BLOG: Painting the picture

EDMONTON, AB- Before diving deep into the drills on Saturday, newly-appointed Head Coach Jay Woodcroft held the attention of his players at the beginning of practice with a little extra help of some black paint on the ice surface at Rogers Place.
Woodcroft began the skate with a walkthrough of the penalty kill, with black lines running parallel to the boards at the top of the defensive zone acting as a visual guide for the players while assisting Woodcroft in communicating his message.
"It's just a way for us to teach some of the things that we want to get cleaned up on the penalty kill, and I thought the players went out and executed," Woodcroft said following practice. "It wasn't taxing or anything like that, it was just about clarification of different scenarios that you find yourself in on the penalty kill."
BLOG: Saturday's practice at Rogers Place
It's an early example of Woodcroft's coaching style coming into effect in Edmonton as he attempts to keep the focus of the skates centred on the important details with the minimal amount of practice time at the Oilers disposal in the coming days and weeks with 37 games over the next 74 days.
"We want to narrow our focus here and realize that we only have so much practice time," he said. "We only have so much time where we can meet without it being counter-productive, so we're just going to be very selective and surgical with what we bring to our team. We'll try and build our team game on the fly, and at the start of practice today, that was dealing with our penalty kill."

The on-ice demonstration was only a portion of the lesson after the players were introduced to it in the pre-skate video session, where Woodcroft and his coaching staff that includes new Assistant Coach Dave Manson plan to keep the concepts short, sweet, and to the point.
"I think our staff is going to try and see things with an observant eye, but through a positive lens," Woodcroft said. "We only have so much time and we're not going to paralyze our players having hour-long video sessions. We've got to be selective with what we want to accomplish through our teaching and video, which we will be."
Woodcroft later introduced some new drills to the group, but they were all too familiar to some players on the ice. The likes of Ryan McLeod and Tyler Benson, who worked under the tutelage of the 45-year-old in the AHL with the Bakersfield Condors, took the lead in the drills from the likes of Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl so the other could get a grasp on their execution.

"It was a good practice. A couple of drills that we've done before, so it was a lot of fun," McLeod said. "He's been making us start a couple, so hopefully we didn't mess anything up."
After getting the win on Friday in his first game as Oilers head coach over the Islanders, Woodcroft was pleased with the results from his first full practice as they'll continue to slowly introduce new elements and ideas.
"We're going to approach things on a daily basis. We're going to give our players some themes," Woodcroft said. "We had a good video session and worked on what we talked about in the video room, and I think as a coaching staff, we'd agree that we got what we needed out of our players today."