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A guide to what your coach means........
"See what he's got" - You have the ball; see if your man can cover you. Often, this is a chance to draw-and-dump, drawing the double-team and dumping the ball to an open teammate. When you hear this, I want you to trigger the offense; if you can't take your man or draw a slide, pull the ball back out, settle it down and retain possession.
"Match up" -- You will hear this (or "Get a man”) when you first get on defense. Everyone needs to find a man; when you hear me say this, call out the number of the guy you are covering. If you aren't covering someone --or if two of you call out the same number --somebody is open. Find that player and make sure that you or a teammate goes to cover him.
"Drop in" -- We play defense all over the field, but we play tight man-for-man only within our defensive zone, where you have teammates who can slide over and help out if you get beaten. If you hear me yelling this, you are playing too far out from the goal.
"Just run with him" -- On defense, don't try to strip your opponent, just stay stride- for-stride with him. Many times, that is all it will take to cover an opponent; trying to do more may be costly.
"Settle it" -- Let's slow the ball down and set up in our offense. There is no rush. There will be plenty of times when we prefer to take our time with the ball and run our set offense rather than run all over the field.
"Get it behind" or "Get it to the attack" -- This means we want to start up our offense from behind the goal. IT DOES NOT MEAN YOU MUST THROW THE BALL DIRECTLY TO AN ATTACKMAN .Pass the ball to teammates along the perimeter of the offense and down to the attack, or carry the ball to the side of the field so you can get an easy pass to an attackman.
"Stay onside" -- For midfielders, always tied to your name, as in "Jim, stay onside." It means that if you cross the midfield line, we will be offside’s (a teammate who normally stays either in the offensive or defensive zone has crossed the midfield ahead of you).
"You have the cut-off" or "You've got the break " -- for midfielders on a face-off, this is the person whose primary job is to make sure the other team does not come up with a fast break. If you can't come up with the ball, you must slow down the other team so that they can't run-and-gun on us.
"You have the point" -- For defensemen, this means you have the first slide on the fast break, the responsibility to stop the man carrying the ball up field. Stop the break at the top of our defensive zone, never outside of it. For attackmen, it means that you play up high if we get a fast break, and that you will be the player most likely to get the first pass from the guy carrying the ball up field. Your job will then be to look for the feed to someone near the goal or to shoot yourself.
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