Pass it to yourself

Much has already been said, I suspect, about passing the puck to yourself to get out of a sticky situation. But I've been studying the more skilled puck handlers both in our league and at shinny, trying to figure out why in mid-ice skirmishes they always manage to come out with the puck, with perfect control, and skate away from the fray.

I've concluded that it's another application of the adage, pass the puck to yourself. The first place we usually learn this is when you're grinding the puck up along the boards. If there's an opposing player right in front of you, the easiest way to solve the problem is to bang the puck off the boards, so that it makes contact with the boards a bit behind the other player, and skate around her and catch your own pass off the boards. It works amazingly well. (It's also worth practicing when you have time, just getting a feel for the angle of the puck against the boards, and what the resulting trajectory is, and how fast you need to skate to catch your own pass.) Jeremy at How To Hockey actually has a great video in his deke of the week series on this move, which he calls the bank shot.

The only real defence against banging the puck up the boards seems to be for the opposing player to get her body right against the boards. But she's now leaving you more room to just skate around her on the open side.

Now it has struck me that in the middle-of-the-ice skirmish - no boards in sight - a similar concept applies. The players that always emerge with the puck under control pass it to themselves in a straight line. That is, first of all, they don't just bang their stick at the puck any which way. They push the puck in the direction they are already moving.  Just a little push. A controlled push (or kick for that matter). Enough to get the puck through the crowd, and you skate around them and pick it up again, control it, and stickhandle away. Everyone else is still looking at their feet wondering where the puck went.

So next time you find yourself in the middle of the ice with 2 or 3 people fighting for the puck at their feet, give it a try. Pass it to yourself.

[Side note:  I'm hoping to eventually cover a lot of stuff that seems so obvious it's not worth mentioning, at least for people who take up hockey as a kid. Kids learn so instinctively they often can't explain what it is they're doing that just works. When you learn as an adult you are likely to be much more analytical - how do you do that? why do you do this, and not the other thing?]