Steve Gatzos*
Guest
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?
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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