Ball To Puck Comparison/Practice

[Steve Gatzos*]

Question for you guys. I'm 20 yrs old and I've just started to get into ice hockey. I always wanted to play when I was younger but the lack of rinks in the area and time limited me to dek hockey or ball hockey as you might call it. Skating has always come naturally to me i did a lot of inline but found time growing up to go ice skating, and I've been doing a lot of that lately just to get experience before I start playing hockey often. Im fairly confident in my skating that I'm as good as some of the beer league guys and I'm ready to play hockey now. My dilemma is this however: I have near zero practice with a puck. I played one game of pickup hockey last week, i managed to score on a slapshot from inside the blueline and it felt so awesome because I could really feel the stick flex and easily got the puck in the top right hand corner. I think a lot of it was beginners luck though however. It was an amazing feeling none the less though.

Really to cut to the chase though, I found myself in plays while moving backwards to pass the puck that I would normally flick the puck up in the air with a ball and it seemed to work out ok for me. I just havent had time to mess around though to find the differences. I'm assuming if I were to try and pull the puck straight up into the air to glove and hand to a ref, I would make a fool out of myself trying it like you would with a ball. Where do the similarities end?
Is there a way I can practice with pucks at home or anything? I have various practice street hockey pucks and regular pucks but what do you guys do to practice at home? Is this something that is going to take a lot of work? Is playing ball hockey 1-2 times a week good while playing ice?

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[aerialis]

i got a great deal on a goalie slideboard (like a normal slideboard, but 6' x 4'), and i use it for playing around with pucks, sliding butterflies, and stride drills.

they're pretty good for simulating ice i guess - having said that, they're almost identical to whiteboards (like what you can draw on with dry-erase markers), so i would look into that, since you don't need alot of space to flip a puck.

 

[RandV]

I'm in the same boat as you, played lots of floor hockey in college, and now that I graduated and have work I want to get into ice hockey. It may not be perfect, but if you got an old sheet of plywood lying around that seems to works decently. Good for shooting the puck off of at least.

 

[Steve Gatzos*]

The other stipulation is that my basement is burber carpet where i usually mess around. Paved driveway and garage but not much room in the garage between the cars and my bike, plus its rather cold out I'd like to try to avoid that if possible. Just keep playing ball?