The slap shot is a crowd pleaser. While more goals are scored off wristers around the net, a big windup and thunderous slap shot is fun to watch and perform. Seeing a puck sizzling toward the net from a distance is a thrill. Watching the puck beat the goalie and flip the water bottle into the air is even more satisfying. And everybody loves a scorer who takes a great pass and turns it into a one-timer—where the pass is received and a slap shot taken all in one motion—sending a blistering slap shot past a helpless goalie.
The Hockey Slap Shot Explained in Four Steps
1. The Preparation
- Take an athletic stance with your feet about shoulder width or slightly wider, knees bent.
- The puck should be located several feet in front of you, lined up near your front foot to begin.
- Your body should be perpendicular to the goal, facing your dominant side.
- Slide your dominant hand down the stick a little to separate your hands.
2. The Windup
- Vary the windup. Raise your hockey stick blade between waist height and straight up depending on how much power you want on your shot.
- As you wind up, slightly shift your weight onto your back leg.
3. The Slap Shot
- Begin your shot with your weight more on the inside edge of your back skate, then shift your weight forward to the inside edge of your front skate.
- Swing your stick forward, impacting the ice with your blade slightly before it hits the puck.
- As you strike the puck, look at the point you’re shooting at. Keep that head up: Taking a slap shot without looking at where the puck is going can actually be dangerous.
4. The Follow-Through
After contact, follow through so that your body turns to face the target.Mechanics for a Great Slap Shot
The correct position and setup can help create a more powerful and accurate slap shot. Keep your knees bent with kneecaps over toe caps for body control. Stay low in your athletic stance while keeping your head and chest up—too many hockey players don't do this. That can affect your accuracy and power, so it's important to stay down throughout the slap shot.
The dominant hand placement down the stick can also help provide power and accuracy for the shot. Experiment with the placement of the lower hand down the stick, but start about halfway down the shaft. You don't want it so far down that you take the shaft flex away, as that flex is part of what builds power during the shot.
The location of the puck is also important. The puck should begin lined up with the front skate, but as the weight is shifted back to front, driving through the shot, the body will move forward relative to the puck’s position. This means that at impact, the puck is actually closer to the middle of the stance, where the stick flex can impart the most power to the puck.
How to Create Slap Shot Speed and Power
The weight transfer and rotation of the hips and torso during the slap shot are where a lot of the shot’s power is achieved. Begin by shifting the weight to the back leg as you wind up on the backswing. As your stick accelerates down and through the puck, your weight should drive forward to the front leg. At impact, your hips and trunk should rotate, moving from perpendicular to the target to facing the target. Many inexperienced hockey players think it's all in the arms and that stick speed delivers the power to the puck. However, a good transfer from the back leg to the front leg and the rotation of the hips and torso on impact is where most of a slap shot’s power is generated. Another important part of delivering power from the stick to the puck is the impact. The blade of your stick should impact the ice a few inches behind the puck, with the bottom hand powering the stick through the shot. That will flex the lower part of the hockey stick before the blade impacts the puck, transferring all of that energy into the shot.
All of this is made more difficult when moving or when receiving a pass. The ability to launch a slap shot during an odd-man rush, or trying to turn a pass into a one-timer adds more moving elements to the shot. Fortunately, when you're handling the puck and decide to let a slap shot fly, you and the puck are traveling at the same speed. In contrast, a one-timer is incredibly difficult to perform and comes only with a lot of practice time on the ice to perfect the shot.
Slap Shot Accuracy Is Better Than Power
While everybody talks about the screaming slap shots that hit triple digits on the radar gun, they won't talk about them for long if they never hit the net. It's better to keep your slap shot on target until you learn to control it. Back off the power a little bit until you find the sweet spot that allows you to control the puck. Practice shooting for a corner of the goal and work on hitting corners until you can do so with a high level of success. Once you have mastered putting the puck in the net, then work on adding power to your shot. One slap shot technique that improves accuracy is the follow through, which helps keep the shot on target and determines the height of the shot. A low follow through helps keep the shot low, while following through high gets more air under the puck.
Work on your slap shot consistently to add velocity to your shot, but remember that a slap shot that isn't on target doesn't have as much value as a shot that produces rebounds and scoring opportunities. It makes sense to spend time on all the types of shots you're more likely to take in the game, because most pucks that find the net are actually wristers cleaning up the garbage off a blocked slap shot, and other short opportunities.
Pro Tips to Improve Your Slap Shot
Follow these expert tips to improve your slap shot.
Perfect Your Positioning
To generate the most power, start with the puck in front of you and slightly behind your front foot. You don’t want the puck directly between your feet because you’re going to shift your weight forward and move the stick and your body through the puck for maximum power. Ideally, when the blade of the stick makes contact with the puck, your body and your bottom hand should be directly over the puck. You also don’t want the puck outside of your feet, because then you will end up reaching for it and the stick won’t flex as much, which will rob you of power.
Focus on Your Hands More Than Your Arms
A common mistake is placing your bottom hand too low on the stick during a slap shot. It’s understandable, because this position makes you feel like you are exerting the most arm power on the shot. However, most of the power in a slap shot does not come from your arms; it comes from the flex of the stick and the weight transfer of your body. The last thing you want to do is restrict the flexing of the kick point on the shaft, which will rob your shot of power.
Instead, start with your hands slightly wider than shoulder width. Most sticks have a mid- or low-mid kick point, and the flexing of the shaft there will generate the most power. Therefore, you want to leave that part of the stick free to do its job.
Bigger Isn't Always Better
It seems logical that the bigger the backswing, the harder the shot, but that’s not necessarily the case. You want to ensure that all the power and momentum of your body and the stick are focused in the same direction, so it’s the efficiency of your backswing that you should work on. During the backswing and the shot, you want the stick blade to be moving in a straight line toward the target—not coming around in an arc like a golf club. If you twist your body during the backswing, so the blade ends up behind you at the top of the swing, the energy of the forward motion is dissipated because it isn’t pointing toward the target.
Start with a low backswing—say, shoulder height—to establish this straight-line velocity, and then gradually go with a bigger motion as you become more comfortable. If you feel as if you start twisting too much with the bigger motion, drop the height of the swing to reestablish the straight-line power, and then work your way back up again. In some situations—especially if you play high-level hockey—you won’t have time for a big wind-up, so you want to practice generating as much power as possible out of a lower backswing.
It's All in the Knees
As you make your backswing, shift your weight to your back leg. The key here is keeping your knees bent; if you are too upright, the force of your weight transfer will go down into the ice instead of toward your target. As you begin the forward swing, push off the back leg and let your hips slide forward toward your target. Again, try to keep all motion in a straight line toward the goal. When your stick blade makes contact with the ice behind the puck, this weight transfer to the front leg should put your hips right over the puck. The power of your body mass going forward will help flex the stick and add power to the shot.