At some point in my hockey career stopping on pucks, or really abrupt transitions became the norm and players choosing their own turns in gameplay became less of a standard.. In light of that check out this beautiful passage on skating in the third paragraph below. Swap out ‘skaters’ with ‘players’ and you’ll find its relevance to playing hockey well.. excerpted from Scarry’s Dreaming By The Book page 209
Crossings Poem by Seamus Heaney
Travelling south at dawn, going full out
Through high-up stone-wall country, the rocks still cold,
Rainwater gleaming here and there ahead,
I took a turn and met the fox stock still,
Face to face in the middle of the road.
Wildness tore through me as he dipped and wheeled
In a level-running tawny breakaway.
O neat head, fabled brush and astonished eye
My blue Volkswagen flared into with morning!
Let rebirth come through water, through desire,
Through crawling backways across clinic floors:
I have to cross back through that startled iris.
Only to come up, year after year, behind
Those open-ended, canvas-covered trucks
Full of soldiers sitting cramped and staunch,
Their hands round gun-barrels, their gaze abroad
In dreams out of the body-heated metal.
Silent, time-proofed, keeping an even distance
Beyond the windscreen glass, carried ahead
On the phantasmal flow-back of the road,
They still mean business in the here and now.
So draw no attention, steer and concentrate
On the space fleeing between like a speeded-up
Melt-down of souls from hell’s deep, straw-flecked ice.
Everything flows. Even a solid man,
A pillar to himself and to his trade,
All yellow boots and stick and soft felt hat,
Can sprout wings at the ankle and grow fleet
As the god of fair days, stone posts, roads and cross-roads,
Guardian of travellers and psychopomp.
‘Look for a man with an ash-plant on the boat,’
My father told his sister setting out
For London, ‘and stay near him all night
And you’ll be safe.’ Flow on, flow on
The journey of the soul with its soul guide
And the mysteries of dealing men with sticks!
The ice was like a bottle. We lined up
Eager to re-enter the long slide
We were bringing to perfection, time after time
Running and readying and letting go
Into a sheerness that was its own reward:
A farewell to sure-footedness, a pitch
Beyond our usual hold upon ourselves.
And what went on went in, from grip to give,
The narrow milky way in the black ice,
The race-up, the free passage and return –
It followed on itself like a ring of light
We knew we’d come through and kept sailing towards.
Choose one set of tracks and track a hare
Until the prints stop, just like that, in snow.
End of the line. Smooth drifts. Where did she go?
Back on her tracks, of course, and took a spring
Yards off to the side; clean break; no scent or sign.
She landed in her form and then ate snow.
(Which is why Pliny thought the fur goes white
And why one friend imagined the Holy Ghost
As a great white hare on the summit of a ridge –
Then sprung himself at last, still weaving, dodging,
Haring it out until the very end,
Where is the contextual analysis of all this hockey data?
How do lefties fair in the face off dot in the d zone on the east side of rink?
Are righties more prone to giveaways in the neutral zone on the west side?
Are lefties better checkers on the west side of the offensive zone?
In all this data analysis there are gems hidden in plain sight if you think the game through..
“What is mastery? Staying on the path.”
https://classic.esquire.com/article/1987/5/1/playing-for-keeps
Nikolai Aleksandrovich Bernstein (Russian: Никола́й Алекса́ндрович Бернште́йн; 5 November 1896 – 16 January 1966) was a Soviet neurophysiologist who has pioneered motion-tracking devices and formal processing of information obtained from the use of these devices. He was also one of first psychologists to suggest that behaviour is generative, constructive and not reactive.
My hockey agility teacher, Yasha Smushkin, was a student of Bernstein.
Hockey play is generative, constructive not reactive. Because of the handicap imposed by handedness, these handcuffs keep the game stuck in reaction. Meanwhile Two Way Hockey Agility gives the game back to itself, back to its positively constructive roots.
If we want players to have the whole picture then it is essential they study two way hockey agility. Right now the game mainly serves profit..
“Could you succeed in doing this?“ I asked. “No,” admitted Paul. “But we did get an idea of how it will feel when we shall have worked up to that point.”
“Is it really so difficult?” I asked, puzzled. “At first it looks easy. And yet not one of us was able to do the exercise properly. Apparently there is no escape from completely transforming ourselves if we are to be adapted to the demands of our art. Defects that pass in ordinary life become noticeable in the glare of the footlights and they make a definite impression on the public.”…
Since they did not succeed in part they could not succeed in the whole exercise, which was so much more difficult. Page 104 An Actor Prepares by Stanislavski
“There’s a connection between faith in something transcendent and the production of real beauty.” Bishop Barron
https://youtu.be/bSosx6MzIcg?si=0ix7vdlpo78y-kP_
“In the history of our species, in the history of Homo sapiens, the book is anthropological development, similar essentially to the invention of the wheel. Having emerged in order to give us some idea not so much of our origins as of what that sapiens is capable of, a book constitutes a means of transportation through the space of experience, at the speed of a turning page. This movement, like every movement, becomes a flight from the common denominator, from an attempt to elevate this denominator’s line, previously never reaching higher than the groin, to our heart, to our consciousness, to our imagination. This flight is the flight in the direction of “uncommon visage”, in the direction of the numerator, in the direction of autonomy, in the direction of privacy. Regardless of whose image we are created in, there are already five billion of us, and for a human being there is no other future save that outlined by art. Otherwise, what lies ahead is the past – the political one, first of all, with all its mass police entertainments.” joseph Brodsky ‘Uncommon Visage’
All these curves out there crooked.. Players are trying to fit their molds not their own.. two way hockey discards their mold.. stronger integrated skillful resourceful
The business of the game has perverted the art of it.
It’s why we don’t see higher levels of excellence in play.
I’d rather work at Walmart than lay down for a business paradigm. Is that what the game is suppose to teach? Certain there is another teacher for that way..
Lou Lamoriello said this about Zach Parise in this NYT article https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5488324/2024/05/13/avalanche-stars-parise-suter-nhl-playoffs/
We can see he looks for commitment, love, work, and play in players. And he is talent agnostic— he prefers talent over incompetence in any case. I think this is where we see the crossroads of imposing on players learning the ‘right way’ we lose the frame of talents, players’ having a proper relationship with their individual abilities and allowing them space to foster them.
Wishing for themselves and their opponents to win is a rare approach. To foster the growth of the friendship. That’s a rare orientation. Win-win.
“It is impossible. That’s what makes it beautiful.” -Berlin
From La Casa de Papel season 3 episode 3
https://youtube.com/shorts/nMEPGM6Kkqw?si=Z9gtVPKwJATb_ClM
Hockey is a just a game some might say. To me it’s more than that.
It matters how we play. Using crooked tools— physical and psychological— assaults our inbred conscience that orients social games towards fair play and justice. But for some reason our game relinquishes some of the better reasons for play. Play is pro-social, pro-active. It helps refine character and determination. When hockey sticks are crooked are the players made then in that image? Might our communities be suffering from an intense level of crooked play and how might we confront that or even better— prepare the next generation to overcome it?
Only through a lens of an intrinsic motivation might you begin to appreciate the road I hope the game travels down.