3 on 3 Leagues

It is a well-known fact that players improve their skills in practice. This is mainly due to the amount of time that each player is actually on the ice and touching a puck. The game is where the player can then showcase what they have learned from practice.

At Ozzie Ice, every player is always involved in the play during our 3on3 Games. Because the players are playing on a half-sheet of ice, they touch the puck more, get more shots and score more goals. Goalies can easily receive 3 times as many shots in a 3on3 game then they would in a 5on5 game.

Also, because of the shorter rink, players learn to Read & React much quicker in order to execute the play. When these players then go back to playing 5on5, the game will seem like it has slowed right down and they will have much more time to make the right decision.

Although many people feel that players need to have a full sheet of ice to practice or play on, it is obvious that only one-third of the ice is ever really being used in a 5on5 game. With the ice being split up into Defensive Zone, Neutral Zone and Offensive Zone, that is where the play always is. With 3on3, all Zones are integrated, forcing players to think quicker and adjust from offense to defense, and back again in a matter of seconds. One second, a player is recovering a rebound from the front of his own net, and the next second he is shooting on goal at the other net.

Our ultimate goal with 3on3 here at Ozzie Ice is to ensure that all of the players are having FUN! When a person enjoys what they are doing, they worker harder and achieve more.

Small wonder Anaheim Mighty Ducks’ star Paul Kariya has the quickest feet and one of the quickest minds in the NHL. As a pint-sized peewee hockey player, Kariya pointed toward a professional career by sharpening his skills on a sawed-off rink.

The Burnaby Winter Club arena where Kariya played is 50 feet shorter than a standard NHL sheet of ice, and Kariya, who has always been light on the blades, thinks the mini-rink helped raise his reaction time to lightning-fast.

“Paul has said to us, ‘If I can do more in less space and time, imagine what I can do on a bigger sheet of ice. I can do more with a lot more room,’” says Dwayne Lowdermilk, director of operations for National Training Rinks, based in Langley .

NTR is reintroducing the mythical Canadian backyard rink to hundreds of youngsters through its three-on-three program, filling a development gap somewhere between road hockey and the 200-by-85 standard-sized municipal ice sheet.

The theory is that a scaled-down rink—NTR’s measure 130 by 60, about two-thirds of a normal NHL sheet—forces a young player to handle the puck at high speed in a limited area, improving stickhandling ability. Studies show that most minor hockey players get to handle the puck no more than 20-30 seconds per game.

“There’s more puck handling, more passing, more plays,” Lowdermilk says. “There are about 60 to 100 shots a game, so players get to touch and feel the puck about 10 times more than on a full-sized sheet.”

Incredibly, in Canada today there are about 3,000 indoor rinks, compared to 50 in Finland and about 120 in Russia . Although the local municipal rink is dead-square in the mainstream of Canadian life, its regulation ice sheet may work against skill development, especially with the beginning player.

“Basically, the idea is to keep kids moving to allow them to handle the puck and develop passing skills,” says television color man Ryan Walter, who is one of a number of ex-NHL players promoting the concept of Three-On-Three Hockey. “So often today you see a game where one kid’s got the puck and there are nine others chasing him. Even at the bantam (14 and 15 year olds) level, some of those skills still need to be taught.”