The importance of how to play away from the puck is often spoken about and made in reference to forwards. But what about play away from the puck with defensemen?
That’s the opening question on the opening slide of this College Hockey Inc. Virtual Coaching Clinic presentation from Matt Nicholson, Associate Head Coach at Robert Morris University.
For Nicholson, who spent six years with the RMU Colonials men’s hockey team from 2009 to 2015 before becoming an Assistant Coach at Niagara only to return to RMU in the summer of 2022, play away from the puck comes back to two important factors: time and space.
In this 40-minute presentation, packed with countless game examples to help illustrate his points, Nicholson teaches the “euro pivot,” the importance of the offensive blueline and how to set up “dot-wide,” the slide-and-squash through the neutral zone, when and why your toe-caps should be facing the puck, and boxouts, “which are a sneaky and hidden skill that could improve the game of a lot of defensemen.”
This is not a video to take lightly. You will take a pile of notes, you will learn a lot and you will change how you teach your defensemen to work with time and space.
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Matt Nicholson
Matt Nicholson spent six years with the RMU Colonials men's hockey team from 2009 to 2015, before becoming an Assistant Coach at Niagara. In 2022, Nicholson returned to RMU as Head Coach. Nicholson helped RMU record a 108-88-30 during his six years, including earning their first automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament in 2014.
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