World Junior Summer Showcase: Day 1 Notebook

Notes and observations from Day 1 of the 2023 World Junior Summer Showcase in Plymouth

Practices at the 2023 World Junior Summer Showcase began Thursday morning in Plymouth with each of the four participating teams taking the ice.  The Swedish delegation got the morning started, then came the Fins, after that the "White" USA team, then the "Blue" American side closed out the day.

Games won't start until Saturday afternoon, when USA Blue and Sweden while face off before USA White takes on Finland.  For now, here are some notes and observations from the four practices:

The Swedish practice is scheduled to begin at 9:00 AM, and the entire team is on the ice with five minutes to spare.  

The Swedes waste no time at all on the kind of casual and listless skating and shooting in laps around the rink that begins almost every other hockey practice I've seen.  

Instead,  before practice has even officially begun, the team arranges itself into lines and has a transition passing and shooting progression underway.  At first, the attacking team doesn't have a defense to contend with, but within a minute or two, the exercise evolves into full ice 2-on-2s.  

After fifteen minutes of work, the group gathers around a white board that the coaching staff has fixed to the glass at the penalty boxes. After a brief chalk talk, the team takes turns running through five-man defensive transitions and rotations.

There's a brief session of live five-on-five, before returning to transition work.  Then, practice ends with a few minutes of special teams.

What's most striking about the workout is just how carefully the Swedish staff managed its time throughout the hour practice.  Especially during the transition drills, the Swedish coaches do a nice job of ensuring that the majority of the group is active at any given moment.  Multiple reps are taking place at the same time going in opposite directions, which helps keep the number of players waiting for their next go to a minimum while also decreasing the interval between reps.

2023 Red Wings first rounder Axel Sandin Pellikka takes plenty of reps along the point during Sweden's power play work, showing once again the skills that made him such a coveted prospect in the lead up to June's draft.  

Two habits of his that jumped out at me this morning were the way he keeps his head up from the point and the way he always has the puck in a dual threat position.  Put those two skills together (and throw in some remarkable balance and edgework), and it's not hard to see why he's been so effective in that position throughout his amateur career.  

Sandin Pellikka also has a clear affinity for a dying art in the modern game: the old fashioned, non-one-timed slap shot.  He has an excellent shot fake in his bag, and it's no empty threat; the Swedish blue liner has no compunction about firing a clapper on goal.  That tool further feeds the sense that he is just as comfortable beating you with his playmaking or his shooting from the point.  He can wind and fire, he can wind and slap pass, or he can wind, hold and survey his options.

The Finnish practice begins in the opposite manner to the morning's first session: When practice is scheduled to begin at 10:15, there are just three skaters and three goalies on the ice.  The shooters work to warm up the goaltenders, and some five minutes later, the remainder of the team processes onto the ice.

After two minutes of skating laps and firing shots (the kind of thing we didn't see from the Swedes), formal practice begins with passing rotations in the neutral zone that feed a shot (through a standing screen).  In groups of three, players circle one another and lay the puck off before the whistle blows and whoever is in possession breaks for the net.  It resembles a soccer-style "rondo," except without a defender, and it does a nice job of making sure each player gets touches in early.

Up next, Finland spends about fifteen minutes working on full-ice two-on-two transitions.  The drill has plenty of pace and energy, but, compared to the Swedes, it's notable that only four players in motion at a time, while the majority of the skater group watches.

Before practice reaches the halfway point, the group divides in two, with the half the team participating in a game of "Rebound" with the three goalies at one end of the ice while the other half shoots on an empty net under the observation and occasional instruction of a single coach.

By the scheduled end of practice (11:15), just four players are left on the ice.  They've just been shooting and passing among themselves, and they quickly gather the pucks at the Zamboni creeps onto the surface.

To be clear, I don't think there's anything wrong with reducing the structure of a practice, especially given that the Finnish team is fresh off traveling to the States and had spent some time working together before they left.  

For any player, unstructured play is an essential part of growth because of the unique way it trains an athlete in problem solving.  In the absence of structure, new problems will always come up (rather than specifically tailored challenges associated with a particular drill), so players will have to think on their feet to find solutions.  

Instead, it was interesting to see such divergent approaches from Finland and Sweden, even though they are ostensibly at the same point in the same competition.

The two American practices (first White, then Blue) follow the same format.  Both practices begin with a bang.  

At the White session, the last player takes the ice four minutes before the scheduled start of practice, and the group jumps straight into a 3-on-3 keep-away game, with tires around the offensive zone creating gates for players to pass and skate through.  

From there, the U.S. moves into a series of transition passing progressions, and, like the Swedes, the American staff engages as much of the team as possible by running two reps simultaneously in opposite directions.

After the passing work, the Americans pivot into a progression of different forms of one-on-one and battle drills.  These include one-on-one rushes, two-on-two work off retrievals, and two-on-ones working half of the offensive zone at a time.

After a water break, the team ends practice with dueling power play sessions in either offensive zone.  The reps are offset with one group watching as the other plays out a power play sequence until a clearance, goal, or frozen puck.

After practice, head coach David Carle spoke about the unique challenge of using the Summer Showcase simultaneously to evaluate the candidates for the team he will bring to Gothenburg in December and to educate the entire group as to how he'd like them to play.  

"I think [evaluation and education] is the balance, and so you're trying to put them into some situations in practice that you know are uncomfortable but maybe don't fit exactly into how we want to play," Carle said.  "You want to see how they instinctually read plays and do things, so there will be a balance to it as we go through camp.  And I will learn throughout as well, and we'll talk a lot as a staff and go real open with that.  There's no doubt that we're not picking the team at this camp.  It's a major part of the selection of the team, but it's as much about the education and them getting to know each other and us getting to know them and them getting to know us to build that foundation so when we do pick up the ones that...earn their opportunity in December...we're hitting the ground running."