Defending passing lanes well is a critical facet of team defense. As an off-ball defender, we have to be able to cover more than one player. This is true in a man down scenario, an odd man transition scenario, or a 6v6 with a scramble or slide and recovery. To be a successful team defense, and individual defender, it must be engrained in our DNA that we are often responsible for more than one player off the ball.
If the offense can’t get the ball to a player, then that player can’t score. Playing passing lanes well can lead to caused turnovers, but it also narrows the windows for offenses to get quality scoring opportunities. Let’s dive a little bit deeper below.
First, let’s look at few examples of different passing lanes to play.
The first example is what I refer to as “dragging” the passing lane. This often happens on a rotation. When we rotate, we can drag the passing lane to the player we are rotating from. When an offense gets a defense rotating, they will likely get a shot if they move the ball quickly. If we drag that passing lane, we may get a caused turnover or at least force them to double clutch or move their feet to make the pass, which will slow down the ball movement. Timing is everything. Slowing offensive ball movement down allows our defense to recover. This is one of few times we can encourage poles to play with one hand on the stick.
Watch Mike Ehrhardt drag the passing lane here to get a caused turnover vs Team Canada in 2018. Notice how Jeff Teat on Canada tries to drag Ehrhardt to throw it back.
Watch Beaudan Szuluk, #44 on Hopkins, slow play his rotation and drag the lane here to get a nugget. This is just a high IQ play of baiting the pass and not flying to the rotation. Understanding threats and player tendencies can help with this. We don’t need to fly in our rotations to players that are in non-threatening positions.
In the “drag” scenario above, we are rotating opposite of the ball movement. However, in a “scrape” scenario, we are scraping in the same direction the ball is moving. This is the case when we are splitting two players or showing adjacent to the ball, and then try to get back to our player on the pass. We can scrape through the lane as we get back, which can either deter passes, widen them our, or lead to CT’s. We must be very careful of getting back cut in this scenario.
Watch this Penn State defender scrape the adjacent lane to X here.
Below is an additional clip of the UVA defender scraping from an adjacent position through the lane and getting a nugget. This a great tool for longer defenders to use. If you are rangy, working on widening out adjacent players through scrape lanes is a great tool to have. Even if you don’t get the nuggets, it will slow ball movement and keep the offense wide.
As a defense, we want to keep the offense wide and let the ball move around the perimeter, not through our defense. One great way to deter or challenge offenses is to have great presence on skip through lanes.
One general queue we can use is “stick inside, body outside”. This is broad and may not be true in every instance, but as a general rule, having our stick inside towards the crease and up in lane with our body outside of the lane is a good principle. This leaves our body closer to the player we are approaching on the perimeter, and our stick ready to collapse on the crease or up in a lane.
Below is a great example of Will Donovan from Notre Dame having his stick inside the lane and body outside the lane. This is to his cross-hand side too which can be challenging. Some coaches like to teach guys to switch hands in this scenario, others just allow them to play how they are comfortable as long as they can accomplish the objective. Will Donovan gets a great CT by this simple principle of stick towards the crease and in a lane when off ball.
Just to show a counter example. Watch UVA’s top defenders not have their sticks towards the crease off the ball. This opens up a massive skip lane for Johns Hopkins.
As illustrated through my fine piece of art below, just notice the lane this opens up. I have no clue whether UVA teaches this principle or not, and this is certainly not meant to criticize them. It's easy to Monday morning quarterback - I could pick a clip in almost any game from any level and illustrate how this opens up lanes. Sticks inside and in lanes here would clog this through lane and save a goal.
This is originally a post I wrote for our men's coaching community. There are a number of drills from our webinar guests on our community that are great ways to work on passing lanes. In order to be great at passing lanes, we need to have great stance, stick position, IQ and skill. You can drill actually picking off passes, but we also want to drill just the principles associated with these lanes.
Passing Lane Drills & Teaching Videos from Our Coaching Community:
Coach Ikeda's "Approach, Show, Fill" Drill: The “show” in this drill can work on the scraping concept in the lane. The “fill” should work on finding the through lane to the backside.
Coach Ikeda's "4v3 Nuggets" Drill: a pure drill focused on skip through lanes. This is a great “stick inside, body outside” drill. You can check out a quick clip of the nuggets explanation here as well.
Coach Koesterer's "Sean Taylor 2v1" Drill: this is a great drill to work on the adjacent show principles and scraping lanes.
Coach Koesterer's "Skeleton Invert Defense" Drill: you can certainly implement all of the principles of lanes in a drill like this.
Coach Koesterer's "Keys to Off Ball Defense": I recommend just watching this to learn from Coach Koesterer on the way he views off-ball defensive play.
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