Creating Offense from the Corner: Breakdown
This is a clip for all of our hockey guys of a player that I’ve been working with for the last few years (Matt Sutton: Omaha Lancers, USHL/Brown University, NCAA). In this drill we were working on creating offense out of the corner and I wanted to highlight a few key points:
1. Matt starts out close to the boards but attacks the dot lane before his first cut back. This forces the defender to respect him as a scoring threat, and create time and space for himself on the wall, either as an escape route or to run a high cycle with his defenseman on the point. He carries the puck outside his left foot, away from the defender’s stick, with his chest closed. By attacking the dot lane, it forces the defender to point their skates up ice, which sets up his first cutback.
2. He initiates his cutback with the outside edge of his left skate, and gets his hips flipped, allowing his center of gravity to stay over his feet. This allows him to create acceleration out of the turn.
3. He initiates his second cutback by stepping on the outside edge of his right foot. He is very aggressive with his outside edge, getting it out in front of his body. This allows him to spin off the defenders hip and take the puck directly to the net, instead of going back up ice, where he would be taking the puck back into pressure and allowing the defender to recover.
4. Right before he shoots he carries the puck on his forehand, but then pulls it to his backhand. This forces the goalie to move with the puck, which can create better shooting options. In a game, he would be drawing additional defenders to him, which would create odd man situations in Grade A scoring positions tight to the net.