Hockey Shooting Practice at Home

If you’re going to practice shooting pucks at home there are a lot of ways to do it. You can get super fancy, and pricey, go really minimal, or get creative and land somewhere in-between. We go from the bare minimum to the fanciest at home set-ups and along the way explain the good vs the bad.
Then I walk you through my shooting setup, some of the cheap things I wish I spent more money on, not so cheap things I wish I didn’t spend money on, and some out of the box ideas that worked. 

Links (some links are affiliate links):

Things to shoot at

• Shooting Tarp
• Budget Goal
• Mid-Range Goal
• Magnetic Targets
  • Version 1
  • Version 2
• Bungee Targets
• Clamp Targets
• Bell Targets
• Smart Targets
• Shooting Target (Shooter Tutor)
• Net for around the Goal

Things to shoot on

• Small Shooting Pad
• Large Shooting Pad
• Shooting Tiles

Other Accessories

• Hockey Wraparound
• Slide Board
• Radar

Videos Mentioned

• DIY Hockey Rebounder (Coach Jeremy)
• DIY Hockey Rebounder (quepasaMN)

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Music by RomaRecord1973 via Pixabay

Chapters

• 0:58 Pucks!
• 3:18 What are you launching these pucks at?
• 10:53 Targets and tutors
• 20:06 How do you know you're improving?
• 22:39 Your first luxury item
• 28:16 Don't destroy your stick
• 29:55 More fun accessories
• 38:16 My set-up

Transcript

SPEAKER_1: 0:22

If you're going to practice shooting pucks at home, there are a lot of ways to do it. You can get super fancy and pricey, or get really minimal, or even get creative and land somewhere in between those. There are a few categories of things you need to have. Something to shoot at, something to shoot. Anything beyond that, it's just great.

SPEAKER_2: 0:41

On this episode of The Beer Leaguer Podcast, I'm gonna talk you through my shooting setup, some of the cheap things that I wish I spent more money on, and some of the not so cheap things I wish I could spend more money on.

SPEAKER_1: 0:52

And some of the out-of-the-box ideas that I have for me. First, you need something to shoot. Pucks. You want pucks. You know, you need pucks to shoot. Either regular rubber pucks or pucks made to shoot off of us.

SPEAKER_2: 1:11

An example of that is the green biscuit snipe, which I will say is different than the regular green biscuit, because green biscuits and a lot of these pucks that are made for stick handling, they are not durable enough for shooting.

SPEAKER_1: 1:25

We will break them in half, and easily the first time we get a post for a wall or whatever you're shooting at.

SPEAKER_2: 1:32

So if you're going to get not pucks, make sure you get something that will stand in shot.

SPEAKER_1: 1:40

Now, what you get to shoot with, greatly depends on where you're shooting, and what you're using to shoot at and shoot with.

SPEAKER_2: 1:48

You use soft pucks, you don't break stuff, or you're shooting off of a craggly driveway, so puck-shaped pucks are out of the question. If so, roller hockey balls. It's not quite the same feel as a puck, but it's better than a hockey ball. There are roller hockey balls that simulate the feel of a puck better than other ones.

SPEAKER_1: 2:08

They have a certain circumference to them, so they have the same hit point as a puck, and the same weight as a puck. But honestly, I used to shoot tennis balls. So, you know, you can use anything. Tennis balls totally work, they're cheap. I used to do tennis balls against a brick wall. And that's fine. Just, hot tip, if you don't know, don't let the tennis balls get wet, because wet tennis balls are awful, because you get gross back spray when you shoot. And honestly, I don't know if anything feels as bad and as disgusting as getting hit with a wet tennis ball when somebody's shooting at you, as a side note. With whatever you use then, having more is always helpful than having less. So, you don't have to like take a shot, go chase down the one puck or the one ball that you have every time, you know, you missed the net. So, getting more than one is really handy and a good thing to do. So, think about that when you're buying your stuff. Because some of those things like the green biscuits types, they can be kind of pricey, and it might be worth it to just, instead of getting one of those, buy a couple of something that's cheaper so you can have multiple. So, something to keep in mind. Next, you need something to shoot at. The most basic side of things, you could shoot at, you know, an open dryer, like they always, you know, the famous Crosby thing, where he shoots in a dryer. But who wants to destroy an appliance? Also, you can shoot at a wall. Like I said, I used to shoot at a brick wall. You know, you can shoot at that. If you have a sturdy wall to shoot at, something that's brick or like a concrete block wall to shoot against, that's better than shooting against like siding, which you can break and doesn't take a lot of hits really well. You know, that's, if you have a nice solid, something like that to shoot at, you can easily shoot at something like that. Tape off like a goal or some targets, and there you go. I mean, that's a super cheap way to do it. If you want to get a little bit fancier, get like some reflective tape or something to put on there. So it's just not like some masking tape. But honestly, you just use like masking tape and put it up and shoot at a wall. You can do that like in your basement. That's something I've done before. Super cheap way to have something to shoot at. Kind of the next level up from shooting at a wall is getting a tarp. Now, you don't need to get anything fancy when I say a tarp, just some kind of heavy-ish duty outdoor tarp that you can hang up somewhere. You can get these for cheap at home supply stores. Here in the States, we have Harbor Freight, which is a great place to get stuff like this. And you can shoot off the tarp. I say heavy because heavier means that pucks or wherever you're shooting at, kind of die at it when you hit it. So you don't want something that's super light where it's just going to blow right through it and knock it away, but something kind of heavy, so it kind of hits it and just drops. So heavier being better. Again, you can tape a goal, tape targets or whatever on it. Same thing with the wall, and it works. That's a super low cost way to do that. And the great thing about tarps is you can hang it up in your basement off of like, if you have exposed rafters, something like that, in front of the wall that you used to shoot at. You can hang it, if you have a garage, open the garage door, hang the tarp down. That's where the fancy shooting tarps are made to go. So you can do that. But again, super cheap way to have something to shoot at. It's a pretty easy thing to do. Get a tarp, get some tennis balls. There you go. You have a very low budget shooting setup. One tip, though, for if you're just gonna buy regular tarp, that I will say, is don't get it super, super taut, wherever you have it. Have it a little bit loose, because if you have it super taut, like, tied all around, whatever you're shooting at is probably gonna come shooting right back at you when you hit it. Not great. So have it kind of loose, so that way when you shoot at it, whatever you have just kind of drops down, hopefully. You can always from there upgrade to actual made for hockey shooting tarps. These are tarps that have like nice holes in them with netting behind the holes and stuff like that. Graphics on them, so you're not using tape. Again, this is like a nicety of a thing. You don't need these for stuff, but they are pretty nice to have. They're pretty great to shoot at. They're great, like I said, because you can use them indoors, outdoors, hang them up from wherever. Very, very versatile things. Then kind of your next level up is hockey goals. Just finding a hockey goal somewhere, getting one of those. There are tons of levels of goals out there. You might think there's only one, but no, there's tons of levels. You can find really cheap ones at non-sporting goods stores. I know Costco in Canada will have some of these, not super cheap, but cheaper ones, places. You can find NHL level ones at actual hockey stores, and kind of every level you can think of in between. The major difference you're going to find from a cheap one to an expensive one is the metal used for the piping that holds it all together. Cheap ones are thin metal that will dent and possibly even break easier than a more expensive one, which is going to be able to take a lot of shots before you really do any kind of damage to it whatsoever. So be realistic with how often you're going to shoot at it, how your shot is. When you're looking at these, you probably don't need to get an NHL level goal out there. I mean, it's going to be way heavier and harder to move around. But it's going to be expensive. It's nice, but honestly, if you're worried about completely destroying some of these other nets, I don't know why you're listening to The Beer Leaguer podcast. Let's be honest, you're probably really good. Then if your shots that good that you're hitting the net all the time like that, hitting the posts all the time. Downsides that you have for a net. Again, they're usually the priciest option, even the lowest price one of any of these things we talked about. Generally, they're not great for moving around, because they're bulky, and they do have some collapsible ones that are easier to move, but generally, they take up a lot of space, and they're not great for moving around. And to me, what I think is the worst thing about them, you need to replace the net at some point. And honestly, that's like the biggest pay in the butt thing to do. Unless you're insanely accurate with everything, that you're going to need something also with a net to stop you from breaking windows or drywall or hitting a neighbor's kid that's watching you shoot or something like that. Something around your net to stop this. Because unlike a tarp, the net is only the net. If you miss it by six inches, it's going to hit something. Something's going to happen. So when you get a net, another nice thing to get with a net is getting some sort of netting setup that attaches or goes around it. You can go the budget route and get some fishing net or fabric deer net or something like that, and make something yourself, mock it up, have netting around it that is behind it or whatever, something that'll keep straight pucks from flying all over the place and into the neighbor's yard or whatever. Or you can buy a nice pre-built setup that has things like that, that is just netting that goes around it and handles that. Or honestly, if you're upgrading from a tarp to a net, which is kind of the way I would suggest, if you don't have anything, start the tarp, and kind of work your way up, see if you use it. You can use that tarp. Set the net up in front of the tarp, and there you go, that's your surround, or if you want to be really fancy, cut a hole in your tarp for your net, kind of put your net into the tarp, and then you have that whole real nice shooting setup right there. Easy peasy. That way you're kind of upgrading as you go and as you use things. All right, that really gets you set up with like the most basic things that you need for shooting. Now, if you want to get a little fancier with shooting, where do you go? Well, you're going to need some kind of target. There's two basic kinds of targets. One that are semi-permanently attached, and the ones that are totally not. The ones that are totally not semi-permanently attached anyway are usually ones that are magnetic. They're ones that, you know, they're little plastic targets. You kind of stick wherever you want, and you shoot at them, and when you hit them, they drop down. Super fun. These are really handy. They're super quick to set up, super quick to use. You can move them around really, really easy. You can get different sizes, different colors, slightly different materials that are used. Usually, they're hard plastic, or some of them are kind of like a rubberized plastic for it. But the downside with them is because they're magnetic, you're kind of stuck to only shooting around the perimeter of the net. You know, it's going to be on the posts or on the crossbar. That's where they're sticking to. So really, that's what you're stuck shooting at, just around there. There's nothing kind of in the main field of the net that you're shooting at. Now, you could also try making something like this yourself. It wouldn't be super hard to do. You would need some kind of like sturdy plastic or some sort of rubber material or something like that, that you can attach magnets to. You just need something that's durable enough to be able to take shots and, you know, hit the ground a bunch of times, and some really strong magnets that you secure to this, whatever it is, really, really well. Probably like epoxy them or something like that. You know, this is the time to go 3D print some really cool looking thing that's gonna take one hit and then shatter. Not great for that. So, but you could, you could try making it yourself. I will throw a link to some of these magnetic targets in the show notes at thebeerleaguer.com. You can kind of see, you know, what we're talking about, but you can find these online really easily, any hockey store you go to, any place that sells a decent amount of hockey stuff, we'll probably have these magnetic targets. The other kind of targets that are out there are ones that are attached, usually with some form of like bungee or rope that's stretched across the posts, and there's like targets that hang from them along that. Usually these targets are like a rubbery material or like a plasticky tarp kind of material that you're shooting at. And what's nice about these is you can kind of put them wherever you want in the net. So unlike those magnetic ones I was talking about that are just around the perimeter, these can kind of be in the middle of the net where you want them. So you can kind of simulate shooting, you know, above a goalie's blocker or right above leg pads or whatever like that. Another nice thing is these are ones that you don't have to reset every time you hit them. You know, so that's nice. Those kind of ones that are kind of just magnetic there. Every time you hit them, they fall down. These, they should stay there after multiple hits. I might have to kind of slide them, move them back after every so many pucks to them. But you know, that's a lot less stuff than having to reset them every time. And usually these come in like a softer material because they don't take the hits as much, they're not falling on the ground, which makes them easier to store. If that's something you're concerned with. When looking at pocky shooting accessories. A similar one that you have to that are ones that are hang from the crossbar. They're kind of the same things as these bungees that go across. But they are just some sort of a target that will hang from the crossbar. It's usually attached with like a heavy duty rope of some kind or a bungee or something like that. And these are again usually like a heavy rubber or plastic. Or from these kind, one thing you do see a lot of is these like bell targets. They're made from like a... They're made from metal, and they're made so that when you hit them, they ring like a bell. I found people either love that or they hate it. That seems to be a very, very divisive thing with those. Also, with these, it's usually like one target kind of hanging at the bottom, whereas other ones that kind of go across usually have two or three targets on a bungee, so you can kind of fill up your net more with them. So again, something to think about. Again, you're looking for like a budget option. This hanging stuff from the crossbar thing is, I think, the most popular kind of way to make targets, the easiest way to do it, because all you need is something sort of heavy duty to hang from, some that can take some shots to it and not completely shatter or get destroyed, and some way to hang it. Real popular ones that I've seen with this are like milk jugs being used, or even us, even cardboard being used for this, and then tied off with even a skate lace, an old skate lace hanging there from the crossbar. So, again, that's a pretty cheap way to do that. Or if you have some of these magnetic ones and you want to have something in the middle, mix and match, you know? There's always kind of cheaper options for this stuff. It doesn't need to be fancy. But if you do want to get fancy, then we get into the world of shooter tutors. These are heavy fabric covers for the net that attach to the post and the crossbar, usually. That are cutouts that you shoot at. Sometimes the cutouts have little nets to collect the pucks. Sometimes they don't. Doesn't really matter because the pucks just wind up in the net if they don't have them. Now, these come in all kinds of different configurations and colorings and designs and all sorts of stuff on them. Different openings from where they have them. You have like your pretty basic one that just has openings in like the four corners and a five hole. To ones that have like a full goldie printed on them, and the openings are just above the shoulders and under the arms and things like that. All kinds of different ones for different things. So you can get whatever, kind of whatever you're thinking of for them. If you look around for shooter tutors, tons of different kinds, tons of different options for what you like and how you want to practice your shot. Again, I will link some different types of shooter tutors in the show notes, give you some examples for things. Now, if you want to get really fancy with shooter tutors, there's 3D plastic shooter tutors that you set up that are like a 3D goalie in the net. It's got the dimensions and everything of a goalie. These are completely different than just like the tarp things, because if you miss your shot, you get weird angles coming out. If you're trying to do close-in shots, it's not just a flat surface you're shooting at, it's got some dimension to it. So these are super cool. I have not used these very much, but it's a really neat thing. It's something different. It's definitely something different from just having a tarp to shoot at for it. But that being said, they are kind of expensive compared to just a regular shooter tutor that you might go get. I will say, on a side note, if you're gonna get kind of the tarp kind of shooter-tutor there, and I don't know if shooter-tutor, I think, is a brand of these, but it's kind of what everybody calls them. I highly recommend getting one that has some sort of weight on the bottom for it. That's, if you don't have anything, it's kind of on the bottom because there's no attachment points for it. But if you don't have any kind of weight on the bottom of it, if you just kind of really miff a shot, I can just kind of roll in. And if you're trying to count how many shots have gone in and knock on it and stuff like that, you probably don't want to count stuff like that that just kind of rolls in underneath because it's not very realistic. So most of them have that. Some of the cheaper ones don't, but that's something to keep in mind. For a lot of the cheaper ones that don't come with something do have some sort of opening or something on the bottom. It's pretty easy to attach some kind of a weight there. Or you can put, I have some people, you put like a stick down across the bottom, and that also takes care of that. But these Shooter Tutor Style Aids easily have the largest variety of any of the kind of shooting accessories. So shop around, like I said, check the show notes. I will link some different styles that are out there for you. So you just get an idea of what to be on the lookout for. So you have your something to shoot and your something to shoot at. Now what? If you're by yourself shooting, the most helpful thing you can do is pick one thing that you can record and keep track of and see progress with. This can be, how many times can you hit a certain target or area of the net, or get a shot on goal out of 10 shots, or how many shots can you get on net from a certain distance, kind of move your net or your target or where you're shooting from around, and try and keep track of that. Just find something that you can track and see progress with. You can also record yourself and compare yourself like every week or so. That's a great way to improve your shot. You can be fancy, get something like a GoPro or a DSLR camera, or you just use your cell phone. More than likely, your cell phone has a slow-mo video option, which is great for this. It's the great purpose for having the slow-mo option on your cell phone. Trust me, you're going to look awful when you start. But when you take that and you start comparing yourself to the just insane amount of shooting tutorials that are online, you can get a whole bunch of things that you can look at to work on. I would suggest only taking like one thing at a time to try and work on it. So maybe spend a few weeks working on your weight transfer, and then proper follow through, or pulling your top hand back when you shoot. You don't need hours of recording to see if you've gotten better, just a few shots. That's all you really need. Give you a little pro tip. Sometimes recording from different angles can help really show different parts of your shot way better. So maybe record a shot from behind, one from kind of in front of you, slightly, so you're not shooting at your camera, or if somebody's holding your phone for you, you're not shooting at them. And then do one or two from the standard side shot. But just kind of moving that around can give you amazingly different perspectives. So I highly recommend that. But that's all you really need to do. Record yourself taking four, five, six shots once a week. Shoot through the week, record yourself taking a couple of those, and kind of use that to see your progress. That's where you're going to go with that. All right. Now, you've done all this stuff, but you want to do more. Or really, you just want to be able to buy some more shooting stuff because there's all sorts of cool fun toys out there like this. So what kind of other options do you have? You know, you can always upgrade your tarp net shooting surround thing, no problem. You can buy more pucks or balls, whatever you're using. You know, that's a great thing to do. But I think the next thing that you should get is something to shoot off of. There are nice shooting tiles out there. All kinds of companies make them. They're really just like a sturdy, smooth plastic to shoot off of, and pucks, actual real pucks, you know, slide nicely off of them. You can also get plastic sheets that are in all kinds of sizes and thicknesses and stuff like that. Some of them you can roll up. They can shoot off. These, generally these move around pretty easily, so you can practice, you know, slap shots from far away, snap shots from like kind of in close or right up close backhanders, things like that. These are great, and they're probably the most practical and economic version of something to shoot off of. If you kind of want a cheaper version, then the stuff you can buy specifically for hockey. A lot of people do is they will go to a home center and buy either whiteboard material or shower panels, like stuff you would have if you were building a shower out. And they get some kind of like spray on silicone, and just kind of spray it on there, let it kind of sit and slightly kind of wipe it off a little bit. And then you have a surface that you can shoot off really nicely, but also stick handle on too. So it's kind of a two-in-one there sort of thing. So this, you know, because you have this kind of surface, having something like that, it lets you, because hopefully you bought a little bit of a decent size one, not a tiny little, you know, four-inch by four-inch whiteboard. You know, not only can you shoot off it, but it lets you do some little bit of work with the pucks too. So things like pulling pucks in and shooting, or, you know, like doing a toe drag or something like that, or doing a little bit of a stick handle move before you shoot. Something like that, because having a little bit more movement, besides just standing there stationary and shooting pucks, is going to make this way more of a game-like situation. Now, what I did to have something to shoot off is, I found a somewhat local plastic manufacturer online, contacted them about buying cutoffs, and I was actually able to get from them a ridiculously cheap piece of HDPE. That's what it's called, HDPE. That's what it's used for, like the hockey boards. And a lot of shooting pads are usually made of this. I got a nice big, it's a two foot by six foot piece. And super cheap to get, like I said. Mine sits outside year round, does not get beat up. I mean, I think of hockey boards, it takes a lot to beat them up. So mine's been sitting outside for about 10 years now. Works great, works awesome, it's super durable. About once a year, I spray it with some silicone lubricant, let it soak in, and then wipe it off. That's really it. Other than that, it's power wash it every so often if it gets really dirty, as it's outside. You know, it's a great way to do that. So if you have the means, or if you know something around there, that might be something to look up, is if you have any place around you that sells, usually it's places that sell bulk plastic things. See if they have HDPE, and if they have cutoffs, or if they sell small quantities of things. Because I found a lot of places that would sell me exactly what I wanted, but I had to buy 50 of them, or 100 of them, which I was about to do. Like I said, super cheap way to do it. But I will throw in the caveat that shipping was very expensive. It still came out cheaper than buying a really large shooting pad made for hockey. But that's something to look at, is shipping was super expensive. And like I said, it was pretty local to me, but one, I bought a very thick piece, which I didn't need to do, and probably shouldn't have. The piece I got is, I think it's about a quarter of an inch thick. Probably should have gotten some super, super thin, but I didn't. So, you know, it can't be bent or rolled or anything like that. And since this place was a plastics manufacturer, the way they ship everything is on pallets on the back of a truck. So when I got this, a truck came down my street, like dropped its, you know, dropped this thing off on its tailgate and left it at the end of my driveway. And I had this giant piece of plastic wrapped up in plastic on a pallet that I had to move up my driveway, get in the backyard. So not the best, easiest way to buy something, but I mean, I have a nice big shooting pad that I didn't pay a lot for. So, you know, six of one, half a dozen of the other, but something to think about. Another kind of important note, I just want to throw in here as a side note for things if you are going to practice shooting. If you use your regular game stick for shooting, on anything that's not like one of these smooth plastic surfaces and even kind of these two, you will tear up your blade. So if you care about your game stick, either use a sacrificial cheap stick, you know, like go to your hockey store or use Sporting Good Story even better, go to their bargain bin, find some cheap sticks, you know, hopefully something that's kind of the right size for you and use that. You know, it's a great way to learn to shoot different curves. Maybe you find a curve you like or something, or get something to protect the blade of your stick. It's not tape. Tape's not gonna protect it from a driveway. The most popular of these kind of things is called hockey wrap around. I'm linking the show notes. And what that is, it's just like a plastic protector that goes around your blade. And it's just kind of like sacrificial plastic. Like, that's what gets chewed up as you're shooting versus your blade. That's something you can easily take off your stick, you know, when it wears out, or when you're gonna go play a game with it or something like that. And there's a couple other ones out there, but hockey wrap around's kind of the big one for that. So, something important to think about if you are gonna be practicing your shooting anywhere. You don't want to destroy your stick if you want to keep your stick, if you have a gamer that you like to use. So, some other things that you can use that can be helpful and fun for practicing shooting. One is radar guns. It is super fun and great if you ever want to shoot with buddies or something like that. Have them over for shooting, or you can take it up to a stick and puck or something like that and use it. They're great. It's a radar gun. You know, see who shoots the hardest. It's an easy way to track your progress too. That's something nice. I would like to say though, not the be all, end all way to track your progress, but it's a nice way to do it. But they're great. There's all different kinds out there that you can find. It doesn't have to be a hockey specific one. Just something that you can set up somewhere and have it sit kind of on its own. So, when you're looking at these, if you're not going to get a hockey specific one, make sure you get one that doesn't require somebody to stand there and hold the trigger. Think of what police use for cars, for radar on cars is, you always think of somebody standing there holding the trigger on the radar gun. If you don't have somebody watching you shoot all the time, you're not going to be able to hold that trigger, so that's not going to work. So, make sure you get something that doesn't need that. And the other big thing I will say with getting a radar gun is, they are super fun, they are super cool. But, don't obsess over it. I have seen people that completely destroy how their shot looks and how effective it is just trying to get like another couple miles per hour on it. So, you know, just be careful with that. It is very easy to do that and kind of get obsessed with it. But, you know, don't. Oh, no, I better say just don't. I have a radar gun. I use it. I generally try to shoot almost every day, depending on weather outside. And I only use the radar gun like once a week, kind of like my end of the week thing that I put out there to track how my shot's possibly gotten faster over the course of a week, hopefully has. You know, that's how I use it. And I think that's a pretty kind of healthy way to use something like that. Something newer, last couple of years, I've been out there are smart targets that you can get. Now, there's whole systems you can go and buy and use and stuff like RapidShot is one of these places where they have, you know, the net done up into a grid and they light up certain colors for what you're shooting at and stuff like that. You can get stuff like that for at home. But those are super expensive and probably overkill for any beer leaguer to have unless you're throwing money and stuff ridiculously. Which in that case, hey, would you like to sponsor the podcast? There's those, there are though, like more affordable at home options that are like smart, that are smart targets. And basically all they are is they're targets like we talked about previously, but they light up or indicate what you're supposed to shoot at. And the whole point of this is so that you have your head up. Much like when you're doing stick handling stuff, you don't want to be staring at the puck the whole time, you want to have your head up so you see where you're shooting. Because if you're shooting, you want to know what you're shooting at. You don't want to just throw out the net, and maybe the goalie's moved, somebody's moving in front of you, whatever. You need to have your head up during the shooting process at some point there. So that's what these are really doing, just trying to encourage that. So look, I'll put some links again in the show notes for some of these smart targets. That's what they are, they're just things that light up. Doing that, so you just kind of give you something a little bit different for shooting, you know, instead of just saying, hey, I'm going to go, you know, top left corner every time right now. This would be more of a, hey, it's, you know, five targets in there. Which one do I shoot? You know, you're ready to shoot. Look up. Oh, got to go top left. Oh, bottom right. Oh, you know, center, whatever, with those things. So it's kind of a different way to practice your shooting for that kind of after you've progressed, I think, to a certain point. That's one of those neat things to be looking at. Now, having a way to get the puck to yourself, that's not just pulling in a puck from a pile, can make shooting a lot more fun and also a lot more game-like. This can either be somebody passing to you, you know, depending on how big of a setup you have, and if you have somebody there to pass to you, getting a puck rebounder. You know, there's things you just kind of like pass the puck to yourself off of. You can make a DIY rebounder. There's multiple ways to do that. Or again, if you want to get really fancy, you can get passing machines. There is super low-budget versions of this. Like there is, I think the big one out there is the Franklin street hockey ball passing machine, that's a thing that totally works. It passes the balls to you, you know, so you don't have to have somebody around for it. But, you know, it is hockey balls. If you're using pucks, that's not a great, great thing to use. Thanks for switching that up. And, you know, it's not a very hard pass or anything like that. So a lot of these rebounders are really nice. Like I said, there is tons of them out there. There is some really good videos on how to make DIY ones out of like rubber or with elastic band, stuff like that. I will find a couple of those videos on how to do those things and throw them once again in the show notes that you should be checking out at thebeerleaguer.com. One more thing that I can think of that you can get that's fun, it makes shooting a little bit harder, but way more game like is a slide board. It's basically just a, well, I don't know how to say it, it's a board you slide around on. You put on like little booties and slide back and forth. They're usually used for simulating skating, but it's great for shooting with. It's a very ice-like experience. It's probably as close to an ice-like experience as you can get without being on ice. You just kind of slide back and forth on it, slide while you're shooting with it. I think it's more ice-like than using rollerblades, because one of the issues we have with shooting off ice can be the height difference from just standing on the ground to being on skates. Rollerblades helps with that, but rollerblades don't move the same as ice skates. Obviously, they're close, but not exactly the same. I think a slide board is a little bit closer to the ice experience, but you don't get the height. So it is kind of a trade-off of things there. All right, so now, you're doing all the shooting. Is it really going to help you when you get on the ice? Yeah, it's going to help. Okay, now, it's not probably a one-to-one translation, depending on exactly what you're doing and what equipment you're using and everything like that. I mean, ice is slick, so pucks and sticks feel a little bit differently. You're on skates, you might be shooting off, you know, just standing on your shoes. Maybe you're using balls, and they're not pucks. If you're just standing still while you're shooting, you know, whereas when you're playing a game, you're moving around and stuff like that, it's going to be different. So try and kind of keep that in mind while you're deciding what you want to do when you're shooting. You know, it's good to get basics down of just standing still, but then adding in some movement, adding in some other stuff really does help make a difference from translating from what you're doing in your backyard. So throwing in some movement really can make a difference when you're translating from what you're doing in your backyard or your basement or whatever to what you're doing on the ice. So something to keep in mind while you're figuring out what you want to get, if you want to get any shooting accessories or stuff like that, and what you want to practice and how you want to practice. So with all that being said, you're going to help yourself by shooting off ice, even if it's slightly different than shooting on ice. Okay, so what do I do? I've been taking videos of myself shooting to try and do like a shooting progression series on YouTube. So what do I have? All right, well, first off, I shoot outside in my backyard, off that giant piece of HDPE that I talked about. I use an old net that I inherited from a place I used to play hockey at. It's not NHL quality net, but it's not like a super thin, cheapy one either. It's kind of a middle ground in there. When I started, I tried to make my own netting surround for it with some like deer netting material that worked pretty well to keep pucks in, but then I had to take it down in the winter because it snows around me, and it was great to leave that out in the middle of winter like that. And all the netting just got insanely tangled up, and I couldn't untangle it, so I wanted to get rid of it. And I actually moved on to getting a surround netting from Hockey Shot. It's their one that has nets on the side and the top, attaches to the net, works great. It's only a couple of feet around the net, so if you really miss the net, it doesn't help anything. But it does attach the net pretty easily with some bungees, so I can take it off if I need to, but I can also just fold it into the net and move the whole net if I need to do something like mow the backyard or if I want it out of the way for whatever is going on. So I really like that. I also buy large batches of used pucks from Facebook Marketplace when I see them. I check areas so often for buying batches like 50 or 75 at a time. They don't come up very often near me. It's every couple of years. But I look for it and I wait till they're under a dollar a piece. And if these are ones that are for me shooting in the backyard mostly, they're not ones for taking to my team. For those, I get nicer pucks, a little bit nicer. Some of these have little bits out and stuff like that, which I don't care for my shooting stuff. But I do lose pucks. I lose a lot less than I used to because I'm better at shooting than I was. But I like to have on hand 50 pucks in a milk crate. And then I just go through a crate full of pucks for every shot I want to do. And it's 50 and it's a really easy thing to do. So I can do like, okay, dump the crate out, do 50 snapshots. Then go take the milk crate, throw all the pucks in, come back, dump them out, and do 50 snapshots and do like that. It's a really easy way to keep track of everything that I'm shooting, how many I'm shooting, and it's a nice round number. And to me, doing 50 is a high enough number that I'll shoot three, four different types of shots in a session. And that's 150, 200 shots, which is a lot. But I'm not spending most of that time shooting. I'm not spending that time picking up a bunch of pucks because I only have 20 at a time to do that. So that's kind of how I handle through that. Originally, before I had the net and shooting pad, I actually did use a tarp. It was an outdoor tarp that I hung from the rafters in my basement. I have an unfinished basement, so I wasn't worried about pucks flying. It's got cinder block walls everywhere, so I'm not really going to do any damage besides marking them up. And I had that tarp hung up. It was kind of loose, like I said. I had taped out a goal, an actual size of a goal, and I actually taped some kind of like targets within the goal there. My floor is just a concrete floor. And I started with some roller hockey balls. I also had some tennis balls that I would kind of use occasionally. And that worked. It wasn't great, but it totally worked as a setup. That's why I say you can kind of do these budget things and just kind of slowly upgrade over time to get better and better things and more and more stuff with it for your whole setup. So that's where I started at. A tarp and a concrete floor. You know, that was it. So, you don't have to do this expensively. You can do it on the cheap, for sure. All right. Well, I hope they got some good ideas from this. Maybe even learn something that you can use to help practice at home. I think a little bit better. Links to a whole bunch of things that I talked about, the videos, a lot of the items and stuff that I talked about that I've used and I know about and I think are helpful. We'll be in the show notes and at the beerleaguer.com, which is also the place you should go to check out the latest social media postings that I've made in previous podcast episodes as well. So thanks a lot, everybody. And as always, any likes, comments, reviews, and follow-ups or subscriptions are greatly appreciated because they all help the channel grow. Thanks for listening. Catch you in the next one. Thanks for sticking around. I wanted to let you know that we added the ability to text the show. If you check out any of the show notes for any of the newer episodes, you'll see a link called Text the Show. Just click that and it'll open up your text app of choice. There, you'll see a code automatically inserted into your text message. Please leave that there. 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