By Laura Warner

The best (and easiest) way to score on a ringette triangle is to exhaust and demoralize the defenders with smart passing. There is a really cool concept you’ll want to use with your line mates in the offensive end to accomplish this. It’s called the L Offence. I’m going to show you right now how to use it to create lethal scoring chances (don’t miss the two DVD clips at the end).

In the L offence, forwards create speed by passing the ringette ring quickly. The basic premise of the L offence is that the ring carrier always has a minimum of 2 passing options.

Notice that the ring carrier (F2) has 2 passing options: F1 and F3. Because of where F1 and F3 are standing, F2 could pass them the ring quite easily.

The offensive players without the ring constantly move into a position where the ring carrier can pass the ring to them. Using this system, the offensive players are almost always set up in the shape of an L.

ringette strategy

After the first pass, F1 skates to the same side as F3.

After the second pass, F2 skates lower in the zone.

The rule is that no one is ever totally on a diagonal from the ring carrier.

When a player is diagonally across the ice from the ring, the ring carrier often cannot get the pass through to her. We say the diagonal player is not supporting the ring.

In this diagram, F1 is diagonally across from the ring. If the defence were set up, F3 could not get a pass through to F1. Because F3 can get a pass to F1, we say that F1 is to supporting the ring. It is easy for the defensive triangle to cover this because only F2 is open for the pass.

Of course, the ultimate objective of the L offence is not passing – the objective is to score.

Here is an example of how it all unfolds to create a fantastic scoring opportunity:




Why the L Offence works

The key to the L offence is to move the ring quickly. When the ring moves quickly, the defensive triangle has to move quickly and defenders eventually get caught out of position.

The forwards` job is to notice when the defence is vulnerable and drive at one of the defenders one on one.

Check out this DVD clip.

The player who drives in on the low defender chooses to pass across the crease instead of shooting. That`s the beauty of the L Offence. It sets up multiple scoring and passing options.

Here’s another example of using the L Offence to set up a player to drive on the low defender in the triangle. Notice that the key is timing. The ring carrier only passes when her line mate is ready to drive on the opposite side of the triangle: