Scoring is all out aggression

Many people fail to realize the mentality and commitment needed to score goals. Sure there are some players or goals that you might consider to be somewhat soft, but the true scorer or goal has a warrior mentality to it. Case and point, most of the goals that Alex Ovechkin scores. Here is a player that almost looks the goalie in the eye and says "it's either you or me tonight and I've got some bad news for you, it's not you". What can you and what do you need to learn from this attitude to create a scorer with-in yourself or with-in your team will be the focus of this post.

Before getting into some of the physical attributes of scorers and the mechanics for creating goals, it's worthwhile to begin this discussion with the mental side of goal scoring. This side, is in many ways, more important than the physics of goal scoring. You must understand that, like the Ovechkin line above, to bring this attitude to your game, you must have a very aggressive attitude toward your oppenent. You must be willing to expose your game totally and let everyone know you are as prepared to be successful as you are to fail. This type of risk taking, is something that may not seem that extraordinary, but in reality, this is exactly the attitude that most successful coaches are constantly trying to tap into for all their players. Complicating this search is the fact that finding the magic mixture that ignites a player to make the transition from player to scorer is often different for each player. Not to mention, there are hierarchy mentalities on teams, where in so many subtle ways, players are expected to fall into rolls that make the team successful. Players often fail to recognize the roles they are being pushed into and attempting to change a role can be very disruptive for the player moving to a new role. Not that this is impossible or that your teammates will have a hard time accepting your new role, it's more that you will be shedding light on yourself and you'll be taking a walk on a tight rope where the results are always a black or white. Many times, players might start down this path, but after starting down the wire, feel a lot more comfortable turning around and heading back to safety. The first step in making this transition, however, is to create an awareness that you need to make this change and have a plan to make the changes needed. For coaches, constantly reinforcing the toughness and aggessivness needed for scoring with all your players is the surest way to add more players as goal scorers. Which brings us to the skills and tactics that are needed to become a scorer, discussed below.

The starting point for the ability to score is obviously adding to your shooting skills. Sure it will help to improve on your accuracy, but the bigger determining factor are the abilities to release your shots quicker and getting as much on your shot as possible. This second piece is where many players unknowingly fall into the trap of being satisfied that they got a decent shot on net rather than getting a great shot on net which is usually the difference between scoring and a good save by the goalie. From my experience, players are constantly shooting pucks in drills and scrimmages at practice without a warrior mentality which has two negative effects on them. #1 They don't score enough to reinforce a scorers mentality and #2 They are not practicing skills that will be needed in games to score goals. Think of it this way, you practice a music piece for weeks and then get to your performance and your instructor tells you you'll need to play this piece 25% faster. The chances of being successful at this pace are small. To test this theory, after a few drills, bring the team together and ask them if they are shooting all out every shot. You can go to the bank that they will tell you that they are not.

There are also specific skills to practice besides a more aggressive approach to shooting; like working on one-timers and creating a mindset that we need more of these. You also need to reinforce players driving to the net without the puck and firing low shots to those players' sticks for redirects. This tactic is also critical for defenseman shooting from the point where the redirect scoring chance is far more successful than the big shot from the blueline that rarely finds the back of the net. The critical point with the redirect slap-shop pass is to make sure it's hard enough that the redirect will still have lots of speed on it. I'll also add that far to few forwards use the quick slap shot from the dot to top of the circle areas, especially in the women's game. Lastly, I believe players often give in far to easily on 2 v 1s by being indecisive and making it far to easy for the opposing goaltender. They find themselves heading towards the net and being denied a pass across they tend to fire at goal where the keeper has read the situation and come out aggressively to take away any shooting angle. There are times where the best chance for scoring here is to fire a low shoot to the far side and give your teammate driving to the a chance to score on a rebound shot. Many times an even better option is to fake the pass to force the defender to slide over more to cover the pass which allows you to cut into the middle more for a better angle shot or even continue driving to the net and try to deke the goalie that is usually well out of their net.

There are certainly more variables that could be discussed on creating more goals, but adding the above skills, tactics and mentality to your team's practices will be a great starting point for increasing scoring right away.

Had to add the video below after watching a couple of teams struggle to create goals over the weekend. Color man Donnie Sholzhoffer says it best "If you ain't got a big bag of knuckles in front of the net, you don't got" ....... you know the rest. As for goal scoring if you "ain't getting traffic in front of the net, you don't got goals." Simple as that, but if your team is lacking in scoring, this is the most basic and usually most overlooked area to create them.

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