Saucer Passing
Ages 9 and up · A shooting pad or smooth floor, pucks or street balls, an obstacle to clear (a stick across two objects works), a partner or landing zone beyond
The saucer pass (a pass that flies flat like a frisbee over a stick or body and lands flat, ready to receive) is hockey's most satisfying skill to practice and one of its most useful: games at every level feature lanes blocked by sticks, and the player who can float a pass over them and land it soft owns options nobody else has.
It is also a perfect driveway drill: an obstacle (a stick laid across two pucks, a cone bar), a partner or target zone, and the physics lesson repeats until the wrists own it: the puck rolls blade-heel-to-toe through release, spinning flat, climbing just enough, landing dead.
How to run it
- The release alone, no obstacle: passes where the puck rolls from the blade's HEEL to its TOE through release, the toe flicking last, the puck spinning flat like a frisbee. Grade the spin: flat rotation is the whole mechanic. Ten reps.
- Add gentle air: the same release with the blade opening slightly, the puck rising a few inches and landing FLAT (no wobble, no rolling). Ten reps.
- The obstacle: a stick laid a few feet ahead; saucers clearing it by inches and landing flat in a target zone beyond. Ten reps, clean clears logged.
- Distance and touch: zones at varied ranges, the saucer's height and length adjusting while the flat landing stays sacred.
- Partner rounds when available: saucer catch (both players receiving each other's saucers dead on the blade), streaks counted. The landing quality is always the score.
What to say
Common faults and fixes
Wobbling, knuckling flight (no flat spin).
Back to the release-only phase grading rotation: the heel-to-toe roll creates the spin, and slow exaggerated rolls rebuild it. Spin first, air second, distance third; the order never changes.
Sky-high saucers (cleared the stick, uncatchable anywhere).
The inches-not-feet standard with the obstacle low: the saucer is a low flat float, not a lob. Score clears that land in the zone flat; height without landing is zero.
Scooping with the body (lifting shoulders to throw the puck up).
The wrists own the saucer: body quiet, blade doing the physics. Slow reps with the body deliberately still isolate the roll where it lives.
Make it easier, make it harder
Street balls (they saucer easily), no obstacle, celebrating flat spin alone.
Higher and wider obstacles; landing zones shrinking; saucers off the backhand (the graduate badge); moving saucers (passing over the obstacle while walking); partner saucer-catch streaks raced weekly.
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