Odd man rushes cause goals against. They generally occur after a turnover, often at the opposition’s blue line. If you are constantly outnumbered in your end you’ve got a big problem. This article will talk about reducing it.

Your team has the puck and is attacking. You have three players in their end, and they also have three – a forward and two defense men. Their last two forwards are back checking, and one of them picks up the puck. Now what?

First, your team is facing away from the direction that the puck is now travelling, and their team is facing toward the direction its going – your end! They have to skate forward while some of your forwards have to turn around and try to catch up.

If all three of your forwards are deep they are essentially going to be out of the play. The opposition forwards who were floating back will pick up any puck chipped or passed ahead by their D-men and your two D-men will be outnumbered. The more often this happens the more often the opposition gets a scoring chance, and the more often that happens the more often they’ll score. Goals are hard to come by. You can’t give them away or dig yourself a hole. If you keep other teams under 3 goals per game, and in a perfect world, under 2 goals a game, you’ll increase the number of your wins.

The answer is pretty straightforward. Be prepared for turnovers. You know that they are going to happen. It’s the way the game goes. The other team will check you, you’ll take a shot and they’ll get the rebound, or there will be a bounce that goes their way. Be ready.

Start by not getting three men deep. Keep one forward high and ready to reverse direction. In fact, at some times you’ll want two forwards high and only one deep. High means close to the blue line. Deep means close to the goal. The high forward stays between the blue line and the top of the face off circle and watches for turnovers, or for the other team to cough the puck up. If the turnover occurs he’s there to cover the third man breaking out. That means they don’t have a man advantage – no odd man, no good scoring chance.

Easy and straightforward. Nothing complex.

How do you effectively implement this tactic? You can’t have one guy step up and act as the coach and tell other guys to do it. Nobody likes that.

You can tell the forwards it needs to be done, but tell the lines that its up to them to figure out who’s going to do what role. That way nobody points fingers at any individual. If you give up an odd man rush you can just yell out “Hey, no odd man rushes you guys! Keep someone high!”. The more guys on the team that are willing to yell that out the less often, obviously, it will need to be yelled out.

Enlist the defence corps to help you. They can tell a forward to stay high and cover a guy. Asking for help is better than telling someone what to do. Forwards won’t argue with a defenceman who asks for help. A good relationship between D and forwards means more passes to forwards, and they want the puck. And, if you get this tactic figured out at a basic level, all three forwards benefit – the two who do go deep cause turnovers that the high guy picks up and feeds back to them. Break outs by the opposing team break down, and you stay in their end longer. The two who go deep see how this works and they re-enforce the system.

After the turnover in puck possession the forward from your team who is closest to the puck pressures the puck carrier as much as he can. No fly bys. He has to go straight at the puck carrier and make him either pass or make a move. You want the pass, which is why your forward has to go right at the puck carrier. Eyes on the center of the chest kind of thing. The quicker you make him pass the less chance that the pass will be a good one.

Your second deep forward goes to the first obvious pass receiver to take that pass away. The more obvious this looks the better, because if the puck carrier sees this he’ll look for a second option. If your first deep forward is pressuring him he won’t have much time to find the second option, and there is an increased chance that he’ll dump it up the middle.

We talked about anticipating the turnover, right? With your two low guys pressuring the opposition there’s a good chance that a puck will end up going up the gut. Your high forward can either grab it or at least stop their hotshot forward from picking up and streaking away with the puck. Forcing them to move it quick leads to them icing it or turning it over, not to pretty break outs.

If they can’t pass and break out quickly, with your three guys deep, there’s no odd man rush. Thats fewer goals against. So, keep one forward high and ready.

Hamish Ortizco has played lots of beer league hockey and knows lots of hockey drills. For more discussion of how to win hockey games search his name on google.