TOP Hockey Program Overview

The 'Four-Corners' development model is a staple at all TOP Hockey practices, providing players at all ages with a highly-structured and efficient practice plan resulting more touches of the puck, more repetitions per drill, and a more engaging practice experience. Players will be placed in small groups and rotate through all stations during the practice time, usually spending between 10-12 minutes per station. We believe in spending a lot of time on the fundamentals of core skills; skating, shooting, passing, and competition, ensuring all players have a strong base of skills before introducing more advanced concepts.

Game-Based Learning Environment

It's no secret that kids like to play games, whether it's on the playground, in the backyard, or on the ice. In fact, games-based learning has been shown to be one of the most effective ways that kids learn. By using games to teach hockey, we can teach kids to execute skills based on their environment, which is called the 'practice-to-game transfer'. Skills cannot be solely learned in isolation, but must be reinforced by making decisions, and ultimately by making mistakes. For any situation that occurs in the game of hockey, we are able to use small-area games to replicate it, provide kids with more reps of that situation, and provide instant feedback and teaching. At all practices we incorporate at least one small-area game station, which can take the form of activity-based games (ie. freeze tag), skill-based games (ie. shark & minnows w/ pucks), and role-based situational games (ie. transition 2 v 2).

Station-Based Practices By The Numbers

• 2x-4x more repetitions of core skills per 60-minute practice, as compared to a 'traditional' single-team practice.
• 27.8% more individual ice-time per week as compared to a 'traditional' team schedule.
• 23% more individual puck-time per week as compared to a 'traditional' team schedule.
• 40% more players on ice per 60-minute practice, resulting in higher engagement and lower ice costs.

Sources: USA Hockey, Hockey Canada, TOP Sports Inc.