Try this on your next breakaway...

Okay, this is from a shootout -- not a breakaway -- but it's a great example of leading the goalie one way and directing the puck the other way.

Actually, the thing that impresses me the most about this is Jurco's ability to stop the puck on a dime before performing his spin move and taking the shot. We do some drills involving drop passes in our clinic and let's just say that generally speaking, we're not nearly as good at stopping the puck as is this dude.

Several members of my team have had breakaways in our past few games but with mixed success. The problem is twofold: sometimes we're up against very talented D-men who can chase us down and we usually don't have a plan about what to do should we ever have a one-on-one against the goalie.

So one more thing to add to my to-do list -- work on one move that has at least a tiny chance of working. I'm kind of a lousy skater, stickhandler and shooter -- and even I ended up with a sort-of breakaway in a game last season that I blew when my grand idea was to skate straight at the goalie, wind-up to take a slapshot and then shoot it straight into his body.

How bad was my shot? I could have sworn the ref blew his whistle before the goalie even caught the puck. Yea, that bad.


--S.H.