Left-handed, Canadian, or just BS-ing?

Here's a little thing that was related to me by a boss I used to have, who was in fact a right-handed Canadian. I was wondering if Unca Cece, a venerated SD staffer, or if any of the teeming millions, could comment on this for me.

It seems that though a right hander, he played many games, such as golf and baseball, left handed (he throws righty, though). He claimed that it was his "natural" way to play, as a Canadian, and that 90% of Canadian righties infact play sports like golf and baseball "lefthanded."

His explanation was thusly: Since a Canadian's first sport is hockey, from a young age he/she is taught to hold the stick in the most natural way, with the control hand close to the fulcrum, i.e. the right hand on the end of the stick. Logically, this translates to a "left-handed" baseball and golf swing. Americans, it seems, play baseball first, and so learn the correct way to swing a bat is to put ones control hand higher on the bat, i.e. this makes them left-handed hockey players.

Now, I had taught myself to play hockey, and have been playing both hockey and baseball since my earliest sporting memory (my dad taught me both, he was an American, but an avid self-taught hockey player as well) and the "Canadian" style of holding a hockey stick seems unnatural to me. My girlfriend, who has never played baseball, however, confirms my bosses story by playing hockey the "Canadian" way, saying it feels more comfortable to her, a righty, to use a "left-handed" hockey stick.

Compounding the mystery (which is by no means solved in my mind) is the problem that hockey sticks have "left" and "right" clearly printed on them, but the "left" stick corresponds to the lefty baseball players hold (i.e. the "Canadian Righty" hold my boss claims to account for the high sale of left handed golf clubs in Canada). I say "AHA... Americans have it right, and my bos sis just a great BS-er..." Not quite, he counters, the designation indicates not the handedness of the intended user, but the curve on the blade, a Canadian righty would therefore use a left curved blade?

Now, if I haven't bored the everyone reading this into a stupor, my question is this: Is my ex-bosses story truthful, or is he just a phenominal BS-er? That is, do Canadians really play American sports backwards and visa-versa due to the baseball/hockey bias? Or is he full of it?

Huh? If you're right-handed, you use your left hand as the fulcrum, closest to the end (nearest your body) of both a baseball bat and a hockey stick. The right hand is the "power" hand in both types of swing.

Then again, maybe I misunderstood the question.

in response to nickrz:

This was HIS explanation, not mine. But his explanation (when I countered with very similar logic) was that when you properly handle a hockey stick, you want whatever hand you can _control_ better to be the hand on the butt of the stick, and with righties this means the right hand. Your lefthand, in this paradigm, is purely for power, and where as the power difference in the two hands is less significant than the control difference in the two hands, you sacrifice a little power for a lot better control. As a natural defenseman, I do a lot of 1 handed stick play, and do admit I find myself using solely my left hand to control the stick, a less-than-ideal situation, as a righty. Also should be noted that the power situation only comes up in a slap-shot, which despite its impressiveness is useful only in limited situations. With a proper wrist-shot (of which I am incapable, hense "natural defenseman") or a good directional pass, the secret lies (or so I'm told) in the hand on the end of the stick. I must admit that my lack of wrist shot has alot to do with my inability to get my left arm to do what it is supposed to. (BTW, a true wrist shot is said to be one of the hardest things to do in any sport, trust me it is. The physics of it are mindboggling, and when done correctly it is a thing of beauty). So it boils down to again: power conscious Americans: right hand in middle of stick. Finesse conscious Canadians, right hand on end of stick. But I STILL would like to hear something from people with more hockey experience than I (i.e. Canadians).

I hesitate to post this, because I've never played hockey. I have, however, watched plenty.

In hockey it's advantageous for the left winger to play lefthanded, because most of his passes will be to his right, and most passes to him will be coming from his right. If he plays lefthanded, these passes will be on his forehand. Right wingers are usually righthanded for the same reason. The left defenseman almost always plays lefthanded too.

A hockey team usually has 4 left wingers and 3 left defensemen in its 20-man roster, so for about 35% of hockey players should be lefthanded. Since only about 10% (I think) of the general population is lefthanded I would guess that coaches of kids' teams would encourage some naturally righthanded players to play lefthanded.

My husband is from Canada. Plays hockey. Is right handed. Shoots left.

My husband is from Canada. Plays hockey. Is right handed. Shoots left. OK. Went to an expert. (Him). He says the majority of hockey players shoot right, no matter where they are from. Leftys are rare, it's just a prefrence. Your strong arm in any sport is supposed to be your outside arm-but I guess sometimes it just feels more right(?) the other way. Now I'm a lefty, and use my right hand for sissors. So I guess it is just what is more comfortable.

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Huh? If you're right-handed, you use your left hand as the fulcrum, closest to the end (nearest your body) of both a baseball bat and a hockey stick. The right hand is the "power" hand in both types of swing.
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Not according to all my gym teachers :-> They had us hold a baseball bat with (I'm a rightie) the dominant hand towards the 'business end' of the bat. Likewise golf, the right hand goes lower on the club (closer to the business end). Supposedly this gives you more power, since you're not really treating the thing completely as a lever; you're moving the entire stick through the air as a line, and you want to have the hand more able to control it, closer to the wider end of the arc. I know I get more control batting as I was taught, than the other way round (as you seem to be describing). They taught us to hold hockey sticks the same way, and I found it kind of awkward. Just another data point. :->

There's a related question to this...
as a left-hander myself, I've never felt comfortable holding the stick or the bat left-handed, but always right-handed, and this seems to be true for most left-handers I know. Yet statistics claim that left-left is more common... am I just messed or is this the corollary to the phenomenon we're currently discussing?

Here's another: my brother, an AMERICAN rightie, plays baseball left-handed (batting and catching). Since he was never really "taught" to play, he just kinda picked it up playing with other kids, one would assume that this was a natural inclination. Strange, I think.

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The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.
-- Henry David Thoreau

I am Canadian, I am right handed and I shoot left, bat left and golf left. When playing hockey almost everything you do with the stick is done mainly with the top hand, this includes shooting. This is especially true of the wrist shot which may explain your problems jayron, all the power comes from the top hand. When taking a slap shot the right hand becomes the bottom hand when the stick is raised and you generate power by pulling down on the stick in which case the hand on the butt end does most of the work. This motion feels natural to me also when swinging a golf club or a baseball bat. When skating it is normal to have only one hand on the stick, this hand is obviously the top hand and a rightie would feel more comfortable using only his right hand. The only time the bottom hand is more important than the top hand is when taking a backhand shot, this may explain why so few players have a good backhand. All this being said my brother is also right handed and he shoots right, so really it comes down to what works for you. Regarding Manduck's statement about righties being forced to shoot left, more players shoot left than right. The reason the right winger is generally considered more important than the left winger is that more center's are shoot left putting the right winger on his forhand.

Thanks Vlad! I finally have another data point for this conundrum. I never actually disagreed with my boss, I was just wondering if his logic was true. My personal intuition was "no" but I have a bit of information pointing to the fact that leftie is the most natural way for a righty to play hockey. I've tried it, and it feels very awkward, but that may be just because I have a different bias... Or it may be more complex than a direct corelation to your righting hand.

I guess I still don't understand the question. Forget about one-handed stick play, forget about ambidextrous players, forget about "natural defenseman," forget about fulcrums, forget about "control hand," and forget about slapshot vs. wristshot.

A truly right-handed player uses his right hand as the power hand (farthest from his body in relation to the "stick" end closest to his body) in both hockey and baseball. If
your friend's explanation (as I understand it) were to hold true, you'd have right-handed right-wing offensive hockey player approaching the net from the right making what is essentially a back-handed shot? Or a right-handed baseball player batting with his left hand uppermost on the bat and using the left hand and arm to pull the bat backwards through the swing? By the same logic, your friend has us right-handers masturbating left-handed because we have more "control" that way? I offer an emphatic "bullshit."

I just can't make any sense out of what seems to be a needlessly convoluted question.

I'm a right-handed Canadian and I play no kinds of sports at all, unless you consider fast-dancing, walking, and sex to be sports.

A truly right-handed player uses his right hand as the power hand (farthest from his body in relation to the "stick" end closest to his body) in both hockey and baseball.

I am another Canadian. Trust me. Many 'truly right-handed' hockey players shoot left. Maybe most.

Oh, come on, Vlad. Most hockey players are right handed players. Do you really play?

I've had a hockey stick in my hand. It's both control of the puck and shooting that you have to manage.The right hand controlling the end of the stick controls the finer movements.Eh?

Most players do not shoot right. Look through any NHL teams roster and you will find that well over half the players are left handed shooters.

I based my comment on the two hockey sticks I had as a kid. Now I'm a little confused.Do they play right handed, then switch the stick around to shoot from the other side?

Only when they are playing in the southern hemisphere, sunbear. ;)

I'd give my left hand to be ambidextrous.

Might not the dominant eye play part in this? I know of plenty of ball players who are right handed and bat left. Personally, I am right-handed but I shoot a bow left-handed. Besides, aren't left-handers from another planet anyway?

You guys lost me a while ago. I play or have played a lot of sports. I am a natural right-hander, no question about this .I write with my right hand.

In baseball, I wear a right-hander's glove and throw with the right hand (in fact, if I were going to throw anything, it'd be with the right hand). I bat right-handed.

In hockey, when I was a kid, my left hand was on top of the stick and my right hand was the fulcrum. I'm convinced that the power in a wrist shot comes from the fulcrum hand, though I'm not a physicist, so I can't prove this. I believe, though, that this is the difference between a wrist shot and a slap shot.

Here's where it gets weird. I'm clearly left-footed. In soccer, I shoot and pass much better with tle left foot than with the right one, which is why I was always either the left winger or the left defenseman. When I ran track in high school, I pushed off with the left foot. I am a lousy basketball player, but I play basketball left-footed--and therefore left-handed. I can't dribble well with my right hand, and I shoot left.handed. By the way, I'm a typical white guy point guard in pickup basketball--the guy who can make the pass and hit the set shot but not move to the basket.

Sorry, I doubt this was interesting to anybody, but some of us are ambidestrous in a weird way. Just thought I'd fill you in.

American, not Canadian. Question--do Canadian hockey coaches train their young players to shoot from the left in the same way that American Little League coaches train their players to switch-hit?

No hockey coaches don't train players to shoot left because it doesn't matter which way you shoot.

Ok, hold everything. Let's sort this out.

Truly right-handed players in hockey, baseball, golf and tennis all use the same hand for the same thing. Their right hand is the hand farthest down the shaft of whichever implement they are using.

When they are "shooting," (in a forehand posture for hockey and tennis) they always present the left side of their body toward their target.

It's just the opposite for true lefties.

Now I don't know how you can make it any simpler than that.

In the days before tennis players started using two-handed grips, a right handed player did not use his left hand when confronted with a shot to his right (forehand) side. That's silly. He used his right, and only his right hand for both control and power. When presented with a shot to his left (backhand) side, he did not switch hands, he presented the right side of his body toward the net and used his right hand in a backhand swing. (Unless, of course, he was one of those people (like me) who would do anything to run around a backhand and make it into a forehand).

Now comes the two-handed grip. Why have that other powerful arm just flapping out there in the breeze? The right-handed player did not bother to add the left hand to his forehand, but look what happened on the backhand. UH-OH! The left hand now becomes the hand farthest from the body, the hand that provides the power and control! Well I'll be dipped.

Is that what this guy was talking about? Hockey players are taught to make what is essentially a forehand shot with their non-dominant hand? NOW we are getting somewhere. A guy that could do that would have no "backhand" shot at all, no matter which side of the net he approached from. They simply switch hands. Now it makes sense.

Geezis, the amount of time I spent wading through tennis sites looking at pictures and reading captions like "Two-handed backhand with the dominant hand in the half eastern continental and non-dominant hand in the full western continental forehand back grip."
Then try figuring out if they guy in the picture is right-handed or not, cause they don't say. I HATE tennis sites!

You guys are still arguing?I can only agree with Lawrence:
In hockey, when I was a kid, my left hand was on top of the stick and my right hand was the fulcrum. I'm convinced that the power in a wrist shot comes from the fulcrum hand, though I'm not a physicist, so I can't prove this. I believe, though, that this is the difference between a wrist shot and a slap shot.
me too

Wait, now I don't agree anymore. We'll have to take this outside on the ice, that's the only wway.

I'm wondering if this is an example of mixed dominance (of the hemispheres of the brain, each of which control the contralateral part of the body). I used to identify myself as ambidextrous, and although there are some tasks I can do equally well with each hand (I'm a switch hitter, for the baseball example), in most activities I tend to favour one side or the other. I write with my right, I turn keys with my left, etc. So I'm wondering if hemispheric dominance could be on a scale (the same way sexuality is), with right-handedness on one side, left-handedness on the other, and ambidexterity in the middle. And inbetween each absolute would be mixed dominance, favouring one side or the other on particular activities. Does that make any sense to anyone?

Sunbear and Lawrence: I think you are misplacing the fulcrum in your wrist shot.
The fulcrum is the point upon which a lever rotates. In the case of a right-handed hockey player shooting right-handed with his right hand well down on the stick, the fulcrum is in the area of the left hand. The arc of the stick (lever) follows the right hand, it does not rotate about it.

Whoops. Dammit. Now you have me standing around playing air guitar with a hockey stick. That last thing I said ain't right, either. I guess in a wrist shot, there are two fulcrums (and two different motions) involved. There is the motion of the right hand as I described, yet the left hand also pulls backward on the stick making the right hand into a fulcrum as well. Right?

Gee, I'm beginning to make a career out of this thread! Cripes. Someone shoot me.

I don't know how this got so complicated, talking about fulcrums and changing hands and left and right brains. A player can't change hands because the blade of his stick is curved he always shoots the same way except on backhands but they are always weak shots for that very reason. A player therefor always has the same hand on the top of the stick. When skating the player usually has only one hand on the stick, the top hand, so for most right handed players it is more comfortable and easier to control the puck if your right hand is the one on the stick. I don't really know if we just learn to shoot that way as a result, or if we actually can shoot better with the right hand on top but it seems from this discussion that some things are done better one way and others the other way, but since you can't change the side you shoot from during play it's a trade off. Since more time is spent skating and handling the puck than shooting it is common to play this way . I would also point out that in spite of the fact that most hockey players are left handed shots very few Canadians golf left handed, this would seem to support the view that playing hockey left handed is a control thing and not for shooting.

Golly gee Vlad. I just checked my handy dandy NHL guide and you're right, there are a heck of a lot of left handed players out there.

THERE ARE NOT! NOOOOOooooooo ack gurgle /

I had no idea this thread would cause this much anguish, especially for our moderator. Here's what I gathered from this thread:

Either the best way to play hockey is to have your right hand on the butt end of the stick (for control) or closer to the blade (for power) Despite NickRZs denial of it, it is a fact that most NHLers are lefties, though not by much. The split is very close to 50/50, though with a 10/90 lefty/righty split in the "real world" it would definately indicate a large proportion of righties-playing-lefty to make up this difference.

My original question boiled down to this: If you had never played any other sport before that required the handling of a stick/bat/cudgel/whatever before, and someone handed you a hockey stick, would you handle it with your dominant hand on the butt-end or in the middle. My indications from Canadians (most of whom play hockey as their first sport) was that many played with the dominant hand on the butt end, while Americans (for which baseball was the first sport) put the dominant hand in the middle. It might be as simple as this: In pee-wee hockey, some kid got stuck playing left wing/left defense as a righty. Their coach encouraged them to play using the other-handed stick. As this was the first exposure to hockey for them, they got to feeling natural playing this way, and thus, caused my conundrum. As there is no shortage of righties, we don't find many left-handers playing backwards to play right wing (or do we???? would change the nature of the issue) but we DO find a lot of righties playing lefty to play left wing.

Canadians are so weird.
Nickrz: 2 minutes for high-sticking.

i dont no butt if i use mi left handto jerkoff its like sumddy else iz dooin it

OK, I was never actually "taught" how to play hockey, but when I played it seemed obvious for whatever reason to put my right hand at the top of the stick (I bat, throw, write, eat, etc. righty). However, when I skateboarded, for some reason it felt more natural to do so goofy foot(right foot on the board, left foot pushing). And it confused me that I played hockey lefty also.

I decided that it was a balance and power thing thing. When shooting a slap shot it feels (to me) like I have better balance and more power planting on my right foot, same with riding a skateboard. And when I hit a baseball or throw any ball, the power comes from planting my good/right foot and stepping onto my left/weak foot. That's what it comes down to for most people, I think. It's just that shooting a hockey puck is such a weird action that people can go either way easily and feel comfortable.

ewwww, somebody just peed in the pool!

hey shit4brains, try punching yourself in the face with the left hand and see how that feels!

to the rest of you...
Canadians need to be able to do stuff with their left hands so they can hold the beer in the right :)

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"give me ambiguity...or give me something else.."

I have never heard of a player being encouraged by a coach to change the way he shoots in order to play left wing. It really doesn't matter a lot left wingers are right handed shots and right wingers lefties.

Maybe it might help some Americans to look at it this way. Suppose you played a game like field hockey, but with baseball bats. You would go running around poking at some ball, often with just your right hand (if you were right-handed), while you used your left elbow to knock the opponent's teeth out or whatever. Occasionally you would have to take a fairly sudden whack at the ball with both hands. A lot of righties would swing left-handed, no?

In hockey, it makes even more sense, because with the curved stick you can only really shoot one way.

BTW, to confuse the issue, I am right-handed and I shoot right. But I am also not very good.