It’s the third period in a tied playoff game with under five minutes to go. Your coach puts you on the powerplay to get the go-ahead goal. Your team establishes possession, and you’re moving the puck around, but when it gets to your stick, will you be ready?
It’s NHL playoffs right now, so every night, you can watch players who train all year so when that crucial moment arrives, they’ll know what to do. Let’s look at some of the gear you can train with to be fully prepared for playoffs.
Shooting Skills
Equipment for practicing off-ice shooting skills by leaders like HockeyShot replicates game conditions in ways players from previous eras could never imagine. Different types of shooting tarps can cover the parts of the net a goalie would cover, but some extend even further to protect your wall or garage door!
The heavy-duty material lets you fire pucks as hard as you can with peace of mind, knowing your property won’t get damaged if you miss. Shooting Pads simulate what the glide of a puck feels like, so you can practice sniping top corners from the driveway just like you would in practice.
Pass Right on the Tape
Whether you’re a defensive player walking the blue line on the powerplay or you’re cycling down low, you need to make crisp and accurate passes to get that scoring chance and maintain puck possession. One bad pass and your team will need to regain the blue line and take precious seconds off the power play.
“Passers” have high-quality rubber bands that return the puck with the same level of force with which it was passed. “Hockey Sauce Kits” help players develop their saucer pass, so passes can rise above a defensive player’s stick and land right on a teammate’s.
You can also give yourself one-timers to develop a booming shot and the supple wrists needed to cradle and command the puck the instant it lands on your tape.
Skating
The Synthetic Ice Tiles available today are truly amazing, as they enable players to turn their own homes or backyards into skating rinks open 12 months a year. Ice is expensive to rent, and you can’t flood a backyard into a rink during summer.
Developing foot speed and edge work is impossible without a skating surface, but you also need to practice your other skills while skating. Stickhandling is easy when you’re standing still on the driveway, so you need to work on these skills with your head up as you skate.
The extra bit of skating practice may be the difference between speeding away from that defender and letting them poke it off your stick.
Hockey players never know exactly when their skills will need to be sharp, so they must always be ready especially come playoffs. If you practice all year with training gear that works as hard as you do, you’ll be ready for game seven heroics.
