I was not ashamed, however, when he freight-trained Anton Volchenkov earlier in the game—a legal hit that was, yes, violent, in the way of car accidents, and effective, in the way of establishing a physical presence, as the old-timers say, on behalf of his team. The line between these two hits is clear, and separates good, mean hockey from bad, embarrassing hockey. And while we’re back on this subject, may I direct your attention, all of you who sanctify, or at least Platonicize, the European game, to a vicious, lethal, disgusting hit from the World Championships the other day. The offender was a Frenchman. And also, one notes, while reading the superb account of Mitt Romney’s prep school days, by Jason Horowitz in the Washington Post, that the Michigan high-school hockey of that era featured brawls and fisticuffs. We can’t blame that one on the Flyers. Maybe it goes back to McGill.
The Devils victory and the grinding, parsimonious style of the Rangers-Capitals series (now tied at three games all, after the Caps won last night), are examples of the effectiveness and ubiquity of claustrophobic hockey. Alec touched on this in his post on parity. To his thoughts, I will add the following:
One thing that made Gretzky’s dominance and point-production possible was expansion. He arrived on the scene when the league went from seventeen to twenty-one teams. The thinner distribution of talent (especially in goal) allowed him to pick the league apart. The same held true for Bobby Orr, the only other similarly dominant player in N.H.L. history, who flourished, fifteen years earlier, in the first years after the league went from six teams to twelve. It’s in the earliest years of expansion, in other words, that a dearth of talent leaves room on the ice for the hotshots to exhibit their brilliance. In Gretzky’s case, the talent gap eventually narrowed because coaches got smarter about team defense; goalies got better and acquired bigger, lighter pads; and there was a sudden influx of highly skilled European players, both from former (or soon-to-be former) Communist countries like Russia and Czechoslovakia, and from Sweden and Finland. In other words, the league, soon after being diluted, was re-saturated, talent-wise, by way of mass immigration.
The Sun Belt expansion, on the other hand, did not kick off a spasm of dominance by the few. Rather, as Alec pointed out, teams developed suffocating defensive tactics and strategies, creating a welter of hooking, clutching, grabbing, trapping, and left-wing locking from which no Orr or Gretzky (or Sakic or Modano) could have ever hoped to skate free. The N.H.L. did away with a lot of that a few years ago, dusting off the rulebook during a labor dispute, and the game sped up again. Lo and behold, a new influx of talent came into the league: small guys. Short players were rare, in the tight, clutch-and-grab game of the late nineties and early aughts. But, under the new rules, suddenly they could zip around and wreak havoc without having to worry about being smothered by the big gorillas. Stars emerged like the Bruins’ Brad Marchand (nickname: the Little Ball of Hate) and the Devils’ Zach Parise (nickname unnecessary). A new emphasis on pure speed meant that many of the role players—the lower-echelon guys—were now great skaters. In spite of the number of teams in the league, the talent, from one end of the bench to the other, has never been better. Players can do things now with a puck and skate at speeds that players of Gretzky’s generation, including Gretzky himself, would never have dreamed of—and it’s not just a function of the lighter composite sticks or fewer post-game cigarettes.
It may be that kids who are serious about the game play year-round nowadays. (The American high-school stars of my generation often played soccer and lacrosse or baseball and spent their summers goofing off. Now they live at the rink.) I’d bet that there are more top-tier youth players in the state of New Jersey now than there were in all of the United States a quarter century ago. It’s funny that, as the media wrings their hands over hockey’s so-called relevance, and over the N.H.L.’s status as a major sport, more kids than ever are playing hockey and playing it well. (At least here in the States. In the old Eastern bloc, the opposite has happened. Bobby Holik has an explanation).
I say all this merely to amend Alec’s point that the parity hockey of today is a result of a less-talented league. In fact, on most teams, the fourth line, traditionally a ghetto of goons and plugs, is now a so-called energy line, made up of guys who can fly around the ice. The fifth and sixth defensemen on most teams can really skate and play. In the old days, you’d just stick a tall guy back there and tell him to grab someone and hold on, or sit on the bench and work the door. The tightness of the game, I’d argue, is not a function of talent dilution but rather of an arms race among teams to win games. To win, you need to play relentless defense, block shots, clog up passing lanes, menace opponents’ sticks. You need to refrain from making mistakes and mind your X’s and O’s. Coaches need to win to keep their jobs. So do players. What’s more, they all want to win. That’s why they’re in the game in the first place. It’s a team game, the object of which is to score more than the opponent does—not to make nifty plays or support the artistry of the new phenom from Thunder Bay or Guelph. Sport, in spite of what people often say about it, is not art.
So, in putting together a team, you find the guys willing to commit to that project. Some of them are not always the guys with the quickest shot or slickest stride, but rather the guys with a knack for body positioning in battles along the boards or a masochistic tolerance for blocking shots. The minor leagues, not to mention the rec leagues and bars, are teeming with talented players who don’t have that jam. In other words, the maddening tightness of the game—the absence of time and space, and thus of prettiness—is not a result of coaches coming up with ways to put bad players to use. It’s about their mandate to win. It’s not a moral or aesthetic failing but a natural, if regrettable, evolution. I’d prefer fire-wagon hockey. But I’d cheer for bumper cars, if they’d bring me, or rather Timonen/Briere/Giroux et al., the Stanley Cup.
Read more of Rink Rats, our coverage of the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
Illustration by Bendik Kaltenborn.
May 12th, 2012 | 
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