Free coach tool
Hockey practice plan template
A blank practice plan with a rink diagram to draw your drills on. Free, no sign-up, nothing to download. Fill it in on screen or print it and write on it at the rink.
Practice Plan
| Time | Min | Drill or activity | Key coaching points |
|---|---|---|---|
Drill diagram
Drill diagram
Notes
Free practice plan templates for coaches at teamdock.ca
A 60-minute practice that works
Most minor hockey teams get a single hour, and most of it gets lost to lines and explanation. This is a structure you can copy straight onto the sheet. The times are a starting point, not a rule.
| Time | Min | Block | Why it's there |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0:00 | 8 | Warm-up and flow | Edges, puck touches, everyone moving. No lines. |
| 0:08 | 12 | Skill block | One skill, taught properly. Skating, puck protection, shooting. |
| 0:20 | 15 | Stations | Split the ice. Three groups, three coaches, far more reps each. |
| 0:35 | 12 | Small-area game | Compete in tight space. This is where the skill block gets used. |
| 0:47 | 10 | Team concept | One idea only: a breakout, a forecheck, a D-zone look. |
| 0:57 | 3 | Finish well | Something they enjoy. They leave wanting the next one. |
What separates a good plan from a wasted hour
- Pick one thing. A practice about four things is a practice about nothing. Name the single skill or concept before you write anything else down.
- Count the reps, not the drills. A drill where eleven kids stand in line is a bad drill, however good it looks on paper. Stations beat full-ice almost every time at minor hockey ages.
- Write the coaching points down. The right-hand column matters more than the drill name. It's what you'll actually say, and it stops a drill becoming activity for its own sake.
- Keep explanations under thirty seconds. Draw it on the board, show it once, go. Time spent talking is ice time you paid for and didn't use.
- Finish on something they like. How a practice ends is what they remember and what they tell their parents in the car.
Using the sheet
- Fill the time column first. Blocking the hour before you choose drills stops the plan running twenty minutes long, which is the most common way a plan falls apart.
- Use the rink diagrams for the one drill that needs explaining. Two is usually plenty. The rest you can describe in a line.
- Keep the sheet afterwards and write on it during the practice. What ran long, what they struggled with, what to repeat. Next week's plan half writes itself from last week's notes.
- Give a copy to your assistants before you step on the ice, especially if you're running stations. A coach who knows the plan runs a far better station.
Keeping practice plans with the rest of your season
A printed plan does its job for an hour. The problem comes in February, when you want to know what you worked on in November, or an assistant takes a practice and has no idea what the last three looked like. That's the gap TeamDock fills: your schedule, your game film, your player feedback and your team's files live in one place for the whole season, so the plan isn't the only record of what you did.
Share the filled-in sheet with your coaching staff through Files, tie what you taught to what you see on video in the Film Room, and turn it into individual player feedback without retyping any of it.
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