he single most important factor in skating speed is not the length of the stride or the upper body angle but, rather, how quickly the player can retract the leg back into his body. We break down the leg recovery into two components: 1. leg quickness and 2. the player’s skating technique on the leg recovery. We work on both. For this brief discussion, I am addressing the latter i.e., skating technique.

Assuming two players with identical leg quickness, leg strength and weight, the player that kicks his heels up on retraction will take longer to bring his leg back into his body than the player who returns his leg underneath with his heels low to the ice. In our video sessions the guideline we use is that, on a side view, heels returning with the lower leg above a line parallel to the ice need to be worked on.