2024 MTL Development Camp Review

Overview & raw clips

In the past two days, I’ve attended the Montreal Canadiens’ Development Camp held in Brossard, QC.

It was an excellent opportunity to better understand the MTL Player Development department’s ever-evolving process and to steal some best practices that you can employ with your players.

In the first of a multi-part series, here are some of the themes of the two practice days

Click here for my Twitter recap thread with clips & brief notes.

In the next few days I’ll be doing a drill-by-drill video breakdown, as well as share one mind-blowing learning from Adam Nicholas’ innovative approach to drill design. In the meantime, here’s a very brief overview of what MTL did and didn’t do.

Format

• 9AM-10AM goalie session

• 11AM-12PM Fs & Ds on separate rinks - station drills, no goalies

• 12:15PM-12:45PM all players on same rink - small area games

• No afternoon on-ice sessions

Focus

What I saw:

• First touch on puck retrievals & rim collections

• Puck protection & finding plays under pressure

• Timing & quick-strike offense off bad pucks

• Practice-to-game transfer of above skills

What I didn’t see:

• (No rush play or rush defense drills)

  • Ex: Nashville Predators

• (No isolation shooting or skating drills)

  • Ex: Boston Bruins

  • Ex: Detroit Red Wings

• (No shot blocking or pure physicality drills)

  • Ex: Toronto Maple Leafs

• (No systems/tactics/explicit style of play drills)

Raw Clips Download