[4-5 Mins Read] This read is intended for players who strive to play AAA, junior and college one day. In the midst of creating my first hockey IQ course and watching Canada take on Czechia in the quarterfinals of the tournament… (People need to study how Czechia played that game). I came across this amazing video that could help forwards (and offensive minded players) who are entering the early stages of hitting and/or junior hockey to create more offense. And regardless of your age, the principles of this skill could be the difference of you having 2-3 extra chances a game versus none at all. For context, I learned this skill in my 3rd year of junior playing for the Oakville Blades (OJHL). At the time we had associations with the LA Kings development program through our head coach, Jamie Storr, who was a goaltender for the LA Kings back in the 90’s. And one of our early "skill days" we had as a forward group was learning this concept called "Tics & Pokes". At first, you’d think, with the forward group that we had, this had to have been a joke. To be frank, this skill work isn’t exactly glamorous, perhaps why it’s overlooked. But so you have an understanding of how skilled our forward group was at the time… Here’s a couple names and where they’re at now since our time playing tier 2 junior A together. Jack Ricketts – ECHL Utah Grizzlies (Holy Cross/Quinnipiac D1) Ryan O’Hara – ECHL Greenville Swamprabbits (Bowling Green D1) Harrison Israels – ECHL Indy Fuel (Alaska/Omaha D1) Luke Tchor – Leads Hamilton College in pts (D3) Jacob King – University of Toronto (USports) Cam Garvey – “C” at Robert Morris University (D1) Alton McDermott – “A” Canicius College (D1) With no doubt, this group was the most offensively talented group I'd ever play with. And still, with the trajectory we were all on (and where you see us now). Here we were, mastering the basics (when we really didn’t need to). Lesson #1) Always be a student of the game.