Can odd training techniques take a player to the next level? The answer is a resounding…maybe. And they can also do more harm than good.
By Jared Clinton, features writer
When you post nearly 500 points across a four-season span, you’re going to find yourself on the occasional highlight reel. That’s been the case for Nathan MacKinnon, whose signature all-gas-no-brakes style has led to more than a few jaw-dropping viral moments.
This season, though, MacKinnon managed to turn heads without even leaving the practice rink.
The clips that caught some attention didn’t stand out at a glance. There’s MacKinnon, deking and drifting a harmless shot toward the boards. Truly, if anything, what’s most notable at first is that it goes against type. Instead of dashing and dancing around the ice, MacKinnon is displaying the type of rudimentary stickhandling generally reserved for a peewee practice. But then it clicks: MacKinnon, regularly a righty, is knocking the puck about with a left-handed twig.
Immediate speculation was that MacKinnon was engaging in some ultramodern training technique. What particular skill was he working on? Was it possible he had found a way to level up his game? What was this sorcery? Ultimately, when another clip of a left-handed MacKinnon cropped up in March, theories began to surface, including one from NHL defenseman-turned-broadcaster Erik Johnson, who played parts of 11 seasons alongside MacKinnon in Colorado.
During his time in St. Louis, Johnson wrote online, he recalled watching Hall of Famer Paul Kariya practising with an off-hand stick. Johnson noted that Kariya had explained that it “tricked his neural pathways” – confused his brain, put more simply – and ultimately resulted in a stronger core and more strength on his stick when he reverted to his normal hand. As these things tend to go, Johnson’s premise was picked up elsewhere, with content creators piggybacking to add that wielding the wrong-handed stick was a valuable skill-building technique.
But if that’s the case, though, no one told MacKinnon – or, at the very least, any self-inflicted brain games were far from his intent.
“It’s more just having fun,” MacKinnon said. “It definitely feels good when you go back to your normal hand…It’s nothing too serious.”
Ah. Well.
In fairness, one can understand why Johnson – and others – might ascribe greater meaning to a bit of goofing around. Though we’re decades beyond the days of using training camp, and training camp alone, to get prepared for the season, we have entered the hyperdrive era of training. It seems each summer there’s a new technique or gadget or craze that crops up. And through that prism, it’s easy to view MacKinnon’s attempted ambidexterity as more than just goofing around. It’s easier yet when considering that practices at the big-league level can sometimes feature eye-catching drills or skills sessions.
On one hand, these can be particular and niche skills. In Vancouver, for instance, the Canucks’ Aatu Raty has fascinated onlookers by becoming a switch hitter at the faceoff dot the past few seasons. Raty changes his handedness depending on the situation – and to great effect, as he’s won more than 60 percent of his draws. Meanwhile, in Dallas, Stars fans watched a clip of rookie center Arttu Hyry rapidly ripping off faceoff wins during practice with the butt end of his stick.
And while those are scenario-specific skills, the newfangled training methods and novel on-ice gizmos have filtered out to the rest of the ice. Think back to Connor McDavid’s rise, when mere clips of his summer stick-and-puck sessions had hockey fans drooling over his potential.
IT’S MORE IMPORTANT TO WORK ON PUCK PROTECTION AND EVASIONAND PUCK CONTROL WITH SPEED THAN ANYTHING ELSE– Ron Johnson
But ask Elite Hockey Science’s Ron Johnson – who has been in the development business for more than 35 years and trained the likes of Joe Pavelski, Patrick Marleau and Dylan Larkin – and he has his reservations about all of the above.
“We used to take faceoffs with the butt end of our stick when I was 12 or 13 years old. Big deal,” he said. “But then people go, ‘Well, it doesn’t really teach me how to use the points of my blade, the toe of my stick to grab the puck or to slash the guy’s stick properly or do all the other things, and it just faded away.’ It just fades away because, in time, it’s proven.”
To his way of thinking, the same holds true for the McDavid-style stickhandling – “slip skills,” as Johnson calls them – that has become a hallmark of summer skills camps since the Edmonton Oilers superstar broke into the NHL.
Paul Kariya (Ron Chenoy-USA TODAY Sports)As part of Johnson’s research, he tracks hundreds of big-league goals each year and analyzes the video for skating style, shooting technique and puckhandling application. By his measure, there were only six instances in the more than 1,400 goals he analyzed last season in which the use of a slip skill resulted in a goal.
“That’s ridiculous to spend that much time training it,” Johnson said. “It’s more important to work on puck protection and evasion and puck control with speed than anything else. That’s what the data shows, but people won’t train it because you don’t make money doing that.”
In part, too, Johnson said these tailor-made skills “caused all sorts of problems in hockey development because it became a ‘me’ game and not a ‘we’ game.” Put another way, it stripped away fundamental tools like vision and situational awareness in favor of attempting to teach players the rare ability to turn low-percentage situations into goal-scoring opportunities.
“Everybody thought that by doing what McDavid could do, you’re going to become another McDavid,” he said. “That’s just not the way it works. He sees the game at a completely different level.”
What, then, of a more individualized position like goaltending? Like their forward and blueline counterparts, goaltenders have seen their own training innovations. Eli Wilson – whose stable includes current NHLers Logan Thompson, Stuart Skinner and Joel Hofer and former pros such as Carey Price, Tuukka Rask and Tim Thomas – isn’t afraid to incorporate unorthodox methods into his training.
“We have goaltenders that are in the net off ice facing a tennis-ball machine,” Wilson said. “I use that a lot. You’re not stopping tennis balls on the ice in games, but off the ice, I find it is a fantastic tool to get guys to execute proper save selection. It works on hand-eye coordination, allows them to adjust to speeds of different shots, all that kind of stuff.”
It’s not the only tool he uses away from the rink, either. Off-ice training sessions at his development camp include the use of strobe glasses, which intermittently obscure vision, and Binovi vision boards that can help improve reaction speed. (Think Whac-A-Mole, but with lights.)
“The on-ice stuff is repetitive, but guys are still intense and still enjoy it,” Wilson said. “But the off-ice stuff, I find you need to keep it fresh, keep it interesting. It has to be competitive, and they have to enjoy it.”
THE OFF-ICE STUFF, I FIND YOU NEED TO KEEP IT FRESH, KEEP IT INTERESTING– Eli Wilson
In saying that, Wilson concedes nothing replicates what can be done on the ice. He’s also hesitant to have his goaltenders learn a skill using a specific tool – say, tracking the puck more precisely with a peripheral-vision-obscuring device – when the same ability can be taught naturally.
“The thought process is, ‘If it’s not in the game, then I’m not using it on the ice,’” Wilson said.
On that, both Wilson and Johnson agree.
“That’s what the martial-arts community discovered after 500 years of training,” Johnson said. “Just do what you’re supposed to do. Don’t mess around with it. That’s it. They went down the rabbit hole for hundreds of years and came back to that simple answer: do nothing that isn’t relevant and do nothing that isn’t true.”
This article appeared in The Hockey News' Top 100 NHLers 2026 issue.
Top 100 NHLers 2026 provides a look at the top 100 players in the NHL, PHWL playoff previews, as well as features on Edmonton Oilers’ Connor McDavid, San Jose Sharks’ Macklin Celebrini, and more.