Duality Refines Control or Yakovlevian Torque

The title of this post is taken from Iain McGilchrist’s book, “The Master and his Emissary”. A book I’ve slowly started working my way through. Here are a couple passages that stuck out to me that shine interesting lights on a two way approach:

In marmosets, individual animals with more strongly lateralised brains are better able, because of hemisphere (brain) specialization, to forage and remain aware of predators. There are shorter reaction times in cats that have a lateralized paw preference. Lateralized chimps are more efficient at fishing for termites than unlateralised chimps. Even individual human brains that are, for one reason or another, less ‘lateralized’ than the norm appear to show global deficits. In a word, lateralisation brings evolutionary advantages, particularly in carrying out dual-attention tasks. p26

In Hockey attention is split between tasks of managing actions on the ice and actions in the game.

Iain goes on to mention two types of attention that operate: focused and open. Focused attention operates on the minutiae while open attention observes the situation or wholeness. He also writes about allegiances outside of the self which are lost foraging only for what is desired by one’s self.

Hence the brain has to attend to the world in two completely different ways, and inso doing to bring two different worlds into being. In the one, we experience— the live, complex embodied, world of individual, always unique beings, forever in flux, a net of interdependencies, forming and reforming wholes, a world with which we are deeply connected. In the other we ‘experience’ our experience in a special way: a ‘re-presented’ version of it, containing now static, separable, bounded, but essentially fragmented entities, grouped into classes, on which predictions can be based. This kind of attention isolates, fixes and makes each thing explicit by bringing it under the spotlight of attention. In doing so it renders things inert, mechanical, lifeless. But it also enables us for the first time to know and consequently to learn and to make things. This gives us power. p31

Lastly, a diagram of what neuroscientists call Yakovlevian torque— the idea that the brain is not oriented symmetrically but is slightly rotated on its central axis.

All of this information begs one to engage in a curious approach serving a growth that seems far outside the realm of any hockey game but that is crucial to success inside one.

Redundancy and Resiliency

Layers of redundancy are the central risk management property of natural systems.

Redundancy allows you to survive under adversity, thanks to availability of spare parts. Look at the human body. We have two eyes, two lungs, two kidneys, even two brains (with the possible exception of corporate executives)—and each has more capacity than needed in ordinary circumstances. So redundancy equals insurance, and the apparent inefficiencies are associated with the costs of maintaining these spare parts and the energy needed to keep them around in spite of their idleness.

Nicholas Taleb wrote the above in reference to the redundancy and resiliency of natural systems. For those that still wonder about the reasons for a two way hockey played with either handedness, here is a reasoning for it.

Gordie Howe HandShake

This is footage of Gordie Howe playing for the Houston Aeros. In this short clip Howe illustrates the "handshake" (handedness switch) or the fundamental tactic of two way hockey.

The following is excerpted from Gordie Howe’s book, “Mr. Hockey”:

“I’ve heard people say that I am naturally ambidextrous, but that’s not exactly true. The reason I could shoot from both the right side and the left side goes back to playing goalie as a kid. As you can imagine, proper goaltender equipment was expensive and pretty tough to come by. When I was scuffling around for gear, the only thing I could find for a catching glove was a first-baseman’s mitt that went on my left hand. If I was a left-handed shot that would have been fine, but I shot right— and there is no way you can shoot right with a catcher’s mitt on your left hand. Since the glove was dictating the terms, I didn’t have much choice... I learned to shoot the puck as a goalie, clearing it up the ice and steering it into the corners, from the left side. When I played out as a defenseman or forward, I would flip back to shooting from the right side. That’s how I developed a shot from both sides, but for a long time I didn’t realize I was switching hands. I just shot whichever day I thought had the best chance of putting the puck in the net. It wasn’t until my first training camp with the Red Wings, when I was sixteen, that I found out I was doing something out of the ordinary... I went in on one of the goalies during a practice, switched hands, and scored. Jack Adams, the coach at the time, was watching. He called me over with a gruff ‘What are you doing?’ ‘What’s that, Sir?’ I asked. He stuck his chin toward the goalie and said, ‘You shoot both ways.’ I hadn’t ever thought about it, so I asked, ‘I do?’ I had no idea. After growing up playing every position on the ice, it just seemed natural.”

— Gordie Howe

Connor McDavid 100 Points

Connor McDavid tallied four points for the Edmonton Oilers a few days ago. This game gave him a season total of one hundred points with a few games remaining.

We’re all in awe of his game, his individual feats. But he lacks that shibui element that Gretzky had. Healthy reminder that team play is what we’re after, open heartedness and resourcefulness. Two way hockey style looks beyond hockey kings and pawns.

Worse is Better

I just read RIchard Gabriel’s Worse is Better article. In this piece he makes an argument, he flips his allegiances to it and then invites a sense for debate.

First, he hypothesized that an inferior program was more successful because of its inferiority.

Next, he opens the door to a never-ending debate oscillating between arguing for and against this original proposition.

Lastly, he finishes by saying the debate space is an aesthetic preference versus a technical certainty.

How does this relate to two way hockey?

I once sat in conference room with Bryce Salvador. After my proposition of playing hockey with a straight blade entered the conversation, paraphrasing he said that if you give an NHL player any sort of stick, no matter if it was curved or straight, they would make it sing (meaning they would play well with it). He simply missed how players’ spacial orientation as it related to the game would be vastly enriched by a two way hockey approach. But his point was well taken. It’s possible. His thought process was limited by the game lens we all inherited. As was my own until I reread Smushkin’s books and considered their implications.

Hockey’s current stakeholders have technical vocabularies that conceal a sense for the game. Two way hockey unshackles players by reorganizing this vocabulary.

Pond Hockey

I played pond hockey at Strawbery Banke two nights ago. It reminded me how beautiful and dangerous the game is. The game attire some of these guys sported was noteworthy. Two players wore bike helmets, one player wore a pair of black lined overalls. How is any skating stride retention even possible in overalls? They were just doing it, hockey playing. Some guys could barely skate yet one step after another they hammered the throttle as if they sensed their unstoppable freight trains were nearing the dead end of the track.

You reader are interested in the vision I have for the game. Well its about embodied strength in the face of uncertainty, a fearlessness is what hockey demands and requires. My vision reorients the game and takes the heart of it back and through to a whole other level.