Thought I’d take time during 2nd intermission of the Flyers-Penguins game to talk a little hockey. I’ve always been kind of “aware” of what’s happening in the NHL, wathced a few games on TV and attended some minor league (ECHL) games. For whatever reason, my interest has grown considerably since the second half of last season. I’m picking up more and more about the sport, things like offensive and defensive patterns (some seem similar to set plays in basketball). I know what is meant by offsides and icing, and I understand why those rules are in place.
Things on which I’m still not quite clear:
[ul]
[li]I don’t understand what is meant by forechecking and backchecking[/li][li]I know the goalie is restricted to handling the puck only in that little trapezoid behind the net. What is the purpose of this rule?[/li][li]FIGHTING! I love a good scrape, so long as it doesn’t get too nuts. And I understand how a fight can break out when everybody’s all crowded together and a little miffed. But why will two guys just drop gloves and go at it while standing next to one another before a face-off?[/li][/ul]
FTR- my favorite teams are the Carolina Hurricanes (close enough to where I live to be the home team; seemingly more entertaining than the Thrashers) and the Maple Leafs (I really don’t know why).
Forechecking is an offensive tactic. It occurs when the defensive team controls the puck in their own defensive zone. A forward* who is forechecking will aggressively pursue the puck carrier(or perhaps a defensive player who might receive a pass soon).
Doesn’t have to be a forward, but practically always is.
To explain backchecking, you first need to understand the distinction between the transition game and the cycle game**. In hockey, you may have already noticed that there are two broad ways for a team to score. Sometimes a team will score within a few seconds of entering the offensive zone, but sometimes they will control the puck for some time, passing it around a lot before finally scoring. Scoring just after you enter the zone would be scoring “in transition”. Scoring after controlling the puck for some time in the offensive zone is scoring “off of the cycle”.
This distinction is important for a number of reasons. Scoring in transition almost always happens due to a very temporary numerical advantage in the offensive zone. If you can get more players into the offensive zone than the defence can, you have a good chance to score, but the chance is fleeting. Hockey is a fast game, and the defence will very quickly get all of their players back into position in the offensive zone. Speed is the most important asset in the transition game, whether on offence or defence.
Scoring off of the cycle requires patience. You have to keep control of the puck and wait for a defensive breakdown to free a player for an offensive opportunity. Strength is far more important in the cycle, because often players will have to muscle each other off of the puck to gain control of it.
If you’re a basketball game, the transition game is analogous to the fast break. The cycle game is analogous to the half-court set.
With all that out of the way, explaining backchecking is easy. A forward is backchecking when he is defending against the transition game. Backchecking is critical because when the forwards backcheck and get themselves into proper defensive position, the transition game ends and the offence has to go to the cycle game. If forwards don’t back check, that gives the offense more time to score in transition, and it’s far easier to score in transition than it is to score off of the cycle.
To make dump-and-chase a viable tactic against certain teams – teams who have goaltenders with excellent puck-handling skills(Martin Brodeur, Marty Turco and Rick Dipietro come to mind). Dump-and-chase is an offensive tactic a team can use to enter the offensive zone. When there are too many defensive players in position to defend against the transition game, entering the offensive zone without going offside or giving the puck away is a difficult thing to do. The standard tactic in this case is to shoot the puck past the defenders and then beat them to it. The defence could counter the dump-and-chase by putting defenders further back in their defensive zone, but that leaves too few players to defend the blueline, which gives the offensive an easy way to carry the puck into the zone. However, before this rule came into place, teams like the Devils could stack the blueline and leave their goaltender to handle the dump-in. This left the offense in a nearly impossible position. If they try to skate the puck into the zone they’ll either give the puck up or go offside. If they dump the puck in the goaltender will get to it first and play it to one of his teammates. Preventing the goaltender from handling the puck in certain areas gives the offense a way to play dump-and-chase against goaltenders like Brodeur.
The fighters pre-arrange the fight before the puck is dropped. Why? Fighting is what these guys do. If they’re not fighting, why are they on the team? More cynical people say that these fights are staged so that the players can justify their place on the team.
If you(or anyone else) have any more questions, just keep asking them. I love talking hockey.
[li]I don’t understand what is meant by forechecking and backchecking[/li][/QUOTE]
Rysto did an excellent job of explaining this.
If I can add a small note of elucidation, “forechecking” and “backchecking” do not necessarily equate to “hitting guys.” Don’t confuse different meanings of “check.” In hockey, the term “check” can mean to hit another man, but in a looser sense it means to place oneself in a position that interrupts the other team’s ability to execute plays. A player who is properly backchecking is not necessarily hitting someone; he may simply be shadowing an offensive player, taking a defensive position, or occupying a passing line in front of an opposing player, depending on what his defensive assignment is.
There are lots of Canadians here to answer any questions you may have. To us, hockey is not sport. It is religion.
WOW! Great info everybody (especially you Rysto). Thanks A Million!
BTW- The Penguins-Flyers game was very exciting (decided with seconds left in overtime…I won’t say who won in case anyone TIVOed). If I may follow up on offensive strategies: in basketball, some teams, like the Phoenix Suns, specialize in the fastbreak offense, making it their primary scoring strategy. Do some NHL teams specialize in the transition offense to a noticeable extent, or do most teams mix-and-match with the transition and cycle games?
Can anyone recommend books about the formation and/or early days of the NHL?
A lot of it has to do with making a statement. Watching one of your guys fight one of them guys does get your blood pumping, and your adreneline up. Back in the 70s-80s it used to be a much bigger deal, kind of like an undercard to the game. Everybody wanted to see Tie Domi vs Bob Probert. Just to see which was tougher. Now it is much more rare, with most teams not even having a true enforcer, because the bench room cant be spared. Its just the guy,who made the team on his hockey skill, who happens to be the biggest guy, will fill the role and square off against his counterpart on the other team.
A minor or major penalty, at the discretion of the Referee, based upon the degree of violence of the impact with the boards, shall be imposed on any player who checks an opponent in such a manner that causes the opponent to be thrown violently in the boards. There is a major penalty if an injury results.
As I understand things, the player is usually a few feet away from the boards before the check.
Who do I cheer for? First Calgary and second Ottawa. Calgary was my childhood team because my family is from there and Ottawa became a favorite when they came into the league I cheered for them mostly as an alternative to the Leafs (I’ve always hated them).
Both teams have huge goaltending issues so this may be a long season.
To some extent, certainly, but nothing like the Suns. In hockey it’s quite difficult to create transition opportunities in the way that the Suns create fastbreak opportunities by pushing the ball up the floor. But there certainly are teams that live-and-die by the transition game: the Sabres and trapping teams like the Devils and the Wild come to mind.
Basically it comes down to hitting a player about 3-5 feet away from the boards into the boards. The player being hit has to be close enough to the boards to fall into them but far enough away that he actually falls into them, instead of hitting them while still standing upright.
Okay- a few more questions (and thanks for everyone’s input so far):
[ul]
[li]During a face off, why will the official sometimes chase one of the guys out of the circle to be replaced by another guy?[/li][li]In my brief tenure as a Leafs fan, I’ve observed some outright hostility toward the organization (even from some of its fans). Did the Toronto Maple Leafs do something to royally piss off the rest of the hockey world? I know they haven’t won a Stanley Cup in 40+ years, so its not like they’re the Yankees of hockey.[/li][li]In Your Humble Opinion, has the legalization of the two-line pass been a good thing, a regrettable necessity, or something akin to apostasy? [/li][li]I like to listen to sports on the radio (via internet). Which radio announcers are regarded by hockey fans as being the best?[/li][/ul]
The Leafs main sin, IMO, is they have not rewarded the loyalty of the fans. Maple Leaf fans have stuck with the team through many hard times and made them one of the richest franchises in the league and have been rewarded with…nothing. No Stanley Cups, very few winning seasons. As a franchise they have been content to ice a passable team and sit back raking in the cash. Many fans have grown tired of it and are demanding more. They have spent tons of money on aging veterans over the years but haven’t done anything to build a consistent, winning franchise. Look at the organization the Red Wings have and then imagine the inverse, that’s the Maple Leafs. They’ve started a rebuilding phase though so there’s hope but Maple Leaf fans have been subsisting on hope for a LONG time.
Because that team “cheated” somehow. Typically the player taking the faceoff moved before the puck was dropped. Another common thing is another player on his team entering the faceoff circle before the puck was dropped.
[quote]
[li]In my brief tenure as a Leafs fan, I’ve observed some outright hostility toward the organization (even from some of its fans). Did the Toronto Maple Leafs do something to royally piss off the rest of the hockey world? I know they haven’t won a Stanley Cup in 40+ years, so its not like they’re the Yankees of hockey.[/li][/quote]
Well, imagine a team with all the arrogance of the Yankees, without the hardware to back it up, and you might start to get an idea of why. For me, it’s simply because of a regional rivalry between my Ottawa Senators and the Leafs – the cities are about 4-5 hours apart.
At the time, I thought it was a stupid, backwards change. Now that I’ve seen it in action, I’m totally in favour of it. It has had an excellent effect on the game for the most part. I’ll give more explanation as to why when I get some time.
I can think of five reasons (they may be more, I don’t know if there’s an actual list somewhere):
[ul]
[li]Not putting your stick down when the linesman says to.[/li][li]Not squaring up when the linesman says to.[/li][li]Not putting your stick down in the correct order. [/li][li]Jumping the faceoff (i.e. moving to win the faceoff before the puck is dropped).[/li][li]Having a teammate break into the faceoff circle too early.[/li][/ul]
[li]During a face off, why will the official sometimes chase one of the guys out of the circle to be replaced by another guy?[/li][/QUOTE]
Many reasons have been provided, but it’s USUALLY for jumping the faceoff.
There’s a variety of reasons for this. One, as pointed out, is that the Leafs are an exceptionally rich franchise who use their riches to do everything except win a Stanley Cup. The team is owned by a big financial interest and, on quite a few occasions, hasn’t even pretended to care about winning. They’re obstructionist in that they fight the transfer of another team to southern Ontario - a market desperately starved for more pro hockey.
Another, however, is Canada’s general hatred of Toronto. It’s commonplace in Canada for everyone who doesn’t live in Toronto to despise Toronto. Like all big cities, Toronto can be insular and navel-gazing at times, and like all big cities people from outside it tend to have a negative impression of it. In a Canadian context, this is extreme in its degree; Toronto, within its city limits, has almost 10% of the country’s population and within its urban sprawl something like 15-20%. Americans aren’t terribly fond of New York City as it is; imagine if it was five times bigger than it already is. Heck, I’ve lived in Toronto, and have lived just outside of it now for only four years, and I hate them already.
As a consequence of its size, Toronto dominates the national media. If you want to see a hockey game, in much of Canada you must watch the Leafs. Where I am, they won’t show any other Canadian team if the Leafs are playing, not even on other networks. The dichotomy between this and the team’s abject failure on the ice is hard for a lot of people to swallow; why do we have to watch this lousy bunch? Why not more Habs games? Of course, there are marketing reasons for it, but that doesn’t really impress the ordinary fan.
The Leafs also lack the lovable-loser mystique of teams like the Chicago Cubs in part because in recent years they have tried to buy their way to Stanley Cups by loading up on old guys. They don’t produce their own talent. I suspect, if you did a really good study of it, that you would find that fans will tend to warm up more to home-grown stars as opposed to rent-a-players.
It’s a good thing, although its impact hasn’t been an enormous as some would have hoped.
Remember that the two-line pass was not always a rule. In effect they have gone back to the way it used to be.
I played a lot of hockey when I was young. It was the only time I ever got in fights. It is hard to explain ,but when you have a breakaway and someone hooks you face first on the ice ,you come up swinging. I quit because I hated that and strangely could not control it. The fights are not staged. They are a part of the game.
Fighting was abused a few years ago in the NHL. Philly put a bunch of goons on the ice to intimidate and beat the opposition off their game. Some fans loved it. I hated it.