Pre-Scouting Your Opponent
Every NHL team pre-scouts every opponent to prepare for games. At the highest levels of our game, coaches are able to glean huge amounts of information by watching video of their current opponent’s previous games. Players want to know how to win each game. They want to know that the coaching staff knows how to give their team the edge. Players need to be focused on the specific process that gives them the best chance to win. This information delivery process starts with pre-scouting your team’s opponent, and the information is delivered during your pregame team meetings.
What Your Players Need to Know
The game of hockey often uses the word tendencies to describe what teams do and how they do it. Pre-scouting your team’s opponent is about understanding their tendencies and planning your team’s response to give your players their best chance to win. Different coaches like to focus on different parts of their opponent’s game, including offensive and defensive strategies, and most coaches focus on the special-team-play strategies that have been used during recent games.
Pre-Scouting the Opponent’s Offensive Strategies
Often teams break down opposition tendencies around when their opponent has the puck and when they do not have the puck. If this is how your coaching staff organizes your game strategy, then your opponent’s offensive strategy could start with their breakout patterns. Pre-scouting your opponent’s offensive strategies can be exhaustive, so it should highlight the specific strengths and processes that your opponent has used to be successful recently. The key question that coaches need to ask themselves in this area is “What specific offensive tendencies has my opponent showed recently (what is giving their team success), and how should our team be aware of these tendencies and counter them to increase our game success?”
Offensive tendencies range from won face-offs in all zones, to turnovers, to defensive zone and neutral zone breakouts, to offensive zone entries, to how they react with the puck in the offensive zone. A large portion of what your opponent does with the puck may be on the power play, and at the higher levels of our game, the coaching staff’s pregame meeting will spend a specific amount of time on how to counter the opposition’s power-play breakout, entry, and setup.
Pre-Scouting the Opponent’s Defensive Strategies
The key questions to ask while pre-scouting the opponent’s defensive strategies are “How do they play without the puck? What are their responses to certain tendencies? Are they aggressive in certain situations, or does our team have more time in certain parts of the ice?” Players want insights into how to beat their opponent, and showing (or telling) your team how your opponent may react during specific defensive situations really increases player confidence.
Defensive strategies are often the exact opposite of the offensive pre-scout focus. In all zones, how your opponent reacts off lost face-offs is important information. Special attention is placed on how your opponent reacts in their defensive zone and how they forecheck. Again, extra focus will be placed on what strategy your opponent uses for the penalty kill and how your power play can take advantage of this.
Let’s look at a real game example of how this works best. During recent games, your coaching staff notices that your upcoming opponent often stands their defenseman behind the net and swings their center man deep into the corner as a way to generate breakout speed. Obviously, this tactic is a tendency, so players want to understand how to counter it. One of the best ways to take away this advantage would be to have F1 forecheck aggressively up toward the side of the net that the center man is swinging to and place his stick in that passing lane. This defensive response to your opponent’s breakout tendency reduces their ability to pass the puck to the speed player. Developing the solution to your opponent’s tactic allows your players to feel prepared not only to play the game but to win it (see figure 13.1).
Figure 13.1 Forecheck response to opponent’s control breakout.
Just as a quick aside, both of us have found during our coaching and playing career that as your team matures so can your pre-scout meeting process. Especially if you have the luxury of showing video of your opponent’s tendencies, instead of telling your players how to respond, ask them (or a specific player) what their suggestion would be to counter a specific opponent strategy. We have found that this leadership approach increases player engagement and begins to create the type of learning culture found on winning teams.
Pre-Scouting Power-Play and Penalty-Kill Tendencies
One key focus of the pre-scout should be how to counter your opponents’ power-play and penalty-kill tactics. Most power plays prefer to execute breakouts that they are comfortable with, but great power plays also have breakout options to counter penalty-kill forecheck tendencies. Let’s say that you identify that your opponent’s penalty kill forecheck tends to swing their two forwards deep and then use a box formation as they back up into the neutral zone. Power plays have many breakout options that work against this tactic. The double swing breakout works well against the box PK forecheck, especially if your power play slashes one winger on an angle from the boards into the middle of the box as a passing option (see figure 13.2). Slashing that winger off the boards toward the middle ice often opens space for the center man who was swinging into the corner and now has great speed with the puck up the boards. Your pre-scout information has delivered not only a sense of what your opponent will do in this situation but also delivers a complete solution for your players to execute.
Figure 13.2 Breakout response to PK box formation.
The following pre-scout sheet allows you to record individual tendencies, strengths, and weaknesses of each opponent player along with your opponent’s team tendencies.
Mike Johnston has used the following simple but powerful outline with the Portland Winterhawks in the Western Hockey League; see figure 13.3. (We have copied a blank template for you to personalize; see figure 13.4.)
Figure 13.3 Sample scouting form.
