20-In-30 Day Stickhandling Challenge
20 Challenge Days - 30 Days To Complete
Do you want to get better hands on the ice and improve your stickhandling skills to dangle around opponents and put goalies in a spin cycle? Then it's time to start some off-ice stickhandling training sessions in your spare time. The best stickhandlers in the world didn’t reach their level by only practicing during games; they mastered their craft with countless hours of off-ice drills. To help tune up your stickhanding, we've created a 30-day stickhandling challenge that will enhance your stickhandling skills and help you stand out on the ice!
How It Works: Each Color day has Ten-1 Minute Drills you have to complete. In order to complete the challenge, you must do each color day ten times before the 30 day window ends.
(Credit to HockeyTraining.com for the drill ideas)
Quick Dribbles
Watch players like Patrick Kane or Auston Matthews; you will notice they use these quick “dribbles” within their stickhandling for added deception. Usually, there are only 2 or 3 quick dribbles before making a move or shooting, but it's important to practice doing these to work on technique and forearm conditioning simultaneously.
Similar to the majority of your stickhandling moves, it’s important for this move that your top hand is doing 80% of the work, and your bottom hand is only used as a guide.
Side to Side with Dribbles
Once you’ve mastered your dribbles, you can start incorporating them into other moves. The Side To Side is a basic drill that should be a staple in your stickhandling work, and when ready, you can add the dribbles on either side, as seen in the video.
Narrow To Wide
With this one, we have four pucks set up – two about one foot apart, and then two more out wide (roughly 5 feet apart – but pick a distance that works best for your reach).
We will do 5 quick stickhandles in tight and then follow that with 5 reps back and forth out wide. This is a good hybrid drill for practicing your narrow and wide stickhandling.
Wide Stickhandling
For this drill, all we need is a line in front of our body, as shown. This could be a skipping rope, a line of pucks, or even an imaginary line if needed.
There are two variations to this wide stickhandling drill. The first is starting by sticking handling in the middle and then moving the puck wide to your forehand side, back to the middle for a few quick stickhandles, and then to your backhand side wide, and repeat.
The second variation is starting off with some quick stickhandling in the middle, followed by moving the puck wide and around the line. Repeat but in the opposite direction.
Wide stickhandling drills are very important to practice as it’s something that usually isn’t practiced too much but comes into play quite a bit in game situations. In games, you often have one hand on your stick and need to control the puck out wide or pull it back into your body from out wide.
Hockey players need a feel for this wide stickhandling and also the grip, wrist, and forearm strength to control the puck away from the body.
Line To Line Stickhandling
It is similar to the previous Wide Stickhandling Drill, but for this one, when we bring the puck out wide, we will be stickhandling out wide on both the forehand and backhand sides.
The lines should be set up slightly less wide than the previous drill, as we want to be able to do some quick stickhandling at each point with two hands on the stick (whereas the previous drill was more about controlling the puck with one hand very far away from the body).
Around The World
This Around The World Drill involves stickhandling all around your body and gets your hands, forearms, and core warm and ready to go.
Backhand Toe Pulls
This is a drill used to prepare you for learning Backhand Toe Drags. The Toe Pulls will help you get a feel for flipping that stick over and using the backhand side of the blade to pull the puck across your body. Once you’ve got a feel for the toe pulls, you can start putting it together with a full backhand toe drag.
Backhand Cutbacks
The Backhand Cutback is a great move to use when you are skating down the ice on your backhand side and want to cut back toward the middle to get past your defender or create space and a better angle for a shot or pass.
Push the puck forward on your backhand side before pulling the puck towards your body and then out to your forehand side. If you were looking at the puck movement from over top it would look like an ‘S’ shape.
Vertical Figure 8s
This simple drill works on forehand side stickhandling with a bit of toe drag work involved as well.
Set up two pucks on your forehand side vertically (one roughly in line with your toe and then another about a foot in front of that).
All you will be doing is making figure 8s with your puck between the two pucks. Make sure you switch directions every set.
McDavid Crossover Shuffle
This drill went viral, as it was a drill that Connor McDavid did as a teenager, and there’s some great video footage of him performing the drill. And because he’s arguably the best hockey player in the world, it makes sense to try and figure out how he got there!
For this drill, we want to have two lines on the ground (ideally tape or something you can’t roll your ankle on) that we will be doing lateral crossovers over top. Use a stickhandling ball for this one as we want to concentrate on quick hands, having your head up, and fast explosive crossovers.
