Reading Ice Hockey Diagrams

Key focus

Read the caption first, and believe it over the picture. A diagram freezes one moment of one system among several. The caption says what the picture is for, which details are a coaching choice, and what a shaded region means — so ask which version your team runs.

Find yourself next. Shape is the position — a circle is a forward, a triangle a defenceman, a bare G the goalie — and fill is the team: open is yours, solid is theirs. The letter inside is your role: if you reach the puck first on the forecheck, you are F1. Some coaches assign F1 by position, so check.

Follow numbered routes in order, and read how each one ends. A numbered tag gives the order things happen, never who does them. An arrowhead means the move carries on; two short bars mean you stop there, under control.

Keep the relationship, not the spot. A drawn position is where a player is relative to the puck and the other players at one instant. As the puck moves, keep that relationship rather than skating to the drawn mark and staying there.

Treat a route that ends on an opponent as "arrive under control", never as permission to hit. Whether you may body check at all depends on your age group, your league and your book. Find out first, and until you know, do not hit anyone.

Check the key on anyone else's diagram — and on your own team, the coach's whiteboard wins. The IIHF's own key uses the two shapes for the two teams, so a defending right wing there is a triangle. Where no key is printed, ask whoever drew it.

Overview

A diagram is only useful if you can turn it into what you do on your next shift. It is the most absolute-looking thing on a page, but it shows one moment of one system, and the caption is where it says so — including whether a shaded box is ice to head for or ice a pass must never cross. Where the caption and your eye disagree, the caption wins.

Shape and fill carry two separate facts, so you can find yourself in any picture, in print or in greyscale; a winger stays a circle whether attacking or backchecking. The letters are roles, so the route you play is set by what happens, not by the name on your line-up card. The positions are relationships: the drawn spot is only where the player was at one instant.

A route that finishes on an opponent is not an instruction to hit. Many youth, women's and non-check adult leagues ban body checking outright, so find out what yours allows before you play one.

Last, keys differ. Shape as position follows one published key, and reading fill as the team is this guide's own choice; the IIHF key uses the same two shapes for the two teams instead. Colour carries nothing except the red tint on a hazard region, so a hazard's caption says it in words. You do not need to memorise the rest; come back when a symbol is unfamiliar.

Where each symbol comes from

In short: Most line symbols here follow the IIHF key; do not assume another diagram's key matches this one.

The notation draws on two published symbol keys, and one symbol is compared against a third source: a coaching manual with its own house key, not a governing body's. The two keys disagree in places, so it is worth knowing which is which.

Six line symbols are drawn the same way in both keys: forward skating, skate and stickhandle, passing, shooting, the drop pass and the two-bar mark. The keys often name a symbol differently even where they draw it the same — the wave is skate and stickhandle on one and skating with control of the puck on the other. Where this guide had to pick one name, the bullets below say which.

Backward skating differs. The Hockey Eastern Ontario sheet draws it as a tight wave; the IIHF key draws a row of separate overlapping arches, flatter than they are wide. These diagrams follow the IIHF key. A sharp zigzag — straight lines and corners, not curves — is backward crossovers, also the IIHF key's.

A bare hook, curling in low and leaving the other way, is a pivot: turning from forwards to backwards or back again. Both keys have it and draw it differently — the Hockey Eastern Ontario sheet runs a wave into the hook — and these diagrams use the IIHF key's hook. It is in the key above but in no play diagram, because this notation cannot draw which way a player is facing. The rest:

• A line ending in two bars is a sudden stop — the IIHF key's name, and the one used here. The Hockey Eastern Ontario sheet draws the same mark and calls it stopping. The IIHF key's plain stop, a pair of slashes, is a different mark and is drawn here too.
• A line ending in one bar is deliberately not used here. It means checking pressure on the Hockey Eastern Ontario sheet and screen, pick, or block in a coaching manual (Johnston & Walter, Hockey Plays and Strategies, 2nd ed., 2019), and the IIHF key has no such symbol — one bar is half of its two-bar sudden stop. Draw one bar for pressure and an IIHF-trained reader sees a player stopping where you meant a player closing. It is the clearest reason not to assume another key matches this one.
• A route that closes on an opponent ends in the two-bar mark, not an arrowhead — the one place these diagrams knowingly draw one glyph for two things. An arrowhead reads as carrying on past the end of the line; the bars read as ending there. Where the end point is an opponent, read the bars as arrive under control, and let the caption carry the rest. The IIHF key does have a mark for a hit — a line ending in a small curled bracket, named body check — but that tells you what the drill's author had in mind, not what your league allows. Where body checking is banned, a hit is a penalty, and a hard one can get you thrown out of the game.
• Bars across a line are lateral crossovers — the one line symbol here taken from the Hockey Eastern Ontario sheet, because the IIHF key has no lateral-crossover symbol. (The player glyphs come from that sheet too; most line symbols are the IIHF key's.) It is kept because a barred line collides with nothing in the IIHF key. The published glyph is a bare picket of bars with no direction; the line and arrow are added here so it says which way you are going. The IIHF key's nearest equivalent is a different shape again.
• Dropping the puck follows neither key. Both draw a wave — the carrier skating with the puck — then a marker, then a straight line and an arrowhead. These diagrams leave out the wave, so the mark shows the drop and not the carry before it. It is this guide's own version.

What a tinted area or a faint dashed line means

In short: A tint names a region, not paint on the ice or an instruction; read the caption for what to do there.

Shaded regions and faint dashed lines are this guide's own; neither published key has anything like them. Many diagrams wash an area in a light tint with a thin dashed edge, usually named inside — the slot, the house, home plate, the box, the passing lane. The Hockey Eastern Ontario sheet's seventeen rows are players, lines and a cluster of pucks, and the IIHF key's list runs from players to body check with no region mark in it. Four things are worth knowing.

First, the tint is not paint on the ice unless the caption says it is. The slot, the house and the high slot are names for regions, and Rink Map defines their edges. The edge is drawn thin and broken so it cannot be taken for a line on the rink. The trapezoid is the exception: it really is painted, and its caption says so.

Second, the shading does not say whether to go there or stay out. The caption does: one shaded box is the ice a centre heads for, another is ice a pass must never cross. A hazard is tinted red rather than blue — the one thing in this notation carried by colour alone, and nearly lost in greyscale or a photocopy — so read the caption.

Third, the same dashed mark between two points, with no tint, is a line rather than a region, with a short name beside it. It marks something you need to see that is neither on the ice nor a route — the royal road, the imaginary line from one net to the other that a pass crosses to make a goalie push hard sideways (Shooting owns it), or the shooting lane a defenceman had a second ago. Nobody skates it; it shows what someone else is set up for.

Fourth, where one region is tinted more heavily than another, the depth is a ranking. The turnover-cost map in Risk Management marks five regions, four red and one blue, and the four reds carry only three strengths. ⚠️ Two are equal on purpose — the middle of the neutral zone is shaded as heavily as your own end, because a mistake in either costs about the same — so do not expect four distinguishable reds or try to rank them by eye. Red is still the hazard tint and blue still the ice you want; only the depth carries the order, and neither key has anything like it.

So read the order from the caption, not the page. The tints are close by design, greyscale and photocopying compress them further, and across red and blue the order inverts outright, because a light blue prints darker than the faintest red. A graded picture names its regions in order in words, and the words are the part to trust.

Shape, fill and what goes inside a glyph

In short: Shape is the position and fill is the team: a circle is a forward, a triangle a defenceman, open yours, solid theirs.

Shape is the position. The International Drill Symbols sheet gives it in two lines — "● ○ Forward / Player" and "▲ △ Defender / Player" — so a circle is a forward and a triangle is a defenceman, in every picture. A goalie is a bare G, with no shape round it, because a circle would say forward and a triangle defenceman. Both keys offer that form; the IIHF key also draws a goalie as the numeral 1 inside a team glyph, which this guide does not use.

The IIHF key does this differently, and it will catch you out. Its columns read TEAMS — OFFENSIVE / DEFENSIVE, with circles in one and triangles in the other, and the position as a numeral inside — 1 goalie, 2 right defence, through 6 left wing. ⚠️ On that key a right wing on the defending team is a triangle. These diagrams follow the Hockey Eastern Ontario sheet.

Fill is the team. An open glyph is your own team and a solid one the opposition. The key prints a solid and an open version of each player row without saying what the pair means — "● ○ Forward / Player" could as easily read as solid-is-a-forward and open-is-any-player — so reading it as the two teams is this guide's doing, not the key's. Shape says what a player is; fill says whose side they are on. Neither depends on colour, so neither is lost in greyscale, in a photocopy, or to a reader who does not see red and green apart.

Which side has the puck is not carried by the shapes — the puck is drawn, and the caption says the rest. It is a small solid dot, about a third the width of a player, and it is this guide's own mark: neither key has a symbol for a single puck. Do not confuse it with the marker on a drop-pass line, which sits on a route rather than beside a player.

Two departures on top of that, so you are not caught out:

1. The letters inside a glyph are roles, not positions. The IIHF key's numerals — 1 goalie, 2 right defence, 3 left defence, 4 right wing, 5 centre, 6 left wing — are not used, because F1, F2 and F3 are roles set by order of arrival and not people, and a numeral would say "F1 is the centre". One label collides: a circled C means coach on both published keys and a centre here. No diagram in this guide draws a coach, but on someone else's diagram a circled C is the person on the bench.
2. Reading fill as the team, and open as "you", are this guide's choices. The key also has no opposition symbol of any kind.

And one thing that is almost not a departure: the player glyphs and line symbols are monochrome, and none of the keys consulted separates the teams by colour either. So a printed page, a photocopy and a reader who does not see red and green apart get the same information as the screen — except for the red tint on a hazard region, where the caption has to carry the warning.

The word "international"

Both keys carry "international" in their titles — International Drill Symbols and International Symbols — and what is drawn here is neither of them, ⚠️ so do not call this notation "international" to anyone. The one-bar glyph shows why: pressure on one key, a screen in a coaching manual, undefined on the IIHF key. Each meaning is right inside its own system; they are not the same system. If your coach's whiteboard disagrees with this page, their whiteboard wins.

Numbered tags on a route

Numbered tags say what happened first, and they count routes, not players. A still picture cannot say whether the pass beat the forechecker, so where the order matters each route carries a small numbered tag a short way along it. A tag is never a player's name and never sits inside a player's shape, where the letters go. Like the shading, it is this guide's own and appears in neither key.

What a diagram is and is not

A diagram shows one moment. A movement that only makes sense over time needs two, so read a pair as a sequence or as two answers to the same instant — the captions say which. Where a caption says a detail is a coaching choice, believe the caption, not the picture.

Common Mistakes

• Reading a diagram as the way hockey is played. Almost every diagram here shows one system among several. Believe the caption, then ask which version your team runs.
• Skating to the drawn spot and staying there. Positions are drawn at one instant. Keep your relationship to the puck and the other players as the play moves.
• Assuming a key you meet elsewhere means the same thing. Check the key first, and where none is printed, ask whoever drew it. A circle is a forward here and the attacking team on the IIHF's key; a single bar is pressure on one key, a screen in a coaching manual and undefined on the IIHF's.
• Reading the letter inside a glyph as where you stand. Letters are roles: when you are first to the puck on the forecheck, do F1's job whichever forward position you play. Some coaches assign it by position (Forechecking Systems has the fuller case). On someone else's key, a circled C is the coach.
• Assuming your coach uses these symbols. Nothing here has been checked against how any club draws things. Their whiteboard wins; ask about a new mark before the drill starts.
• Reading a route that ends on an opponent as permission to hit. The two bars say where you stop, under control — never whether you may make contact. Many youth, women's and non-check adult leagues ban body checking. Find out what yours allows, and until you know, do not hit anyone; Body Contact and Battles sets out the books.
• Looking for a shaded region painted on the ice. The slot and the house are names for areas, not paint. Learn them from Rink Map and find them from the painted circles, dots and crease. Only the trapezoid is painted, and its caption says so.
• Ranking regions by how dark they look. Take the order from the caption's words. On the turnover-cost map in Risk Management two reds are equal on purpose, and in greyscale or a photocopy red against blue inverts.
• Expecting one diagram to show a whole play. One frame is one moment. For a pair, read the caption first: it says whether they are a sequence or two answers to the same instant.

Key Takeaways

1. Read in this order: the caption, your own position, the routes in number order, then where each route ends. An arrowhead carries on past that point, two short bars stop there under control, and a backward-skating route simply ends where it is drawn.
2. A circle is a forward, a triangle a defenceman, a bare G the goalie; open is your team, solid the opposition. A backchecking winger is still a circle. Fill as the team is this guide's convention, and ⚠️ the IIHF's key uses the two shapes for the two teams instead, so do not carry it onto IIHF diagrams.
3. An X is a pylon — a practice cone — and never a player.
4. Solid arrow, forward skating. Long smooth wave, skate and stickhandle. Overlapping flattened arches, skating backwards. Sharp zigzag, backward crossovers. Dashed arrow, a pass. Double line, a shot. Two short bars, stop there — on an opponent, arrive under control, never a licence to hit.
5. A tinted area with a dashed edge is a named region; the same mark with no tint is a line that is not on the ice. The caption, not the tint, says whether to go there or keep out. Where tints differ in strength, that is a ranking: take it from the caption's words, not your eye.
6. A small numbered tag gives the order of routes, never a player, and never sits inside a player's shape.
7. The letters are roles: when you reach the puck first on the forecheck, the F1 route is yours. Some coaches assign F1 by position, so check how yours does it.
8. A drawn position is a relationship to the puck and the other players, not a spot to skate to.
9. Where a caption says a detail is a coaching choice, it is — ask which version your team runs.
10. On anyone else's diagram, check the key; on your team, the coach's whiteboard wins, so ask about any new mark. No key says whether you may hit — your age group, league and book do; until you know, hit nobody. Where checking is banned, a hit is a penalty and a hard one can get you thrown out.

Sources — retrieved 30 July 2026

Rules: USA Hockey Official Playing Rules 2025-29 (PDF) — Rule 604(a), body checking prohibited "in the 12 & under youth age classifications and below, all Girls'/Women's age classifications and all non-check Adult classifications", with 604(c)–(e) pricing a check there at a minor, and a reckless one at a major plus game misconduct — plan on a match penalty and a likely multi-game suspension (604(e), 602(a)) · Hockey Canada Playing Rules 2026-2028 (PDF) — Rule 7.3(a), a minor for a player who "intentionally body-checks, bumps, shoves, or pushes any opposing player, in divisions of U13 and below, female hockey, and any other divisions approved by a Member of Hockey Canada"; 7.3(b) lets the referee raise it to a major plus game misconduct for the violence of the impact, and makes that mandatory if the player is injured; 7.3(c) is a match penalty for deliberately injuring or attempting to injure. Both books are named in the note above, which sends a reader to Body Contact and Battles before acting on a route that finishes on a player.

IIHF Coach Development Program, Level I (Tactical), §21.1 "International Symbols": PDF — most of the line symbols. sha256 9b195d03…, 750,071 bytes, 2002.

Second meaning of the one-bar glyph: Mike Johnston and Ryan Walter, Hockey Plays and Strategies, 2nd ed. (Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics, 2019), "Key to Diagrams" — no page number. The copy consulted is the fixed-layout Kindle edition (ASIN B07GX64NNL), whose pages are images rather than searchable text, and no locator was recorded at the time, so this one citation cannot be re-checked to a page. That entry gives the same mark as "screen, pick, or block". Its other line symbols agree with the two keys above: solid arrow for skating without the puck, wave for skating with it, dashed for a pass, double for a shot. The one-bar mark is the only divergence, and it is the only thing cited here; nothing else in this document comes from the book, which is a coaching manual with a house key rather than a governing body's.

"International Drill Symbols", Hockey Eastern Ontario NCCP Development 1 clinic handout: PDF — the source of the player glyphs, and of "lateral crossovers", which the IIHF key does not define. sha256 d0cfeca1…, 309,926 bytes.

James Bloom, "Reading Ice Hockey Diagrams", Learning to Play the Game. https://learn-ice-hockey.com/reading-diagrams/reading_ice_hockey_diagrams/ — licensed CC BY-NC 4.0.

<a href="https://learn-ice-hockey.com/reading-diagrams/reading_ice_hockey_diagrams/">Reading Ice Hockey Diagrams</a> by <a href="https://github.com/jamesdbloom">James Bloom</a>, licensed under <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC 4.0</a>.

@misc{reading-diagrams-reading-ice-hockey-diagrams,
  author  = {James Bloom},
  title   = {Reading Ice Hockey Diagrams},
  howpublished = {Learning to Play the Game},
  url     = {https://learn-ice-hockey.com/reading-diagrams/reading_ice_hockey_diagrams/},
  note    = {Licensed CC BY-NC 4.0}
}