It is a given that hockey players like to scrimmage and play much more than drill and skate. Whatever they�re called�lightning drills, suicides or burgers�even the great workers like Jean Beliveau and Ted Lindsay dreaded practice.

And, at $250 or more per hour for ice in some places, the people bankrolling the team (usually parents) don�t particularly like practice either, so the key is to get as much done in that one-hour block as possible. This column will offer some advice on how to best utilize your practice time through preparation and execution.

Before we go any further, I�ll start by recommending a book that I feel is one of the best coaching aids around, Complete Hockey Instruction by Dave Chambers, former coach of the Quebec Nordiques (published by Key-Porter Books). Every coach can benefit by having this volume on his or her bookshelf.

For the purposes of this column, we�ll assume you are the coach of a team of young teenagers. If you are in charge of a younger team, you may choose to focus less on technical aspects of practice and more on the participative portions. If you are dealing with older players with a greater understanding of individual skills, you may wish to devote more time to technical team skills.

Whatever your team�s needs, here are some tips to make the most out of your practice time.

Before practice

Set clear goals�both team and individual. Before getting on the ice, analyze the team�s relative health/fatigue level and begin to formulate a practice around these factors. For instance, there is not much point working on the penalty-killing unit if your top defenseman has the flu and one of your main forwards is at the orthodontist. If you want to open up ice time for some of the backups to get experience, allow yourself a short, extra drill to give some new people a try on the power play or penalty killing.

Let the season dictate your practice tempo. It doesn�t take a genius to skate his players into the ground, and yet hundreds of coaches�some in the NHL�still think that a killer practice every day is the only way to be ready for the playoffs. A coach�s goal should always be to show players how much they already have, but also push them to build better stamina. This requires reasonable recovery time. A good rule of thumb for growing teens is one hard skating practice per week.

This is not to say that you should allow players to dog their way through workouts. Most players play games like they practice, and laziness and sloppiness are contagious. If the team is just �taking the day off,� that�s when it�s time to simplify everything and just make them skate.

It is important that early in the season, players learn that you�the coach�are taking note of who is working hard in practice. You can show them by choosing just the right time in the next game, and having one of the more lazy players sit out for 10 minutes.

Afterward, in the dressing room, quietly let him/her know why. Word will spread like wildfire. You may have to do it a couple of times, but players will soon learn that one earns game time in practice.

Stretch in the locker room. Hockey is one of the worst sports for warm ups and cool downs. This is, again, mainly the result of the exorbitant costs for ice time. A 10-minute stretching session in the locker room can go a long way toward preventing injuries and making your players come out of the blocks a little faster. Focus on hamstrings and quadriceps, as well as upper and lower back and shoulders.

After practice, it is a good idea to have the captain lead a 5- to 7-minute cool down, as this is when it is best to actually stretch and lengthen muscle tissue.

Diagram new drills. It can save a lot of time and frustration if you go into the locker room and diagram new drills on the blackboard. If you don�t have access to a chalkboard, sketch out the diagram and make a few photocopies. Talk the players through the drill, giving them time to visualize what it should look like. If the drill is a progression�meaning it becomes progressively more difficult, such as some drive skating and 2-on-1 drills�explain when is needed to master the drill at each stage so that the player can move to the next level.

Plan to break the practice into 5-minute blocks. Assuming you have the standard 55-minute ice block, break the practice down five ways, following a reasonably consistent pattern: 1) warm-up; 2) technical team drill; 3) individual skills drill; 4) hitting drill (scrimmage); 5) skate and stretch.

Leave a few minutes of loose time for extra time on one drill, or better yet, time at the end of practice for players to work on their own specific skills with the help of the coaches.

Allow for one minute of water between drills. Remember, water is not a privilege or a luxury, it is a necessity. Do not ration it and do not skip water breaks as a form of punishment.

Rule of thumb: two pucks per player. Practice time is often wasted when there is not a healthy supply of pucks at the point where drills originate. If the ice becomes too littered with rubber, leave a dozen in the nets. Yes, pucks cost money, but the cost of a few extra pucks does not come close to the price of wasted ice time.

To the ice

Now�well prepared, with forethought given to each segment of the session�we�re ready to hit the ice for practice.

Greet the players. For two or three minutes. This is when the players are most receptive and capable of learning. Give them a few minutes to stir the blood and check their equipment. Call them together and briefly go over what was learned from the last game (if appropriate) and, for lack of a better way to put it, tell them why you have called them together for practice. If your team is slow to respond to your summons, you might have the last one to arrive at the huddle do a full lap of the ice while you start talking to the rest of the players. It takes 30 seconds, but the light embarrassment lasts for the rest of practice.

In your talk, be specific, as in �We did not do a good job at giving our defenseman an open target to start the breakout. Today, we will work on the wingers dropping right down below the hash marks, receiving the first pass and then making the second pass to the center breaking up ice. If you don�t receive the pass cleanly, then pass it back to the defenseman and let him start it again.�

Warm up. After the quick assembly, give the players about two more minutes to stretch and shoot a few pucks. This also serves to spread the players around the ice. Blow the whistle and order the pucks put into the net. Immediately, begin having the team skate clockwise, eventually having the players accelerate, on your whistle, to full speed for 15-20 seconds. Make the segments quick at first, but begin to stretch them out in length after the second minute. Make sure you switch directions, having them skate counter-clockwise, as well as backwards.

Have a two-minute stretching session built in to the first portion of the practice, as it allows the players to get rid of the last of the kinks and gives the coaches a chance to talk with a few players individually, offering advice on things for the player to work on in that practice.

A technical team drill. Before players get tired or bored, hit them with the drill that requires the most thought on their part. Ideally, this is the time to work on the breakout, power play, penalty kill or any other position-oriented team play. This is the lecture time, when the coach has the best chance of actually teaching something to his/her players. It is also a time when you can isolate play in one end of the ice, and have those players who are not involved in the play watching and listening from just outside the blueline. If you have assistant coaches, you can have the drills running simultaneously at both ends of the ice.

Individual skills. With their team duties well explained, the focus can turn to developing individual skills, namely all of those puckhandling, shooting, 1-on-1, drive-skating type drills. Here, the coach must focus on the individual players and encourage them to take risks with the puck. This is in sharp contrast to Drill #2, as one should always expect smart team play in execution drills. Instead, in the individual skills drills, the emphasis is on getting the player to try new things, to teach himself/herself what moves are possible. This is the only way to develop the confidence needed to summon these skills in a game.

Be generous with your praise here. Reward initiative, even if it results in failure. If one of your better players is making the drill seem too easy, think of ways to make it tougher, such as dividing the ice down the middle and limiting him/her to the left or right side. If the player is, for example, a right wing, make him/her do the drill along the left boards.

A hitting drill. Now that the players are warmed up and have had their �schooling,� it is time for the scrimmage portion of the practice. This is usually a progression from Drill #2 and #3, only adding the end-to-end, team-on-team aspects. Watch the overall play, but specifically look for good examples of the skills on which the team had been working.

The best piece of advice I ever got about scrimmage is keep score accurately, call every penalty you see and award penalty shots. When he was coach of the Canadiens, Pat Burns awarded penalty shots in which the penalized player started pursuing from the far blue line the moment the whistle blew for the penalty shot to begin. The vigilant refereeing forces players not to make lazy plays, such as hooking onto a faster player. These penalty shot contests also keep intensity levels high, without eating into too much practice time.

This is also the �fun� part of practice, so it is the carrot you can use to motivate your horses. Reward the players who earned your praise in Drill #3. Leave them out for longer shifts and, as long as the intensity level is high, continue this right through practice. If a player is tired, ask him/her if they want to take a shift off. If a player is simply being lazy, and you can usually tell the difference, sit him/her on the bench and remember it for an opportune moment in the next game.

The suicides. Again, here a coach can have some fun creating new and interesting ways to force a tired group of players to put forth one last effort. Because the sign of a lazy hockey team is one that doesn�t stop and start to go after loose pucks, this is usually where coaches start�and why not? It has worked for decades. The key here is to get the heart rate up and keep it up, without allowing players to get too short of breath. If players are doubled over, give a little more recovery time between drills and offer a little encouragement.

Close this portion with a minute or two of recap and reason. Give the players one or two things to remember about positioning, intensity, or the next opponent.

A special note on goalies: Goalies are carrying about 50 pounds of equipment, and do not need to skate much in games. Vladislav Tretiak, one of the greatest goaltenders ever and now a consulting coach to the NHL�s Chicago Blackhawks, advocates a little skating. Mostly, however, he recommends having the goalies use that time for solid stretching (long and thorough) and calisthenics (push-ups, crunches and lateral leg lifts with the pads).

Wrapping up

With the last 3-5 minutes of your practice session, make the players stretch�especially groin muscles and hamstrings�while on the ice. Long stretches of 12-15 seconds are best for actually lengthening the muscles, and improving flexibility. The coach should watch to make sure players are not bouncing, as this can do much more harm than good.

The aftermath. The coach should stay on the ice to until all of the �clean up duties� have been assigned (usually by the team�s captains). If a player has individual questions, or wants instruction, stay out as long as you can. If, however, you are just standing around (and there are no liability implications), leave the players to themselves. They may be willing to try something new, to take chances to try to improve their skills, if they believe the coach is not watching, taking notes.

Use the preceding hypothetical session as a guideline to create a practice routine that is right for your team. And again, the most important thing to remember is that being well-organized before you step on the ice will make the difference between a productive practice and a waste of valuable time.