AAA Hockey Tryout Prep: The 6-Week Plan

Ice is the scarce resource, so this plan is built mostly off-ice. Book one stick-and-puck or a small-group skills session each week and run the on-ice block in full gear, every time.

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Full-depth squats with a three-second hold, fifteen, four sets. Split squats, ten each leg, three sets. Single-leg squats to a chair, eight each leg, three sets. A skating-stance hold, sixty seconds, three rounds. Weight in the middle of the foot, knees tracking over toes, chest up. Everything at a AAA tryout pushes from this position.

One leg, stick in both hands. Thirty seconds still, ten reaches each direction, ten single-leg hip hinges. Switch. Three rounds. The standing knee never caves. This is what keeps you upright with a defender leaning on you in the corner.

Four hundred touches with the eyes on the wall: narrow, wide, around the body, toe drags around an obstacle. Every day of the plan. At AAA the hands have to be automatic because the eyes are needed elsewhere.

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Forty-five seconds hard in skating stance, ninety seconds easy, eight rounds. Track the quality of the last round against the first. Close the gap week by week.

Fifty snap shots, no windup, corner called. Fifty shots off a pass bounced from a board, released as it arrives. Twenty-five shots from a bad reception, puck in your feet, pulled and fired. AAA evaluators are not counting goals in the shooting drill. They are watching how fast the puck leaves and whether it goes where the eyes went.

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Lateral bounds, stuck landings, ten each way, three sets. Crossover steps on the floor, ten each direction, three sets. Continuous bounds twenty seconds on, forty off, four rounds. Push through the whole foot. This is the crossover start that beats a stranger to a loose puck.

Duration: 40 min · Equipment: Full gear including helmet and neck guard, a booked stick-and-puck or small-group skills session

Two laps, then ten stops each side facing each way, at speed. Crossovers around a circle at speed, ten each direction, both forward and backward. Tight turns around your glove at speed, both ways. Then five blue-to-blue sprints from a dead stop with full rest. Then fifteen minutes carrying a puck through whoever is on the ice, at full speed, head up, changing hands and protecting it with your body. Weak side twice, every drill.

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Sixty seconds hard, then fifteen shots at the pad immediately. Rest sixty. Six rounds. The shot goes heavy by round three. Fix it with legs and weight transfer, never arms. This is the last scrimmage of a tryout weekend, built at home.

Partner passes and calls out, as the ball arrives, which option is closed: shoot, pass, or carry. You do the remaining option instantly. Twenty reps, switch. Then twenty more where the partner calls it late. AAA coaches want the second option seen before the first is closed. This builds it.

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Duration: 40 min · Equipment: Full gear, a booked small-group skills session or a stick-and-puck with other players

Find a session with kids you do not know and play small-area games: two-on-two or three-on-three in a zone, quick changes, no coasting. Talk every shift, call for the puck by position not by name, and play the role the group needs. This is the closest thing to a AAA scrimmage you can create, and it is the single most useful hour of the plan.

Sixty seconds hard, seventy-five easy, eight rounds. Best of the plan. Stay low through the last fifteen seconds of every round.

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Three forty-five second intervals, full rest between, best effort. Five bounds each way, stuck. Then stop. The engine is built.

Fifty shots, corner called, quick release, ending on one that went where you said. Then every piece of gear laid out, dry, checked. Skates sharpened at least one skate before the first session. Two nights of real sleep. Nothing new at the rink.

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Run the plan, then after the first session tell us who your kid was lined up with, how the legs held in the last scrimmage, and which drill the evaluators repeated. That is where the next plan starts.