The Never Look at the Puck Myth

Years ago I was working at a hockey school where they let people pitch inventions. One guy rolled in with a device that locked your helmet looking straight up. It had a platform underneath the chin so your mask physically could not tilt down. You literally could not see below your facemask to handle the puck. He had his poor son demoing it.

That's when I really started getting into what's actually happening when a coach says to keep your head up. Because that invention was just a hardware version of the same bad advice every coach gives. Don't look at the puck. Keep your head up. It sounds great in theory. The problem is it's not actually possible, and it's not what the best players in the world are doing.

Turn on any NHL game. Watch the best stickhandlers in the world. Every single one of them looks at the puck. They have to. Your brain needs to confirm where the puck is so your hands know what to do with it.

Most high-level players can keep their heads up for long stretches, but even they still check the puck. Sometimes it looks like a pro is looking up when they actually see the puck out of their peripheral vision. It's something you learn after you've been told and practiced a lot. But nobody plays without ever confirming where the puck is.

The problem with the advice isn't the idea behind it. The problem is that nobody teaches you what to do instead.

The gray space is what I call the area in between. Here's how it works. Pick two things in your field of view. A defender and the puck. A goaltender and the puck. The net and the puck. There's a spot in between those two things where you can see both at the same time. That's the gray space.

Your eyes don't focus on the puck. They don't focus on the defender either. They focus in between, usually about two or three feet above the puck. When the puck moves, the gray space moves with it. That's the key. When you turn left, your eyes follow the gray space up and over. When you move the puck from forehand to backhand, your eyes stay anchored a few feet above where the puck is.

Once you train this, you're not choosing between watching the puck and watching the play. You're watching both at the same time. That's the skill coaches are actually trying to teach when they yell at you to keep your head up. They just don't know how to say it.

One of the hardest things for players to learn is that the gray space stays over top of the puck. What happens with a right-handed player is the puck sits on their right side. They'll look at the gray space above it, then move the puck to the left, but their eyes stay over on the right. The gray space didn't travel with the puck. It's not a fixed point on the ice. It moves with the puck.

Another common mistake is breaking away from the gray space when you lose the puck. The tendency is to look back down, regain control, and then look back up. When you're practicing this, make sure you're looking into the gray space even when you lose it. When you retrieve it, do it looking at the gray space too. That's how you build the habit.

And it's fine to look at the puck. Don't beat yourself up when you do. Every pro still does it. Just start getting in the habit of looking up as much as possible. You'll be fine.

The most important age group for this skill is 13, when checking comes into the game. This is where a lot of players become discouraged because they're looking down and they're getting hit. Hard. That's when it stops being about looking cool and starts being about not getting your head taken off.

This is where it's really important to start developing the habit. But I wouldn't wait until 13 to teach it. That should be something your kid learns as soon as they start playing. The earlier you build the gray space habit, the safer and more effective they'll be when contact arrives.

Most players are reactive. The puck's on their stick, they're looking down at it, and they don't have a plan for what's next. They wait until conflict gets to them and then try to react. That's too late at every level above youth hockey.

When you look at the gray space, you can start making plans for what's next. I've always said you should have a Plan A, a Plan B, and a Plan C on every touch. You can't do that if your eyes are focused down at the puck.

Even if your eyes are only up part of the time, your brain can process options. You won't know it's doing that, but your brain will take action to make a pass or a play that works because the information is there. That's the whole point. The head-up player isn't smarter. They have better information to work with.

You are not trying to stop looking at the puck. You are trying to stop needing to.

Get a puck and start stickhandling in place. Simple handling, nothing fancy. Now try to see everything in your view at the same time without losing the puck.

Read the advertisements on the boards. Notice the other players on the ice. Look at who's behind the glass on the far side of the stands. Read a jersey number across the rink. Do all of this while the puck is still moving on your blade. If you lose it, slow down, find the gray space again, and start over without looking down.

The goal isn't to go fast. The goal is to train your eyes to stop locking onto one thing. Once your eyes stop locking, your hands learn to work without babysitting.