Even on off-days away from games and practices, hockey players still love to hone their craft and work on their skills. Unfortunately, unless you have 24/7 access to a rink, there will be times when you can’t get on the ice to practice things like passing or shooting.
While you can practice on your driveway or the grass in your yard, it simply isn’t the same as on ice, as the puck and your stick move differently on these different surfaces. A great option to be able to replicate the feel of ice for shooting and stickhandling is a shooting pad.
These can be incredibly small and fit in most spaces, but can also be massive. For example, check out the shooting pad that John Tavares has created here.
While you can buy a shooting pad to use in your driveway or a room in your home, why not make one yourself? With that in mind, this guide is going to take you through the process of making your own shooting pad.
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Making Your Own Shooting Pad
The first step to making your own shooting pad is actually finding something to use as a pad. While this might seem difficult, it is quite easy. Simply head to a hardware store and pick up some panel board, some tile board, or a melamine panel.
Choose the right size, and you can even connect multiple boards if need be. Next, most people will pick up some furniture polish or silicone lubricant of some kind. Simply add the polish or lubricant to the panels and the puck, and you should have a surface that is quite similar to ice.
This can be used indoors or outdoors, and you might need to reapply the polish and/or lubricant frequently, but it is certainly an effective and affordable way to practice your skills off-ice. This little bit of prep and maintenance is well worth it, and shouldn’t take more than a few minutes.
Reasons to Make Your Own Hockey Shooting Pad
Now that you know just how to make a quality hockey shooting pad from scratch, why would you make your own instead of just picking one up online or in-store? Well, there are a couple of reasons why.
The first reason is because it has the potential to save you a lot of money. The panel and polish/lubricant won’t run you that much at all in most cases, and many commercially-available shooting pads cost well over $100 to buy.
In addition to saving money, you also have more control over the size and shape of the pad, instead of simply choosing whatever options already exist for you. You can make a large one if you have the space, or keep it compact if you don’t.
The Benefits of a Hockey Shooting Pad
So what are the benefits of having a hockey shooting pad in the first place? Well, the main benefit is that it will be much more natural than trying to play on concrete, asphalt, or grass. It will be much smoother and more consistent and feel almost like ice does.
These pads also help you practice some stickhandling drills (depending on the size) right at home. You will no longer have to travel anywhere to practice your moves, which can give you a lot more time to practice whenever you have a couple of minutes to spare.
If you are wondering which sort of drills you should consider working on, check out this video.
I hope that this guide has been able to learn not only how to make a shooting pad, but why you should consider it, and the benefits it can provide. If you feel I left out a tip or piece of information that could have been useful, be sure to let me know in a comment.
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