’t bend and are solid enough to be used to form straight lines for stick handling drills. Set two planks approximately five feet apart then practice your wide dekes that you can incorporated into your game and leave your opponents behind.

When you are ready, add a great toe drag to your stick handling drills and learn how to improve stickhandling to deke out an opposing player and increase your goal count. Place the puck out in front of you on your forehand and when the defenseman comes in to take it, pull the puck back with the toe of the stick and maneuver around him and down the ice. Practice a variation of these stick handling drills by tilting your stick so that the heel of the blade goes over the top of the puck then drag it back before you maneuver around and away from your opponent.

You can also use the stick handling plank to work on your saucer pass, practice passing the puck so that it moves through the air flat much like a flying saucer. This puck handling drill will teach you to make a pass that is very difficult to intercept by opposing players and when it lands, it will lay flat on the ice and easy for your teammate to control.

For additional training on or off the ice, the stick handling plank is a flexible tool that you can use alone or with other hockey training equipment. Connect the stick handling plank to the stickhandling snake, a 10′ long section of the same material that has a bent configuration to allow hockey players to work on stickhandling drills that have never considered before. If you have ever wondered how to improve stickhandling when ice isn’t available, you can use a shooting mat or shooting tiles with the stick handling balls or off ice hockey pucks in conjunction with the stick handling planks to keep your skills sharp.

The purest moment of life was waking up to the feeling of the cold seeping through the walls and the tiny cracks in the windows, knowing it was time. Rising from bed stretching off the long nights slumber slowly moving to the window seeing a majestic view of the frozen water. The glorious view is unmeasurable to any other sight in the world. Seeing the clear winter sky with the sun rising over the horizon shinning on the ice. I sometimes wonder if anyone else could feel this joy about smooth black ice across a frozen lake.

Ice so nice you almost want to keep it untouched because its too amazing. Looking out your window on those days are the moments in life you remember and wish to go back to. Then quickly catching yourself looking at it in awe you realize its not a dream, its real and its all yours. After throwing on your team sweats and a nice tuque you go into the frozen garage grabbing your skates and twig. Heading out the door your engulfed by the morning freeze. The air that cools deep in your lungs and takes the breath right out. Walking down to pond level you finally see the greatest sight you have ever seen.

The frozen pond has no flaws. No snow to shovel, no hazards to fix, just one thing to do, skate it. As you lace’em up eager to skate, you get a call from a your best bud, “Hey is it ready?” You smile and try to say yeah but he already knows and hangs up before you can respond. Then your finally set, you make the first step on the ice hesitating to make a full stride because you never know about falling in, because you remember that one time. But its just right, you blast off with your first stride going full speed across the lake. All you hear is the saturday morning silence of the neighborhood and the crunching of your steel gliding across the ice. The kind of crunching you only here on the pond, not in an ice arena. Skating across the ice you feel the cold wind streaming off your face and your heart pumping.

This is the feeling of pure beauty on the pond and nothing else matters except the moment your in right then. That’s Pure As Pond Ice, you can be anyone you want, with the freedom to play as you wish. The pond is an endless rink where you can send a perfect saucer to the other side or raise the cup like your favorite pro. No limits, no boards to contain you and no pressure of coaches or statistics. Just you and the game, the game you love. After a good solo skate and some nice snipes your bud shows up and more follow. Throw the sticks in the middle, pick the rules and go at it. Playing through the afternoon, till sweat freezes around your hat. Till your skates feel like they somehow became a part of your body and your toes feel like one. After hundreds of dangles, diggers, laughs, snipes and pond games your exhausted.

The sun sets across the lake as you head into the warm house knowing your time was well spent. After taking off your skates you feel your toes thawing out and you cringe in pain, but at the same time its a pain of accomplishment. Go Grab yourself some sauce, grub, then indulge cause you just spent the day playing the best game in the world and you love it. Cheers to pond hockey!

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If you are betting on NBA games, for example, what you need to do at the very first is to look at the team configuration of the team that you support. Knowing this will be one of the most important factors that will help you win the betting game. Next, you will also need to look at the opponent team. Look at also its team configuration and calculate the percentage of your team wins the game. If you calculate correctly, you will be able to win the bet.

My granddaughter, who is 12 years old, when not playing with her cat and dogs, is playing her next love, ice hockey. She played roller hockey for five years and was excellent at it. At 10 she decided to play ice hockey. After only six months on the ice, the coaches on the travel teams already had their eyes on her. Sure enough, one of the travel team coaches approached my granddaughter and her parents. He wanted my granddaughter to be on his travel team. Of course, all three of them said, yes.

One day, I asked my granddaughter why she loved ice hockey so much, she replied:

• Excitement of the game
• Physical part
• Meeting new people
• Learning new techniques from coaches
• Fast pace of the game
• The challenge
• The feeling after making a goal
• Speed skating on the ice
• Of course winning

The games are so exciting, we all love to go, to cheer her on. The most exciting games are when the score is close, but when the teams are tied, we are a nervous wreck. We scream so loud, it is a wonder we have any voices left when we leave the arena.

When not playing or practicing, my granddaughter loves to play with her little brother. She is already teaching him to play hockey. When they play in the house (carefully ), they have a slight problem. Their pets think the puck is a toy, the cat tries to attack it and the dog barks at it.

To end my article, my granddaughter would like to share some tips with you, on how to become good at hockey.

• Practice as much as possible.
• Important to learn skating techniques, to gain speed.
• Learning to maneuver and handle your stick.
• Focus on playing, don’t let frustration get in the way.
• Be a good sport, remember your out there to have fun.
• Stay in your position on the ice.
• Learn how to give a check and take a check.
• Learning the 3 most important shots; snap shot, wrist shot and slap shot.
• Be able to shoot the puck hard and accurate.
• Very important, don’t be a puck hog. Pass to a fellow team player.

My granddaughter’s dream is to go pro. The love of the sport, dedication and hard work she puts into ice hockey, it would not surprise me at all, to see her dream come true.

Love You Angel!

Although Lord Stanley of Preston donated the famous Cup to commemorate the world’s best team in the sport of hockey each year, he never actually presented the Cup himself – nor did he ever witness so much as a single Stanley Cup Championship game since he had to return to England months before his term was up as governor, in order to succeed his brother, who died in April 1893, as the 16th Earl of Derby.

Prior to his departure, Lord Stanley appointed Sheriff John Sweetland and Philip D. Ross as the Cup’s first trustees (the latter of whom maintained his post for 57 years, a length which has still never been exceeded), in place to ensure regulation of the rules and that challenges took place regularly and legitimately. At the time, ice hockey was still fairly new to Canada as an organized sport; only the cities of Montreal and Ottawa had any organized hockey leagues. Believing that the Amateur Hockey Association of Canada was the nation’s top hockey league out of the two, in 1983, Sweetland and Ross decided that its top finishing team should be considered the best in the nation, and would thus be awarded the trophy that year. Based on this decision, the members of the Montreal Hockey Club became the first recipients of Lord Stanley’s Cup, which would circulate within that team’s league each year to the top finisher until a challenger from an outside league defeated the Cup’s defender. At that point, the Cup would circulate each year within the new winning team’s league from one year’s top finished to the next until an outside league successfully challenged the Cup – and so on, as the Cup was never intended to be exclusive to a single league. However, the Ottawa Generals resented the idea that its league, the Pacific Coast Hockey Association, had been overlooked without the scheduling of any challenge games to actually contest the championship title and the right to possession of the Stanley Cup, along with the idea that no rules had even been specified before the season started regarding how the winners of the Cup would be determined.

To address the Ottawa Generals’ legitimate concerns during the next season, the trustees developed and released more transparent rules to make it clearer for teams exactly how the winners of the Cup would be determined. It would not call for any special contest, but would simply be awarded to the team who finished the season at the highest ranking within the league of the previous year’s Stanley Cup winner – although it could be contested by challengers from senior hockey associations, who had won the championship within their own leagues. The challenge games between the Cup’s defender from the league in current possession of the Cup, and the Cup’s challenger hoping to shift the sports award to the hands of its own league, would be played on the defenders’ home ice at a date and time to be approved by the trustees, and could either take place as one game; be decided by a best of three series; or be determined based upon the total number of goals scored across two games. A given league would only have one chance each season to Challenge for the Cup; it its teams’ challenge was unsuccessful, no further challenges could come from the league until the following year. Furthermore, the competing teams could either agree mutually upon a referee of their own choosing, or the trustees would take it upon themselves to appoint one for them – in either case, the competitors’ would split the expenses equally, and would also split the revenues from ticket sales equally.

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If you happen to live in the New York area and someone mentions “Sport’s Dynasty,” you immediately think of the New York Yankees. What with nearly a century of championships averaging almost one every three years, it is hard to argue against the Bronx Bombers.

But I’d like to advance the theory that during a 10 year span, from 1975-1984 the New York Islanders were as good a team as New York has ever seen in any sport. During that span this hockey team managed to do the following:

• Come back from down 3 games to none in a Stanley Cup quarterfinal series to win the series against the Pittsburgh Penguins. They were only the second team in all of sports to accomplish this.
• Come back again from down 3-0 to tie the semi-final series that same year before losing in 7 games to the Philadelphia Flyers.
• Produce no fewer than 5 Hockey Hall of Fame players
• Win 4 consecutive Stanley Cups.
• Win an incredible 20 Stanley Cup playoff series in a row.
• Play in the Stanley Cup finals 5 times.
• Play in the semi-finals 9 times
• Set the record for most consecutive games won during the regular season

And the list goes on. All of these accomplishments were completed in relative obscurity since the Islanders were playing in suburbia, away from the glaring focus of the New York media. While they got coverage during their peak performance years, it paled in comparison to the coverage their arch-rivals, the New York Rangers would have received had it been them and not the Isles winning all of those Stanley Cups. This was proven in 1994 when the Rangers won their first and only Cup since 1941 and were the darlings of the New York media.

Denis Potvin, Bryan Trottier, Mike Bossy, Billy Smith and Clark Gillies were the Hall of Famers. Al Arbour, their coach also was elected to the Hall of Fame. Maybe more impressive than that is the list of greats on those teams that were not Hall of Famers. These include Bob Nystrom, Bob Bourne, John Tonelli, Glen Resch, Dave Lewis, and Butch Goring to name a few.

No team, before or since in any sport had as great a run as the Islanders did between 1980 and 1984 when they strung together a string of 20 consecutive victorious playoff series, before finally losing in the Stanley Cup finals to The Edmonton Oilers in 1984. While their four consecutive Stanley Cups is not a record (the Montreal Canadiens won five straight back when the playoffs consisted of only two series, the semi-finals and the finals), the Isles’ 20 straight series wins en route to their four Stanley Cups are actually double what the Canadiens had to win to get their five. This far exceeds what any team in any sport has ever done, and this great run certifies the Isles status as a sport’s dynasty.

March can be a very troubling month for hockey fans. It’s this time of year that roughly 1/4 of fans are placed in the unfair position of outwardly cheering for their team to win, while inwardly, (almost subconsciously) almost hoping they lose. This irks me. And I hate being irked. Especially in March.

So why do we tolerate this? Or the better question may be: Why do we continue to reward failure?

If you haven’t deciphered what I’m talking about yet, let me explain. I don’t want you to be irked. If you look at the standings, there are 12 teams still in the playoff hunt that still have an equally good chance of winning the draft lottery. Just like management must decide at the trade deadline whether they are buyers or sellers, fans have to look at the big picture and assess if their team really has a shot at making the final cut. Nobody wants to finish 9th. You have to spend all summer wondering how you let 1 point slip away, while drafting 11th at the table. So do you pray your team is the one that slides into the 8th spot, or secretly hope they slide down the standings and draft the next Crosby, Tavares, or Hall?

It’s an unfair spot to put fans in. Maybe it’s the ardent capitalist in me, but I hate rewarding failure. It never works. I realize it’s been this way in all major sports league since the dawn of mankind, but that doesn’t mean it’s right. The theory behind it sounds very nice, and fair, and compassionate. The teams that stink need a chance to get better. After all, the Penguins and Capitals wouldn’t have the dream teams they’re enjoying now, had they not (somewhat intentionally) tanked it for 2 or 3 years. For some, the sacrifice is worth it, but maybe we’re just accepting something we can’t change.

Consider the cost. Literally. How many fans spent good money at the start of the season on those late March game tickets, only to find that their team has called up a bunch of prospects to “see what they can do”. In other words, see “how they can help us draft higher this year”.

Once again, I’m irked. So what’s the solution? My first answer would be to make the draft order completely random. Put 30 balls in the hopper and let the chips fall. This is probably too extreme to even merit consideration, so let’s meet in the middle with a reasonable compromise. Here how it should work:

You break the teams into two categories: those who made the playoffs in Group A, and those who missed the playoffs in Group B. Let’s deal with Group B first. You rank the non playoffs teams from top down based on points (highest to lowest). And there’s your draft order for the first 14 teams. That’s right, the non-playoff team with the most points drafts first. No lottery, no whining. Consider what this would do:

1. It gives fans a reason to cheer for their team right down to the final game. What do Oilers fans have to cheer for at this point with still a month left to go? In this system, they still would have a shot at actually earning that #1 draft pick, instead of defaulting into it by losing more meaningless games.
2. No team is going to intentionally miss the playoff to get that #1 pick, so it maintains the integrity of the game.
3. Fans and teams in the middle will no longer have it in the back of their heads that it’s ok, or even good, to lose a game.

As for Group A – I’m open to suggestions. Ranks them from top to bottom, or bottom to top, I don’t care. Again, if you’re a playoff team, the last thing you’ll be worrying about is draft position, when you’re fighting for home ice in the final week. Bottom line is this system makes every game meaningful. More importantly, I won’t be irked.

So what’s the downfall? The “negative” is that bad teams won’t automatically get better in short order. They’ll actually have to “earn” their way back to prosperity. In the long run, the franchises that do the best job of managing their team will benefit. Those that don’t will struggle. Imagine that, letting the free market do it’s thing. It works in the real world, so why can’t it work in the NHL as well?

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