Beer League Pro Tip: Winger D-Zone Responsibility

February 17, 2014 | by Mr.Temple | Sports

This series of whiteboards isn’t intended to offer much help to the player who’s had much or any coaching. Instead, the aim is to teach some of the fundamentals of the game, helping beer-leaguers and the like who took up hockey at a later age. This is the first instalment, see parts two and three here:

Beer League Pro Tip (Part 2): Beat Every Goalie and Have Airtight Defence
Beer League Pro Tip (Part 3): Centre and D-Men Defensive Unit

A lot of time the guy who’s never played any organized hockey is thrown on the Wing and has to just figure it out for himself.

As Justin Bourne put it in a Backhand Shelf article:

Backhand Shelf - The Whiteboard: how to play wing in the D-zone better than I ever did

Wing is the easiest position in hockey, especially in the d-zone. I mean, holy hell people, if you can’t play this position moderately well, it’s time to switch to bowling. But still, there are certain nuances in the d-zone that can make one winger more valuable than the next (outside of raw talent), so let’s go over them.

That said, teams with Wingers that don’t know where to be in the D-Zone spend most of their games in their zone, and get very little chance to generate any offense.

What do you think? Do these whiteboards make it a little more clear what the Winger role is in the defensive zone?

Click for larger versions.