This series of whiteboards isn’t intended to offer much help to the player who’s had much or any coaching. Instead, the aim is to teach some of the fundamentals of the game, helping beer-leaguers and the like who took up hockey at a later age. This is the third instalment, see parts one and two here:
Beer League Pro Tip (Part 1): Winger D-Zone Responsibility
Beer League Pro Tip (Part 2): Beat Every Goalie and Have Airtight Defence
In this instalment, I explain how the Centre is really a Centre-Defenceman in the Defensive Zone. Together the three D-Men function as a unit, the key part of the box-plus-one D-zone strategy. They form a defensive triangle with a strong foundation covering both sides of the net and a spearpoint that attacks the puck.
What do you think? Do these whiteboards help explain the Centre and Defencemen roles in their own zone?
This series of whiteboards isn’t intended to offer much help to the player who’s had much or any coaching. Instead, the aim is to teach some of the fundamentals of the game, helping beer-leaguers and the like who took up hockey at a later age. This is the second instalment, see parts one and three here:
Beer League Pro Tip (Part 1): Winger D-Zone Responsibility
Beer League Pro Tip (Part 3): Centre and D-Men Defensive Unit
Hopefully this series shows relative beginners where the real danger areas are in the attacking/defending zone.
It should also shine a bit of light onto the two types of saves the Goaltender has to make: Reaction and Blocking. Knowing the difference between a Reaction Save and Blocking save (and when you’ll see each) is very valuable on both Offence and Defence.
On Offence, if you can force the goalie to make more Blocking Saves, you’re going to score more. On defence, if you know where the dangerous areas are, you’re better equipped to prioritize your defence and get scored on less.
What do you think? Do these whiteboards make it a little more clear where the most dangerous area on the ice is?
This series of whiteboards isn’t intended to offer much help to the player who’s had much or any coaching. Instead, the aim is to teach some of the fundamentals of the game, helping beer-leaguers and the like who took up hockey at a later age. This is the first instalment, see parts two and three here:
Beer League Pro Tip (Part 2): Beat Every Goalie and Have Airtight Defence
Beer League Pro Tip (Part 3): Centre and D-Men Defensive Unit
A lot of time the guy who’s never played any organized hockey is thrown on the Wing and has to just figure it out for himself.
As Justin Bourne put it in a Backhand Shelf article:
Wing is the easiest position in hockey, especially in the d-zone. I mean, holy hell people, if you can’t play this position moderately well, it’s time to switch to bowling. But still, there are certain nuances in the d-zone that can make one winger more valuable than the next (outside of raw talent), so let’s go over them.
That said, teams with Wingers that don’t know where to be in the D-Zone spend most of their games in their zone, and get very little chance to generate any offense.
What do you think? Do these whiteboards make it a little more clear what the Winger role is in the defensive zone?
The debate on whether or not the goalie should be ‘fair game’ when he leaves his crease was recently rekindled in spectacular fashion when Boston Bruins forward Milan Lucic hit Buffalo Sabres goaltender Ryan Miller during their game on November 12th.
Sports writers’ column-inches, normally intimidatingly large at this time of year, are suddenly frightfully claustrophobic.
It was a relatively common play that developed at about the two-thirds mark of the first period: Lucic and Miller were each racing for the puck, Miller getting there first, swatting it aside. What made this particular play uncommon was the fact that Lucic did not lay up or try to avoid Miller, as is almost always the case. Instead Lucic held his course, braced for impact, and plowed into Miller, sending the goalie cartwheeling, his mask flying.
Miller didn’t play the third period, but stuck around to give NHL fans and wags a rare treat indeed: an honest interview, one entirely devoid of tired platitudes or sports clichés; Miller called Milan Lucic a “Gutless piece of shit.”
During the sleepy days of mid-November hockey, the hit by Lucic and the ensuing lambasting by Miller serve up high-drama indeed. Sports writers’ column-inches, normally intimidatingly large at this time of year, are suddenly frightfully claustrophobic, radio call-in programs have their lines lit up by countless armchair Bettmans and Shanahans, and office coffee kitchens have seen sharp rises in the attendance at daily hockey-talk scrums. The only topic of discussion of course is “Why can’t you hit the goalie?”, the Lucic-Miller Incident serving as nucleation point for the issue that has always been simmering on the back of the hot-stove.
I’ll dip my oar into these muddied waters, I’ll explain why you absolutely cannot allow goalies to be hit.
I’ve often asked the question; I’ve wondered why should goalies be treated any differently from players when outside their crease. But as someone who became a goalie rather late in life, I’ve found a new perspective on the conventional wisdom and arcane mystery that surrounds the hockey goaltender.
And so, with this somewhat unique viewpoint, I’ll dip my oar into these muddied waters, I’ll explain why you absolutely cannot allow goalies to be hit.
I’ve been a bit… preoccupied of late. I’ve been watching the 2011 Stanley Cup Playoffs and have been far too consumed with wins, losses, and playoff beard growth to write anything coherent. The playoffs are not quite over, tomorrow we’ll be playing Game 6 of the Finals, but before then, I’d like to share some thoughts.
Roberto Luongo is stealing the Stanley Cup Finals.
Specifically, I’d like to talk about goaltending. As a hockey fan and hockey player who relatively late in life at 29, took up goaltending, I have a rather keen perspective on the game both from the perspective of an average, knowledgeable hockey fan who knows little about goaltending, but also from the perspective of a goalie. Let me tell you, from the new perspective, the game has not been the same.
It is from this perspective that I’ve been watching this years’ playoffs. With this added insight, an insight which few hockey fans ever have a chance to attain, one which I certainly didn’t have until taking up the position, I’ve had to listen to thousands (millions?) of sportswriters and Canucks fans, both casual and die-hard, decry our goaltending from their comfortably ignorant perspectives.
At times it’s as if we are watching two different games, but it’s clear to me that Roberto Luongo is stealing the Stanley Cup Finals.
Roberto Luongo of the Canucks makes a save in a 4-0 loss to the host Bruins in Game 4 of the Stanley Cup final at TD Garden.
Someday I’ll write-up an in-depth exposé on the cult of goaltending, an outsider’s view of the quirky and arcane art of what some call ‘the hardest position in sport’. After which I always add ‘to play well’.
For now though, let’s save that for later. Let’s stick with a few high-level goaltending concepts which may seem foreign at first, which you may not even believe, but which are indeed true and absolutely essential in understanding the position.
Once we establish a common level of understanding about goaltending, and if we can all agree on these points, at least for the duration of this post, then we can all look at Luongo’s play during the Canucks’ 2011 Stanley Cup run to date from about the same perspective. I think that will be helpful.
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