How to Structure A Hockey Tryout

Assembling a team that you are confident in and proud of is the number one goal of any hockey tryout. To achieve this, it is essential to structure your tryouts to ensure a thorough evaluation of your players.

From selecting the proper evaluators, demonstrating drills, gathering scoring criteria, and everything in between, this blog covers the necessary steps for conducting a hockey tryout.

Step 1: Debrief Evaluators

You have selected evaluators for your tryouts, and now is the time to debrief them on:

• A) What drill(s) they will be evaluating
• B) What makes up a perfect score for the drill(s) they are evaluating? I.e, A perfect score (of 10) for puck handling is when a player can maintain close control of the puck while maneuvering their stick and can quickly change directions without losing control of the puck.

Step 2: Assemble Scoring Criteria

Get your pen-and-paper forms in order to score athletes. Alternatively, consider using a hockey evaluation app to score athletes on your mobile devices AND gain instant access to real-time data through auto-generated reports (immediately after tryouts finish).

Use this data to see how your players stack up across categories (passing, shooting, and skating) or specific skills within a category (edgework, forward skate, starts and stops within skating).

Categories evaluated in SkillShark

Metrics evaluated in SkillShark

Step 3: Set Up Drills

With the help of volunteers or other evaluators, get ready for the first couple of drills, ensuring all necessary equipment (cones, pucks, nets, etc) is set up on the ice.

Tip: To determine how many hockey drills you can set up at once, refer to the below:

Types of drills:

1. Full ice drill: One drill using the entire skating rink.
2. Half-ice drills: Two drills, each using half the rink.
3. Station-based drills: Four to six drills, each using a portion of the rink.

Step 4: Register Players

Check in players who are present at tryouts and add any walk-ons (players who haven’t registered beforehand.

Want to eliminate pen-and-paper forms during the registration process? SkillShark has a feature for player check-in:

1. Upload your players ahead of time into SkillShark (either from player management software or a spreadsheet).
2. Create player lists: Segment players by age, region, or groups. For example, A player list will be made for Day 1 Group A, Day 1 Group B, and Day 1 Group C.
3. Select a player list and check in players (or add walk-ons) as they arrive.

Player lists

Player Check-in

Step 5: Guide a Stretch

A warm-up should aim to increase heart rate, improve range of motion, and warm up muscles.

• Some warm-up drills include:
  • Rondo circle passing: Players will assemble in a circle on the center of the ice, taking turns passing the puck to each other.
• • 3-speeds: Players will skate at 50%, 75%, and 100% speeds from opposite ends of the ice.
  • 3-shot shooting: One by one, players will stand at three different areas on the ice, attempting to successfully shoot the puck from each spot.

Step 6: Demonstrate Drills

Describe the purpose of each drill and break down the execution of the drill.

• Example: Suppose one of your hockey drills is the Figure 8 Drill
• Purpose: Test a player’s edgework, sharp turns, and speed.
• Explanation: Two pylons are placed 6 feet apart from each other at different stations on the ice. Players will skate in a figure-8 pattern around the cone for a total of 10 times. The first 5 times they will skate forward, and the next 5 times they will skate backward. Players must stay close to the pylons during each turn.

Step 7: Run Through Drills

Your drills are explained, your players are warmed up, and your evaluators are ready to score!

Now is go time.

Spend the necessary amount of time running through all of your tryout drills. The duration of tryouts will largely depend on the number of players you are evaluating and the amount of drills you have planned.

Step 8: Provide Closing Remarks

Allocate a few minutes at the end of tryouts (typically when players will be stretching & cooling down) to give any closing remarks. During this time, thank players for all their hard work at tryouts and give information on the next steps (i.e., how soon team placement decisions will be made, when practices will start, etc..)

Wrapping Up

Hosting hockey tryouts is essential to make accurate decisions about who to place on your teams. With a well-structured plan and the help of hockey evaluation software to streamline the process, hockey tryouts can be stress-free, enjoyable, and efficient for all coaches.

Give closing statementsWrapping Up
Wrapping up