Desert Hockey Development

Dedicated to building youth hockey in Arizona

Current Youth Hockey Programs

We’re building our youth hockey programs for kids from 6 to 14.

We’re starting from scratch to welcome kids that are completely unfamiliar with hockey. While most of our board members and volunteers have been involved in hockey from a very early age, we want to make sure our sport is accessible to a NEW group of kids regardless of their circumstances.

grow_the_game_webOur introductory “clinics” have been modified and tuned depending on the mix of kids that show up. If we have more little kids than big kids, we’ll be sure to have more “goofing around and shooting” than anything structured. If we have more kids that want to play street hockey than those that are interesting in inline skating, we’ll make sure everybody is accommodated.

Common to all our introductory events is that they’re completely safe and sportsmanship is emphasized a LOT. Mainly, though, we want to be sure NOBODY goes home without a smile on their face and maybe a hot dog or two in their belly. Our goal is that they will all want to come join us again and maybe bring a buddy or two.

Always Free, Always Fun

Once they’re ready for more structured instruction, our team of extremely experienced hockey coaches will run through a structured clinic. The clinic for inline (versus street) hockey would go something like:

  1. 5 minutes for introduction and safety rules for clinic
  2. 10 minutes of skating drills (forward, backward, stops and turns)
  3. 10 minutes of stick handling drills (hand position, puck handling)
  4. 10 minutes of passing drills (how to pass and how to receive a pass, forehand and backhand)
  5. 5 minute water and fruit break
  6. 4 minutes of hard skating around rink (forward and backward)
  7. 6 minutes of shooting drills (wrist shot and slap shot)
  8. 10 minutes of scrimmage followed by 3 hard laps

It’s a blast, you and/or your child will have a lot of fun and get a little exercise.

Once we have our event schedule set up, we’ll keep you posted if you join our mailing list by filling in the really brief form over there on the right of your screen (if you’re on a PC of some sort) or below this page if you’re on a smaller tablet or phone.