Hockey Coaching Styles

Being a hockey coach involves balancing four offensive lines, three defensive pairings and a goaltender while getting the most out of every player. What a team does during game action is the product of practices and drills designed to reflect the style of the head coach. Every coach is different in his approach to the game, but most styles used at any level of organized hockey can be filed into one of three categories.

  1. Offensive Style

    • Teams with several gifted scorers and passers often use a more offensive style of play, with the focus being to outscore opponents. This coaching style revolves around pressuring opposing defenses with gifted puck carriers or speedy wingers who often beat defensemen to the puck when it is shot into the zone. An offensive-minded coach will encourage his swifter-skating defensemen to "pinch," or skate deeper into the offensive zone, to create an odd-man situation. The drawback to this strategy is that offensive players often get caught out of position, leading to odd-man rushes the other way. Offensive-minded teams tend to struggle on the defensive end, particularly when one or both defensemen are allowed to pinch on certain plays.

    Balanced Style

    • The balanced attack allows a coach to rotate between offensive and defensive schemes in an attempt to throw the opponent off track. Often the top two lines are designated as the scoring lines, assembled to generate the bulk of the team's offense. The third and fourth lines play more of a defensive role, taking care of their own zone while capitalizing on opposition mistakes for their scoring chances. Defensemen only venture into the offensive zone when the risk for getting caught out of position is low. This system is the one used by the majority of professional hockey coaches, and most teams are constructed with this coaching strategy in mind.

    Defensive Style

    • Coaches lacking players with scoring touch will often revert to a more defensive style, recognizing that it represents his team's best chance at victory. The primary scoring line is allowed to roam free, but the forwards on the other three lines carry some level of defensive responsibility that inhibits how creative they can be on offense. The third and fourth lines contain few offensively gifted players and plenty of body checkers or shot blockers. The defense is loaded with bigger players who are good at blocking shots, finishing body checks and doing other things to force opposing offenses out of their comfort zones. A defensive style leads to plenty of low-scoring games, and the lack of offensive creativity makes it difficult to come back from two or three-goal deficits.