With the recent, (and sudden), change in the weather around here I have hockey on the brain. I went for a walk across the road to drop off an application for homestay students at the local schoolboard office and the crisp Vancouver Island air, and the sight of one of the neighbors' hockey nets in the driveway, gave me an uncontrollable itch to bust out the hockey stick and blast a few tennis balls at it. I wonder if they would mind...
For those of you who haven't read this stuff from time to time on one of my many blogs, I think I have a few good strategies that could make the Canucks good enough to win this year. Although they will be without Ehrhoff, Torres, Raymond and Kesler, (the last two indefinitely, the first two via the trade), I think they can do it. I am looking forward to seeing the effect Marco Sturm has on the club. He's got some offensive pop and can put the puck in the net. Should be good for 25 goals. He's very similar to Higgins, who I think will settle in with the new club this year and get 25 goals also. It's going to be a breakout year for Hansen, who will get more ice time with the loss of Kesler and Raymond. I am gonna stay consistant and predict 25 goals from him too. I would like to see a bit more of Hodgson this year. He was a scorer in jrs. and we could use him between Higgins and Hansen for the Triple H line. (Copywright D.MacCannell 2011).
I think we will see a more offensive year from Danny Hamhuis this year since Ehrhoff is gone. More goals and fewer hipchecks. I am making my pick for breakout player of the year to be the young blueliner Chris Tanev. I think he will still be considered a rookie this upcoming season and at 21 he's still a baby but he sure plays some seasoned D out there! It's tough to find defencemen who develop so fast. He's pure gold and he's a Canuck. I'd like to see Bieksa and Hamhuis as the top defence team and Tanev replacing Ehrhoff across the ice from Edler as the second duo.
I think I'm with EVERYBODY else when I say I'd like to see more of Schneider and less of Luongo. If you read my stuff I have NEVER been on the Luongo bandwagon and to all you folks who put all your hopes in him as the franchise player and scoffed at me for many years for saying he was overrated, I told you so. In an interview with Henrik last season he didn't quite say it outright but he hinted at what every Canuck spectator can see: the club plays a more entertaining, more successful, more offensive game in front of Schneider because they aren't worried as much about him letting in a bad goal. It'll be interesting to see how Manny Legace figures into the equation. Will the Canucks take a 5 mil. cap hit and just turf Luongo? Will ANY other team take him? We shall see. But as for those tactics that will enhance the Canucks play enough to win them the cup this year, here we go...
This is no joke, folks. The title should actually say, (or any OTHER team for that matter). But I’m trying to give the Canucks my advice so they can use it and maybe win a Stanley Cup before the rest of the teams in the league start copying them.
The NHL is a constantly changing league and professional hockey has been anything but static throughout its history. It’s only been 80 years or so that hockey players have been allowed to pass the puck forward for crying out loud. There have been all kinds of equipment, style and rule changes during that time too. And they are still happening. The trick is to jump on one of those changes before it becomes a band wagon. That requires some keen observation of the game, which I, ahem, am about to offer.
Goalies are no longer the guys who make saves so much as they are the guys who get into position so they will be in the way of the puck. In that way they can more accurately be called “blockers” nowadays. This is not a new thing. The butterfly style, the big equipment, the big bodies, the paddle down technique, are all methods that help goalies more effectively block shots rather than react to them and make saves. How does a sagacious coach adapt to this? There are a couple of ways that have been used successfully, though in blissful ignorance. What I’m saying is there are success stories out there but people haven’t yet caught on to the real reasons for the success and started employing them regularly.
The best method to beat the blockers is by deflections. The goalie will be in position to stop the original shot but will not have the time, reaction speed or in some cases, even the inclination to adjust and stop the deflection. This is not a new technique. It even worked on the reaction goalies of not so long ago. However, in the whole process of the deflection there is a key element that 90 percent of the teams in the greatest league in the world are doing wrong. That’s right, WRONG. Taking a slap shot from the point in hopes that it will be deflected is wrong for a few reasons and it baffles me that they are not being noticed. 1. The crappy, but expensive sticks that are used these days. Every single game has multiple stick disintegrations whereas 10 years ago you could watch a week of hockey without seeing ONE. I’ve seen these untempered twigs shatter on wrist shots and even passes, but generally the slap shot is the major cause of blue line breakage and the point shot for the deflection is the major use for slap shots. One solution would be to revert to the tried and true wooden stick, if you could find an old timer on a rockin’ chair to whittle one for ye.
My solution is this: wrist shots from the point. Another major way our beloved game is changing is the blocked shot. They didn’t even keep this stat until just recently. And it might as well be called “blocked SLAP shots.” Players don’t block wrist shots. Not on purpose. They can’t. It’s the wind-up of the slap shot that allows the goalie to get set, the defenseman to block and the stick to shatter. Not to mention the cold, hard fact that a wrist shot is going slower enough than the slap shot to make it easier to deflect but not nearly slow enough to render that deflection any less effective than a deflected slap shot. And, not mentioning any names, (Salo), but there are players with really hard slap shots that never seem to end up where they aim them. Wrist shots are much more accurate.
Only a few teams have picked up on this idea and one is the Canucks. They WERE using the point wrist shot to get them to the finals but their pointmen seemed to abandon the wrist shot against the Bruins. I’ll move on.
Staying with the best ways to beat the blockers we have to mention the one-timer. A pass moves faster than any goalie, but especially the burly, equipment-laden blockers of today. If you have the goalie set up for the save and you pass to a guy, he’ll have a completely different angle to shoot and a goalie who is out of position to block the shot, IF he can let it go in a hurry. The one-timer is rare in today’s dump and chase, cycle in the corner style of game. But boy it was fun to watch in the days when players were skating up and down the ice all game long. I have no statistical back-up for this but I’d bet there are less than half the average of rushes down the ice nowadays than there were in the average games of the 80’s. That’s when hockey was FUN! Fun to play for the players and SOOO much more fun to watch. It’s my understanding that “the trap” stopped that but now “the trap” has been legislated away by the league, right? Let’s get back to some scoring on the rush. At least give it a try.
When you think of pure goal scorers what names come to mind? Ovechkin, Selanne, Heatley, Iginla, Daniel Sedin, Cory Perry, Stamkos, Getzlaf, Vanek, Kovalchuk, Gaborik. How many of them are left wingers who shoot right handed? Or right wingers who shoot left handed? You could even throw Crosby’s name in there though he’s a center. But not on the power play. He is a lefty playing the right side. How many of the massive total of goals between these players have been of the one-timer variety? If a guy is playing his “off wing” the puck doesn’t have to cross his body before he can take a one-timer shot. This is such a deadly offensive weapon to have in a team arsenal! Many teams actually have it but don’t use it.
Imagine a line with Ovechkin shooting right on the left side, with Semin shooting left on the right side. With any serviceable centre on that line it should be deadly on the rush. What about Daniel shooting left on the right side, with Henrik playing centre and Kesler shooting right on the left wing? Again, deadly on the rush! But that’s not what they do is it? The Sedins, and the Canucks, would score even MORE if they would cycle less. No question in my mind. All around the league the one-timer is something that seems to have been relegated to power play use only. If that.
My final piece of information won’t actually get the Canucks more goals but it will make the extra goals they get more valuable. It’s not so much about how to beat the goalies, it’s about the goalies themselves. In this time of positional goaltending where, as mentioned, goalies are beefy, bumbling blockers who are just trying to stay in the optimum positions to get in the way of pucks heading to the goal, WHY are they skating out of their nets and handling the puck all the time? Isn’t this the exact opposite of every other strategy they are using? It seems simplistic to say but leaving the net empty is just not a good way to be in a position to block shots at it.
How many games were lost by one goal last season? I don’t know but a LOT. There was a point in the playoffs when excluding empty net goals ALL 13 games played were decided by one goal. I’ve been watching this for a while and I am noticing in ALMOST EVERY game I see a goal caused by one goalie or another straying to stop the puck behind the net, or a bungled pass by a goalie leading to a goal by the other team. Regular occurrences both of them. And in a league where one goal is usually the difference between winning and losing tell the damn goalie to stay in the goal! I love Corey Schneider but his one and only weakness is puck handling. Just don’t do it! How much does it really help when the goalie handles the puck? I know for absolute certain it doesn’t help teams as much as it hurts them. And the Canucks are no exception to this rule.
So there you have it: 1. Wrist shots from the point; 2. Decent lumber; 3. Off-wing one timers; 4. More rushing and less cycling; 5. Stay-at-home goaltending. These combined will get the Canucks a goal a game more, (and maybe save them as many). And in a league where most games are within a goal, this should be enough to get them the cup. As payment I would be willing to accept my name on the cup after the Canucks win it. Thank you very much.
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