Working on the simple breakout

One of the skills my team is still learning is the breakout. To put it simply, the ability to take the puck from deep into our zone to deep into the other team's zone without just winging the puck out there, which usually gets us an icing call.

The problem is that my team has eight guys playing in our first league. We don't get to practice a lot together, although a bunch of us participate in a Wednesday night clinic and play some pickup.

So we're trying to keep it real simple. I thought this post at the Hockey Player Tips blog captured our problem and offered up a pretty good solution in the form of a basic breakout. The above video also has some great tips -- particularly using your skates to catch a pass along the boards from your defenseman.

I've played right wing the past couple of games and I'm struggling with the catching the pass issue. A few times during last night's pickup game, for example, I had already turned up the ice and had to catch a pass coming from behind. I often missed. Or I'm facing my zone and have to catch a pass and turn around and get going.

I'm not the only guy on the team having issues with this. But we've got to get it down because we're stronger on defense than offense and we can't rely on our defenseman to take the puck from goal line to goal line and then get back and play D.

As always, any tips on the comment board would be appreciated.

--Steve Hymon