Pic from @larryfigurski

Nobody has ever said the Detroit Red Wings aren’t a top-notch organization. Well actually, some jealous people have, but any team that makes playoffs 22 straight years and accumulates four Cups along the way is a-okay in my books.

Sometimes it’s all about doing the little things right, like sending your team plane to help your AHL prospects get to upstate New York quicker after a tough post-season loss. Looks like a decent sky shuttle too. And hey, they’re not using it right now, so what the heck. I thought this was pretty cool.

Just boarded Redbird III. How cool of the @Detroitredwings to send their team jet to fly the #Griffins to Syracuse. pic.twitter.com/tldRUQwHxy

— larryfigurski (@larryfigurski) June 17, 2013

(S/t Kukla’s Korner)

Oh man, is this an amazing .GIF of Hjalmarsson seeing Milan Lucic coming and pulling the ‘chute. He looks like he freed the heel of his boot from the railroad tracks right before the train came.

(S/t theduckmanz)

The weekend, she is over. But with that comes some good news, it’s time to podcast. Today we discussed:

* Tuuuuukka

* Nathan Horton playing 20+ minutes

* Jaromir Jagr’s goal-less streak

* The loss of a true 4th line for the B’s

* The concept of “Hot Goalie Hesitancy”

* And more

You can listen to it here:

Download it here, and subscribe on iTunes here. Facebook!

After the first period of Game 2, the Boston Bruins must’ve filed into the dressing room, plunked down in their stalls and exhaled a sigh of relief like a tornado had cruised through their town yet somehow skipped their neighborhood (fittingly, an actual tornado had done something similar during the first game). They had been outshot by a whopping margin, 19-4, but only found themselves down a goal thanks to the splendiferous goaltending of one of the league’s best, Tuukka Rask (“Two u’s, two k’s, two points,” as Bruins’ announcer Jack Edwards likes to say in the regular season).

As the Bruins emerged from their storm cellar to play the second period, something started to happen. The clouds thinned and parted a bit, and the play started to shift. The Bruins out-shot the Blackhawks 8-4, 8-5, and 8-6 respectively in the 2nd, 3rd, and overtime period, and eventually left the state of Illinois with a satisfying split.

If Generic Goalie A is in net for Boston, that likely doesn’t happen.

I have no idea if the phenomenon I’m about to describe happened to Chicago, because speculating on the mental state of an entire hockey club from my desk in another country is borderline ridiculous, but it did cross my mind when watching: Tuukka Rask might’ve “stopped” some shots in 2nd, 3rd and OT by discouraging players from ever taking them with saves earlier in the game.

That wouldn’t be what a coach would like to see from his troops, of course. But as a player facing a hot goalie, there’s few more helpless feelings than actually listening to your coach telling you to “shoot everything,” which leaves you in the position of firing an unscreened wrist shot from 50 feet out because once in 2007 some NHL goalie let one of those in (it was Vesa Toskala) so anything can happen. You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take, you guys.

(For some insane reason coaches will absolutely never say “that goalie is exceptional, even in a league of exceptional players, and wasting possession on a low percentage shot is garbage. We’re putting the puck in a jump ball situation when we’ve already got it. Hold on to the thing until you can get a quality look.”)

The good news is, players, particularly offensive ones, don’t always listen to coaches’ advice. Claude Julien and Joel Quenneville were both defensemen who didn’t make their livings scoring goals. While I’m sure their players greatly respect them, their hockey knowledge and their authority, there’s zero chance Patrick Kane is concerned about his coach’s opinion on how to get frozen vulcanized rubber behind a line in a cage. He has done that his entire life, and I’m guessing “throw low percentage shots on a hot goalie” is about Optional L on his mental list. Option R when the other goalie is otherworldly and pushing past that.

So what happens to guys is that they become afraid to shoot. Well, “afraid” is the wrong word; “hesitant” is probably more accurate. When everything you did for 20 minutes results in one piddly goal on 19 shots, you come to believe that pulling the trigger from anywhere above the tops of the circles is a complete waste of time. So you do hold on, contrary to your coach’s advice, and you do look for that back-door tap-in play, and you do look to beat just one more player, you do look forOH GOD TURNOVER.

A hot goalie ends up stopping shots before they happen, like hockey’s version on Minority Report.

In the final 56-plus minutes of the game, the Blackhawks – with Jonathan Toews, Patrick Kane, Patrick Sharp, Marian Hossa and all the rest of the crew – managed just 15 shots on Tuukka Rask. I have no idea how much of that had to do with the frustration of being stymied in the first period, and how much was just a result of Boston making corrections. But I do know that Hot Goalie Hesitance has limited my output in the past, and could very well have done the same to some of Chicago’s offensive forwards.

This is probably the first time that Jaromir Jagr has made it to 20 games without a goal. Without going through and sorting through 19 seasons—17 of which are 25-goal seasons—of a career that produced 681 goals and appeared in the top 10 goal scorers eight times, I’m quite sure Jagr has never gone 20 goal-less in a row.

What is amazing to me is that Jagr never won a Rocket Richard Trophy. In 1995, 1996, 1999 and 2006 he finished second, and he’s first among all active players in goals (six ahead of Teemu Selanne, though Jagr also has 78 playoff goals and Selanne has only 42). Amazingly, he did all this despite losing two-and-a-half seasons to a lockout and had three seasons with Avangard of the KHL.

But the playoffs aren’t about past accomplishments. None of that matters right now. The fact that Jagr is goal-less in the playoffs is about as inconsequential as the fact that he’s lit 759 goal lamps in his distinguished career. For all we know, No. 760 could be a Stanley Cup winner, and everybody will forget that Mike Milbury ripped him during the first intermission of Game 2.

(Side note, is a Mike Milbury hatchet job the hockey equivalent of the Colbert Bump? Milbury tore off on Alex Ovechkin and that guy went out and won an MVP award. Milbury traded Zdeno Chara, Roberto Luongo and Todd Bertuzzi and Bryan Berard and Wade Redden and there are just too many names to fit into that list.)

Every good player will go about 40 shifts before recording a point. In the other 39, it’s quite possible that they look bad, turn the puck over or look generally sloppy. There isn’t a player in the NHL that plays significant minutes you could crop together some video of without making him look lazy or uninterested.

You can look at a goal-scoring slump, tie it to a large number of shots and still conclude that the player isn’t looking as dangerous as he does. Ever since Tyler Seguin’s demotion to the Bruins’ third line, he hasn’t looked like his offensive explosive self. There’s something different with Jagr. Everybody knows he hasn’t scored, but everybody wants him to score. At 41, Jagr has turned the NHL ice sheet into one giant game of keepaway. The puck is, frankly, on his stick more than the stick of any other player at this point. When a rush doesn’t materialize, Jagr will take a puck in 1-on-4 and fight until he’s ceded control. Jagr doesn’t concede defeat.

If he were producing and not mired in the longest slump of his career, maybe he avoids Milbury’s wrath. It’s difficult to use past goal totals to predict future ones. Critics can say that he has yet to light a lamp, but he has 51 shots on goal, and that doesn’t count the post he hit in Game 2 of the overtime.

Boston has already earned a split on the road in the Stanley Cup Finals. Jagr or no, they have been getting excellent results without his stick. Other than the play he made on Evgeni Malkin (could have been a hook) in the second OT of the third game against the Penguins, Jagr hasn’t been involved in a scoring play of consequence.

How far back are you going if you’re trying to forecast the number of goals Jagr will score in the final (potentially) five games to go? 51 shots and 0 goals, but he’s a career 13.7% shooter. Trying to forecast anything over a such a short period is damn near impossible. There simply isn’t enough games for anything to make sense. His lack of production hasn’t seemed to had an effect on the Bruins’ wins and loss record in this postseason. They’ve been doing fine without it. Every indication is that Jagr is playing well and playing even better as games progress into the later periods. His training routine sounds insane.

Which is weird. They tell you that in hockey, you have to create your own luck. Jagr has been playing pro hockey for 22 years. He’s earned a lot of karma over his career and could use a bit of it now. It’s ironic when looking at Jagr’s prolonged slump because he started off his Bruins career by having a winning goal deflect into the net off of his skate. Why is that a goal but a wrist shot that beats Corey Crawford in overtime isn’t? The GIF of his face of disapproval is absolutely perfect.

It’s somebody who has been doing most of everything right offensively but has been bitten by a snake with particularly poisonous venom. You’d think that a high-profile, European forward without a single goal in the postseason would be a recipe for a lot more abuse. Milbury is the exception. Reporters seem to love Jagr’s act and Jagr’s play, and it doesn’t exactly take a community college degree to be able to tell that Jagr is playing well enough to have scored six or seven goals by now. What’s happened luck-wise in the last 20 games should have no impact on the rest of Jagr’s shots, just as much as the previous 759 regular season and playoff goals have no impact on the game going forward. Right now Jagr is just an old guy doing everything right and is a pleasure to watch. For longtime fans of hockey who never really appreciated him during his first NHL go-round, it’s good to see that he’s not all the way bad in 2013. He can still contribute and his keep-away prowess has kept the puck out of his own zone. He’s not only effective carrying the puck, but he’s also very fun to watch doing so.

Sunday Funnies is a feature brought to you by Stevie Roxelle, because hockey is actually a pretty fun game and we run enough “here’s a terribly violent hit” posts here at Backhand Shelf.

Stevie Roxelle is a talented illustrator, cartoonist and biologist that currently lives in Sharks territory. You can find more of her work at the webcomic Biscuit Fox and at her online print shop, and you can follow her on twitter @stevieroxelle. Captions are her comments, enjoy!

***

From Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Final…

I’m pretty sure you start hallucinating when you’ve played nearly 6 periods of hockey in a row.

More great stuff from Reddit Hockey, which you should probably frequent. Great source of fun, mindless hockey stuff.

All I gotta say is: this guy’s a trooper.

(S/t slevik)

Hello! With no hockey since Wednesday we used today to discuss…

* Nathan Horton’s injury

* Tuukka Rask on Torey Krug’s turnover

* Who’s gonna win the NHL awards?

* Coach comparisons

* Sucking on the PP with talented players

* And more

You can listen to it here:

Download it here, and subscribe on iTunes here. Facebook!

If you’ve ever played a sport competitively, at any level really, you’ve experienced some form of heartbreak. It’s just the nature of sports – they don’t always go your way, as great a player as you may be. In the wake of those devastating losses you find yourself with very few options – quit, which you’re not doing because…seriously? – or pick yourself up off the canvas and get back to punching or being punched, whichever.

The Boston Bruins led 3-1 in the third period of Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Final on the road…and lost in triple OT. That’s, as Jim Nantz would say, a nut-punch like no other. (Disclaimer: that quote may be slightly off.)

But they play again tomorrow, and they’re going to have to watch video and assess what went wrong and right, they’re going to have to go to morning skate day of, and they’re going to have to nap, shower, put the suit on and start over again.

But when you show up to the rink for that first time after you’ve had your junk punted into your stomach, you badly need the game to get under way to snap the quiet tension in the dressing room. All you see is guys quietly hanging suits, all you hear is the ripping of tape and the hum of one lone wheel grinding against steel.

One of the greatest parts about being on a successful team throughout the season is the ability to talk and laugh free of judgement. You’re doing well so you’re obviously not taking the game too lightly, and don’t fix what ain’t broke, so “Nice f*****g suit Sully. My god, what is this, this 80s? Do you need me to lend you some money?” And off you go to game prep, doing everything as you normally would.

When you lose a lot, teammates and coaches are always looking for something to blame, so heaven forbid you laugh, you unfocused dissident. And heaven forbid you laugh at the rink before a game coming off a loss, because what, this is funny to you? 

The Bruins have too much experience, and the team has been together for too long to get down on a guy for being loose before the game, but it’s not just post-loss tension that makes things quiet, especially in playoffs.

There’s the gravity of the moment, there’s the realization of how important not falling behind 2-0 is, and there’s the anxiety about the fact that the goddman minute hand has been stuck there for 30 minutes, IS THE ZAMBONI OFF YET??? You have so much pent up…just, everything – thoughts, energy, passion – that you really need to get to puck drop. Pre-game after a huge team loss is the tantric sex of sporting moments.

I don’t believe it makes one lick of a difference whether your team is quiet or loud in the dressing room before a big game. I don’t think dead silence means the team is going to come out flat, and I don’t believe a raucous group is going to come out and own. You let players prepare how they’d like to prepare and trust that they’re professionals and can take care of what they need to personally to bring it come game time.

But that doesn’t mean it’s not a painful 150 minutes from arrival to the end of the anthem. For the Bruins, quietly taping sticks and treating injuries, those minutes will feel like hours.

Only the toughest matchups for PK Subban. (Getty)

I’m not entirely sure what the future holds for Dave Nonis and the Toronto Maple Leafs. If I were to wager a guess, Nonis lasts for a few years at the helm of one of the NHL’s flagship organizations, gets another couple of playoff appearances, perhaps a coaching change or two, and ultimately doesn’t win the Stanley Cup.

That’s not to say that I think Nonis is inherently flawed or that the Maple Leafs are cursed, but it’s just unlikely for any team to win the Stanley Cup. You need a great team and great luck, or everything else falls apart.

So far, the Nonis era has unfolded in Toronto rather unspectacularly. If you can say anything about the Toronto Maple Leafs, it’s that they’re a hockey team, built as one might expect any standard hockey team to be built. The first line has skilled players. The second line has slightly less skilled players. The third line is players the coach doesn’t like. There are fighters on the fourth line.

It’s been just six months into Nonis’ tenure, but he has yet to make a decision with the roster that beats against the current. Not to say that there is a move that surely he ought to have made that would make the Leafs better with the snap of his fingers, but generally, the moves he has made could have been made by anybody.

In baseball, commentators love it when managers bunt runners into scoring position in close games. They love pinch hitting right handed batters against left handed pitchers and they love steals and they love substitutions. They love micro-managing. Generally, commentators like in baseball what they would do and what convention would have them do.

Enter Colton Orr, again.

The fundamental flaw with Colton Orr has nothing to do with the way Orr plays or the effort he brings. To his credit, Orr has a talent that he has turned into a multi-million dollar hockey career. There aren’t many rational arguments in favour of fighting, let alone staged fighting, let alone having a roster player who does nothing but get into staged fights.

So the Leafs re-signed Orr for two seasons. The fact that they re-signed a player with poor underlying statistics is nothing new. Lots of teams sign players whose teams get out-shot when they’re on the ice. No matter how good players in the league are, there are always going to be nine or ten that you could generally consider the worst players in hockey.

What is quite telling about what the Leafs think of Colton Orr is that in their seven overtime games this season, plus two in the playoffs, that Colton Orr did not register a single second of ice-time in any of them. He is counted on to play in the lowest leverage of situations.

Orr was third last in the NHL among forwards with 40 games or more in ice-time per game (6.35 minutes). He was second last in Corsi Rel QoC, and second last in overall Corsi (ahead of only Jay McClement, a penalty killing specialist that played either alongside Orr, or in a real tough checking role for the Leafs). The zero minutes in overtime, especially considering the Leafs finished their season in overtime, is particularly telling. Toronto was a three-line team for much of the year, with goons Orr and Frazer McLaren or whomever generally taking a seat about midway through the second period.

In Game 7 against the Boston Bruins, Orr played 10 shifts. Six of them came in the first period, and Orr played just 1:30 after the midway point in the second period.

What’s the point in dressing him?

If you use multi-season stats like the ones found at Hockey Analysis, you’d find that of players with at least 1000 minutes over the last four years (Orr’s last contract) only nine out of 414 forwards have a lower points/60 than Orr. He was 410th in “Individual Point Percentage”, the percentage of on-ice goals wherein he contributed. I get that Orr’s job isn’t to score points, but why not? There has to be an opportunity cost involved by dressing Orr rather than some skilled forward that’s tearing up the Swiss league or something because he couldn’t find an NHL gig. Did he help out his linemates? Only Todd Marchant and Brad Staubitz had a worse Corsi over the period, and it’s not like Orr’s fists were inspiring a lot of Leafs victories with him in the lineup.

Apparently, coach Randy Carlyle likes him, and that’s fine. Carlyle takes a lot of heat in the Leafs blogosphere for his continued reluctance to play anybody but Orr or McLaren on the fourth line, but in the grand scheme of things, playing two poor players for six minutes a game isn’t going to change anything. You’re giving up just two extra shots a game, so the decision should only cost the team about once every ten games.

The issue isn’t Orr. The issue is Nonis bowing to convention so that he doesn’t have to take a chance on a player he doesn’t know much about, one who perhaps can contribute a little more in a depth spot.

Convention allows teams to make basic moves in depth positions and generally satisfy the status quo of the game. It’s harmless, because nobody of any substance is going to rise up and complain that the Leafs put fighter Colton Orr in a jersey instead of a player like Rob Schremp, Linus Omark or Wojtek Wolski. Those are the moves that if they fail, get criticized.

Patrick Bordeleau, perhaps the only player in the National Hockey League more useless than Colton Orr last season, managed to get a three year contract for himself. The Vancouver Canucks signed Tom Sestito for two years, just months after getting him off waivers, a place where the Tom Sestitos of the world congregate.

The Leafs, Avalanche and Canucks aren’t the only teams that carry these players. There’s Brian McGrattan, Zac Rinaldo and John Scott. Behind The Net found 13 players with 20 or more games played this past season, 8 or fewer minutes, a Corsi Rel QoC of below -1.000 and at least one minor penalty per 60 minutes of ice-time. Welcome, Kevin Westgarth, Brandon Bollig, Tim Jackman and Ryan Reaves. Salutations to Chris Thorburn, George Parros and Mike Brown. The computer has deemed you all pretty expendable, with your coach wanting to pay lip service to the idea of having a conventional goon, but not wanting to actually play you in a high leverage situation.

In this case, stupid generally neutralizes stupid. If you had asked me a year ago, I’d have suggested that the trend of players with specialized goon roles was on the way down. It appears that there are more of them than ever, in every division, even dressing on teams that are generally smart.

So perhaps there’s an issue that teams are concentrating on player roles when selecting players. Good hockey players get shuttled out of the league while bad players don’t. Frankly, it’s easier on everybody if Orr gets a bit of ice-time per game.

Andrew Shaw

When I played hockey I mostly resented the pest on my team, because unlike pure fighters, very few pests aren’t representing who they really are with their on-ice actions. Fighters are often soft-souls when they doff the hockey hat. Pests are not, which is to say, they’re a f*****g handful in the dressing room.

Seabrook on Shaw: He’s a handful in the dressing room, too. … He’s the same without the skates.

— ESPN Chicago (@ESPNChiHawks) June 13, 2013

Yeah, like that.

Now, that alone is not enough to “resent” anyone. It’s not like you’re going to get along with everyone in the room, and it’s not like annoying people are confined to one role, but I resented them because they always did so damn well for themselves, and I was jealous.

I was an offensive player with good vision and hands; relative terms, given I was a college/ECHL-level player. Essentially, I was a rec hockey threat wasting a 6’2 (okay, 6’1.5″) frame which made my coaches want to run me through a meat grinder (which incidentally I was doing to myself anyway by playing in the ECHL). I was a conserve-and-burst style player from the broken mold of Drew Stafford.

But not pests, no. Coaches love pests. Those guys don’t waste an ounce of their ability, especially their energy. They do things people their size shouldn’t, they get points by “going to the dirty areas” which makes most ED pills unnecessary for most coaches, and gosh darn-it, check out how pissed off those idiots on the other team are now.

From my perspective at the time our pests took unnecessary penalties, swatted the hornets nest I had to play against, then messed with guys’ gear in the room which is ha-ha-ha-larious at 8:30 in the morning when you’re pulling your shinpads off your stall’s top shelf and there’s a cut-off cup of water in there to fall on you. (It has to be cut low so you don’t see it, obviously.)

In reality, their value is probably somewhere between how I thought then – why do we use this guy so much? – and how I think now, which is that Brad Marchand is amazing.

You can’t really make a blanket assessment of them, given that somebody like Brad Marchand, while a true pest, is also an incredibly good hockey player, while someone like Leo Komorov (or whoever, there are plenty of examples of lesser pests, pick who you prefer) is replacement level at best. Some are able to play their game while being cognizant of effing with yours, and some have to devote all their brain power to it, which renders them useless in the process.

In the end, I realize I probably should only take issue with the latter type, the guy who didn’t do enough positive to justify the negatives, like PIMs and having put up with his shenanigans in the dressing room.

All I know is that without having any relationship with Andrew Shaw whatsoever, and without having heard a behind-the-scenes word about him, I’m glad I don’t have to deal with him in the room on a daily basis. When he scores a triple overtime goal like he did last night, you just know there are guys sitting there 10 minutes after the initial relief of winning has washed away shaking their head, dreading the reality that his on-ice success is just going to free him up to be louder, and more…I dunno…pervasive in the dressing room.

But if he’s going to have success…who are those guys to resent him, right?

 Sigh…right? Remember: he’s helping. He’s helping. Just remember…he’s helping…

I love shinpads!

I love that the above picture from Reddit Hockey came with the caption “I was sure I did the right thing by adding two hours to the DVR recording of the game before I left the house. That is until…”

Check that out – the game-winner is scored with 7:52 remaining on the clock.

Call me crazy, but two hours should be more than enough time. Hilarious to have it fall six seconds short.

(S/t BullOSullivan)

G’day! Excellent first game of the Final, as you well know by now. John, Jake and I picked it apart, discussing:

* Did the Blackhawks try to out-Bruin the Bruins?

* The Shaw/Bolland line

* What’s with the Too Many Men penalties?

* Andrew Shaw loves shinpads and cursing

* Talking yourself into skating in OT 3

* And so much more. Like, y’know, the whole game

You can listen to it here:

Download it here, and subscribe on iTunes here. Facebook!

Night one of the Stanley Cup Final did not disappoint, with neither team coming out for so much as a period of “feel the other team out” hockey, instead opting for mutual blitzkriegs that resulted in a dizzying pace. I stayed off the Twitter machine last night (well, comparatively speaking) and took notes on the game so I could hopefully give you a unique takeaway or two. So, without further ado, here are 10 takeaways from last night’s game.

***

Early Game

1. Bruins lean on the in-zone escape

I’m not sure if they showed this on the NBC broadcast, but before the game CBC took viewers inside the dressing room for a chunk of both team’s pre-game speeches, which I thought was A) insanely cool and B) surprising. Nothing too crazy-informative was said or anything, but given the nature of the pre-game speech – little reminders of stuff you’ve covered in the past – I thought it was cool hearing Joel Quenneville remind his guys not to over-commit on the backcheck, because Boston likes to pull up and use the trailer off the rush. I watched for it, and boy, do they ever.

There was one play in particular (with about 12:30 on the clock in the second period, I believe) right before Horton took a penalty that Krejci had the puck down by the net and hit a trailer who was probably at center before he gave him a slow spot-pass at the blue for him to skate into. Keep an eye out for it, it’s a common safety valve of the B’s.

2. Chicago’s third line

The Blackhawks third line was naaasty good last night. If the Bruins want Zdeno Chara to maul Jonathan Toews and crew, it’s up to Chicago’s depth players to make some noise, and holy hell did they ever. There was a shift early in the game where Tory Krug and Adam McQuaid got straight punked by the line of Andrew Shaw, David Bolland and Brandon Saad (the latter moved around in the lineup a lot last night). But their energy was infectious from start to finish last night, so it wasn’t surprising to see them score the winner. 

Andrew Shaw’s pass to Bolland on their goal in the third made me write the note “look up Shaw’s statistical history.” Great patience and vision on that play. And sure enough, he’s been an offensive contributor before, he’s not just a pest. 54 points in 66 OHL games in his last season there, the kid’s only 21.

Anyway, it was watching this line that made me think in the first period, “huh, I could definitely be wrong with my Boston pick here.”

3. Blackhawks passes to soft areas in the offensive zone

One thing I noticed early (and I wrote this note about 10 minutes into the game) was Chicago creating opportunities by finding the soft areas in Boston’s coverage, and making great passes. And to be clear, I don’t mean the usual soft areas, this was different. It’s something elite teams can do that the dregs can’t. Use vision and skill to pass to areas you don’t usually see players. It was pretty clear they’ve taken a long, hard look at how Boston defends and decided to make the conscious effort to avoid the normal “set” offensive spots.

Another thing I want to point out (quick tangent) is that the commentary, at least during the CBC broadcast, was heavily skewed by the scoreboard. Even when Chicago was down 2-1 and 3-1 they were controlling sizable swaths of the play doing this. Puck movement is a great way to dissect layers, if you’ve got the skill to do it.

Mid-Game

4. The first Lucic goal

The most noticeable play on the game’s first goal is Niklas Hjalmarsson absolutely trying to decapitate David Krejci when he could’ve played the puck, missing, and the Bruins scoring. Not knowing the B’s were going to score I made one of of my roughly five out-loud sounds from last night when he went for that hit and missed. I think I said “Jesus,” which, apologies if that offends you. But yeah, he went for the homerun and missed and the B’s scored. I checked Twitter through my fingers and winced at the reactions.

In retrospect he obviously shouldn’t have done what he did (duh, his opponent scored), but here’s why that play happens: Hjalmarsson isn’t a moron who was trying to “out-tough the Bruins” or “play their game” or whatever. In pre-series meetings, David Krejci’s name was circled, highlighted, and underlined, the way Sidney Crosby’s was by Boston, Kopitar’s was by Chicago and ____’s was by ____ when he got shut down. It happens often to top players. What I mean is, Krejci gets the “every time you have a chance to put a lick on this guy, you don’t pass it up.” Fear is real, and if you don’t think getting crushed every time you’re near the puck will make you hesitant then please, save me Superman, I’m scared of serious damage to my person. There are reasons true talent can stop producing this time of year.

If Hjalmarsson sees Paille there, he doesn’t make that play. He was two or three shifts into game one and saw the circled guy. If having it backfire that bad were common, teams would just let opposing stars play like everyone else.

5. Is Bickell playing?

Oh, there he is, I guess he must be. (Not his best showing, is the point. Got better as the game went on, but was nowhere to be seen for quite awhile.)

6. Patrick Kane was Crosby-ing

Patrick Kane repeatedly grabbed the puck and got his wheels going through the neutral zone only to turn the puck over, or take a harmless shot from long distance. Boston is unafraid of you through the neutral zone, they swarm you. It’s Venus Fly Trap defense, a dead zone for offense. He needs to better use his linemates, try to delay once inside the blueline, and if the back-pressure is too much, concede that getting the puck deep with chips and support isn’t a wasted rush.

Late Game

7. Boston over-sagging

Seems funny to be writing about “late-game” as the third period, giving that the game still had a full game to go, but here we are. Yesterday I wrote about how Boston defends in layers, basically explaining that it’s a “saggier” system so that players have more help defense in the case of emergencies. But by the time Boston went up 3-1, they were sagging to the point of losing shape. Dave Lozo has often said that nobody is worse in the few minutes after scoring a goal than the Bruins, and right after the Patrice Bergeron goal they started to implode in on themselves like a dying star. Chicago suddenly found themselves at a shooting gallery where the gunman was given all the time and space he needs to pull the trigger. Like most shooting galleries, I assume.

8. Rask finally looked flappable

After giving up two goals to the Penguins in four games, he gave up four to the Blackhawks in Game 1. Well, not so much “he,” but the Bruins did. I would fault him for roughly zero goals last night, in fact, he was so good this very easily could’ve been a three period loss for the Bruins. BUT, there were times late in the game when the Chicago barrage had him kicking out containable rebounds, scrambling, and looking like a goalie facing a great offensive team, as opposed to usual “unfeeling brick wall” style.

(By the way, Crawford was great too, but he did get sizable chunks of Lucic’s and Bergeron’s goals, which he could’ve conceivably stopped. Only reason I won’t say “should’ve” stopped is because I see people solely blaming him for Lucic’s second, when Kane losses a battle and Hjalmarsson makes a crap pinch.)

9. Tyler Seguin needs new sticks

This won’t be a popular opinion cause the kid is a sniper with an absolute cannon at times, buuuut…

Once upon a time I had sticks I liked that I could bomb it with, but something about the lie (it had a weird heel or something) meant I muffed some opportunities where even a mediocre effort would’ve been good enough. That thing was all or nothing. This is Seguin to me right now – maybe he gets off the occasional rocket, but goddammit kid, you’re getting eight quality chances a night, at some point rolling pucks off your heel into the goalie’s stick isn’t good enough.

I believe in Tyler Seguin, and think he’s going to break out in a big way next year. Maybe this series, who knows. But he seems to find a way to blow open chances with weak shots right now.

For the record, my other theory is that he thinks he has less time than he does (confidence thing maybe) so puts his hands together at the top of the stick and bats at the thing instead of leaning on it and bearing down. Whatever it is, you can’t blow that many chances without testing the goalie.

10. Rescue Dog-avins

Kaspars Daugavins had an opportunity off a Tyler Seguin pass last night all alone in front of Cory Crawford (not long before the game ended) that prompted a lot of people to give him crap for not scoring. He took a pass on his forehand moving across the net, knew Crawford would be going for broke over-extending himself to make a desperation save, went across the crease and went to tuck in a backhand when a sprawling Johnny Oduya gets just enough stick in the way to hinder the easy goal.

I’ve seen it said that he passed up “an easy redirect,” or that he should’ve simply shot it on his forehand, or a number of other things that weren’t a deke to the backhand. In retrospect, sure, he should’ve done Not That. But man, this is one of those cases where I want you to talk to offensive players – not the grinder turned analyst, not the goalie – but offensive actual hockey players about what Daugavins did. It’s a pretty common idea – goalie over-committing, show some patience and poise, slide it in on the other side. One-timing an off-hand forehand shot off that pass would’ve been so, SO hard to place accurately, let alone get mustard on. It goes off your toe into the corner half the time, 95/100 for amateurs. He could’ve taken the pass, swiveled his body and shot, but that takes some time, and hey, why not just take it across the crease and slide it in?

Oh. Oh I see.

Gotta feel for the guy there. It wasn’t a terrible play.

(Dave Sandford, Getty Images)

Hockey glorifies size. It’s understandable, considering how physicality is an undeniably important aspect of the game. You need big defencemen to clear out the front of the net and big forwards who can prevent themselves from being cleared. You want players with enough size to deliver punishing body checks to create turnovers and make opponents panic with the puck. You need players who can use their body effectively to protect the puck.

Size is frequently overemphasized, however. Reading draft previews, a prospect’s bio will quote scouts going on and on about his big frame, then add in at the end ”And he can skate!” as if that’s a bonus rather than a requirement. Undersized forwards and defencemen struggle to get noticed in the minors, as less talented, but bigger-bodied teammates get called up long before they do.

That’s one of the reasons why this Stanley Cup Final match-up is so interesting to me. Despite one team’s reputation, these are actually two of the smallest teams in the NHL, showing that size doesn’t matter nearly as much as some would suggest.

Anyone who will tell you that this Final is a battle of size versus skill is ignoring two important facts. First, it turns out the big, bad Bruins are not actually all that big, though calling them the bad Bruins doesn’t quite have the same ring to it. And second, the Bruins have plenty of skill.

As Cam Charron pointed out earlier this week, the Bruins are far more talented than they are big and, according to James Mirtle’s tally from January, are 21st in the NHL in average height and 26th in average weight. The Chicago Blackhawks are similar, if slightly reversed: they were 29th in average height and 20th in average weight.

Certainly, the Bruins have Zdeno Chara, the 6’9″ behemoth who can play half the game and cover the entire defensive zone with his reach while standing still, and Milan Lucic, the bruising power forward who seems nigh-impossible to budge from the front of the net. These two massive players certainly set the tone for the Bruins and are joined by Adam McQuaid, Nathan Horton, and Johnny Boychuk, all players with above average size.

Really, then it’s even more remarkable when you consider Chara and Lucic, as even with them skewing the Bruins’ numbers, they were still below average in height and weight at the start of the season. And, while they added another big, talented body in Jaromir Jagr before the playoffs, they also called up rookie Torey Krug, who is generously listed at 5’9″.

Meanwhile, the player leading the team and the playoffs in scoring is David Krejci, who is 6’0″ and 188 lbs. One of their top offensive players is Brad Marchand — 5’9″, 183 lbs. Their vaunted fourth line has just one player of above average size, Shawn Thornton, and he’s the least important player on that line. Chara leads the team in ice time, but behind him is Dennis Seidenberg, who is thoroughly average at 6’1″ and 210 lbs.

The Blackhawks’ tallest player is Michael Handzus, who is still four inches shorter than Chara, and they also boast Bryan Bickell, Brent Seabrook, and Nicklas Hjalmarsson among their big bodies. For the most part, they’re average in size. Their leading scorer is Marian Hossa, who comes in at the same height and weight as Seidenberg. Then comes Patrick Kane at 5’11″ and 181 lbs. Leading the Blackhawks in ice time is Duncan Keith, who is known far more for his skating and skill than his size. He’s 6’1″ and 200 lbs.

Sparkplug Andrew Shaw, who seemed to spend much of Game 1 viciously battling with Chara’s thighs, is optimistically listed as 5’10″ and 180 lbs. That didn’t stop him from delivering some of the biggest hits of the game and it hasn’t kept him from scoring 9 points in 18 playoff games this year, including the game winner in overtime, which deflected off his undersized body as he went hard to the net.

It’s not unusual to think of the Blackhawks as undersized, of course, as they’re supposed to be the team built on speed and skill. As Game 1 illustrated, however, both teams have plenty of both. Chara and Lucic may cast a large shadow over the Bruins, but they’re balanced out by a number of smaller, skilled players. Calling them the balanced, bad Bruins doesn’t quite have the same ring to it.

Sure, the Bruins are a very tough, and some might say nasty, team, but that’s not built on size. That’s built on team philosophy, which has dictated the type of players they target and the style of coaching they receive. The Bruins seem to have focussed on acquiring tough players without sacrificing skill, with size far down the list of priorities. Brad Marchand is small, but he’s also tough as nails and, at times, dirtier than his playoff beard. Meanwhile, the big players on their team don’t just have size; they’re also talented.

The Blackhawks, meanwhile, don’t have the same team philosophy as the Bruins, but are certainly still tough, whether you want talk about Marian Hossa winning battles along the boards and protecting the puck or Andrew Shaw running over a defenceman on the forecheck or Duncan Keith delivering the occasional retaliatory cheap shot.

Neither the Blackhawks nor the Bruins are actually built on size. When the Bruins won the Stanley Cup in 2011, however, that seemed to be the lesson learned by the rest of the league — they needed to get bigger and tougher — rather than seeing that the Bruins won the Cup thanks to a Vezina-calibre goaltender, a Norris-calibre defenceman, a Selke-calibre centre, and a well-constructed team full of talented, two-way forwards.

The former is an easier lesson to learn, as there are plenty of big, tough hockey players in the world, but not many Tim Thomases, Zdeno Charas, Patrice Bergerons, and Brad Marchands.

For both the Bruins and the Blackhawks, it’s not about being bigger; it’s about being better.

If those lions don’t have 26 NHL games under their belts at this point, they’re stuck wearing those helmets as per NHL mandate for the rest of their careers. This is at the Art Institute of Chicago, for those who don’t feel like doing detective work and aren’t from Chicago.

(S/t Horseraddish)

Sidney Crosby’s face, telling you everything you need to know about the emotional experience of playing Boston.

The Boston Bruins are the toughest team in the NHL.

The above statement is both true and untrue. It would be difficult to prove it by any objective measure. In the era of their dominance, they’ve never led the League in any of the standard metrics of thuggery. They don’t have the most fights, the most hits, or the most penalty minutes. They’re not the biggest team or the dirtiest. Although they appear with some regularity in the Annals of Controversial Incidents, they’re not even close to cornering the market on terrifying plays. If a skeptical alien came down to Earth today and asked us to demonstrate, with clear logic and pure evidence, that the Bruins are tougher than everyone else, we would disappoint it badly.

And yet, somehow, this is something we all know. Not because we have data or proof, but because we’ve seen the games, and in seeing the games, we see something in Boston- not constantly, but consistently- that speaks to us of violence. Sometimes it whispers, other times it screams, but it’s always there. It’s in Chara’s mad eyes, in Lucic’s f*&k-you snarl, in Marchand’s shameless dirtiness, in Thornton’s old-school pugnacity. Even their players who don’t especially represent any kind of danger or aggression it in their own game carry these traces, as if it’s rubbed off on them like dandelion pollen. They have the swagger of men who won’t back away from a fight, and are apt to start one for no good reason.

Last night, a friend who’s hockey fanaticism is so casual it barely even counts as attention- I dunno, the Bruins just seem like dicks. I don’t like that guy, I don’t like the way he plays, I don’t like his face. You know the one. This morning, a headline in my inbox- The Chara Factor looms over Final. When we speak of the Bruins, we speak of them in the language appropriate to school bullies and the Red Menace, without even realizing that we’re doing so. Their toughness has become a social fact without ever being an actual one. We don’t know it for any specific reason, we just know. It is known.

***

Because this toughness is such a well-established feature of the Bruins, it factors heavily in any and all explanations for their success. Outside of their local media, you can’t hardly find a game story or series account of anything the Bruins have done in the past five years without violence being referenced. Traditionally, of course, the story is that they win because they outmuscle or intimidate the opposition. But in the series against the Penguins, where Pittsburgh came out swinging in anticipation, the story was inverted. This time, the Bruins won because they weren’t violent. But if they had been… well, that that would be the reason they won too.

Bruins narratives, then, are a great example of the way that toughness and intimidation have come to function as unfalsifiable explanations in hockey. No matter who did the gooning or what the result, if there was any kind of imbalance in aggression, that will be the game story. Play an opponent aggressively and win: you intimidated them. Play an opponent aggressively and lose: you weren’t disciplined enough. If you play clean and win, kudos to you for not letting those bastards throw you off your game! Play clean and lose, well, aren’t you a bunch of choking cowards? That expressions of violence and emotion might be present in a game and yet have no meaningful impact on the outcome is inconceivable to most hockey minds, but in trying to use toughness to somehow explain all results, they castrate it, and now, it explains none. Give me a game with more than a couple of hits and at least one fight, and I could make up a traditional hockey story that says: because violence, and it would go down easy. Useless, but easy.
The unfalsifiability of toughness explanations is compounded by the fact that no research on the matter has been able to confirm that any of the gestures we associate with intimidation actually correlate with, much less cause, winning. At best, we have a problematic study that suggested that scoring tends to be higher after a fight, but since the effect applies to both teams regardless of who “won” the match and could be due to special teams effects (since it is not uncommon for fighting majors to be associated with other penalties), it’s not much of an argument that you can increase your chances of winning by engaging in fisticuffs. Hits, being the exclusive province of the team without possession, seem to correlate more with weak play than strong. As hockey has evolved, intimidation has gotten pushed further and further down the roster, and now the players with the most PIMs for their icetime no longer ride shotgun on the starring lines, but play seven minutes a night or not at all. As much as every GM and coach in the NHL still values toughness, it’s hard to find evidence that it makes winning.

This is not to say that intimidation doesn’t have any impact on outcomes, only that we don’t know very well what kind of impact it has. Our common tropes about how toughness works do not actually explain the things they purport to explain. We have a lot of stories we tell each other, and those stories are very logical and satisfying, but we don’t know if they’re true. We don’t know very well what the differences are between the times when a surplus of aggression helps winning and the times when it hurts it, nor which types of aggression are beneficial and which are detrimental, nor how a team can know and control any of these things before the game in order to increase their chances of victory. Right now, as far the analysis of winning and losing goes, toughness-explanations are no better than sledgehammers or fairy tales, and in a world where team-building is increasingly based on the fine-grained analysis of data and video, the old macho WIN BY HITTING arguments are going to have to be either profoundly revised or altogether abandoned.

So what is it good for, this heady melange of swagger and glower and grit and facepunching? What is it, if it’s not a way to win?

Consider this possibility: toughness in hockey isn’t a strategy. It’s an aesthetic.

***

First principles: hockey is a sport. Sports are a form of entertainment that encompass both a game element- a puzzle, a challenge, a problem to be solved- and a narrative element. The game element is all about trying to win, but the narrative part isn’t at all. Sports stories don’t need to be stories about winning, and in fact many of the best sports stories aren’t. They’re about the experiences people have in the process, the existential struggles, interpersonal confrontations, hard-won triumphs and abject failures. They’re about what it feels like to play this particular game with its particular culture and rules.

Hockey is an art. The reason we have it- play it, watch it, talk about it, broadcast it, spend money on it- is because it creates moments of intense aesthetic experience, gives us images and ideas that move our minds and hearts in particular ways. If you want to step back from sports and ask The Big Why Question: why are these stupid games worth all the resources we collectively spend on them?, the answer is exactly the same as it is for any of the traditionally-defined arts: because they are one of the ways that we create and share emotional experiences, and the sharing of emotional experiences is one of the major things that makes life worth living. Like painting, like theater, like music, hockey is a way that people take material objects (sticks and ice, paint and canvas, strings and wood) and use them to take experiences out of themselves and put them into other people. It’s one of the most universal things humans do, and we’ve been doing it with sports for just as long as we’ve been doing it with “fine arts”.

The cultural work that hockey does, it’s “function” if you want to be crude about it, is the production and dissemination of aesthetics. Now, when I say aesthetics, I don’t mean mere prettiness. Sure, hockey’s got some prettiness- when we fawn over Pavel Datsyuk compilations on YouTube, we’re savoring hockey’s version of raw beauty- but just like any other art, the most moving or important things are not necessarily the most conventionally beautiful. There are aesthetics of ugliness, and horror, and pain, and tragedy, and a great many artists have done a great many wonderful things exploring them.

Hockey does some of its best work with the aesthetics of violence. The whole massive spectrum of it, encompassing aggression and protection, cruelty and mercy, honor and shame, intimidation, fear, and endurance. Since the very beginning of the sport, hockey has told these kinds of stories, again and again and again, in every possible permutation. It’s told tales that glorify violence, tales that condemn it, tales that sit uncomfortably in the grey area in between. It’s given us images of men triumphing through cruelty and triumphing against it, of bodies destroyed by pain and bodies that refuse to be. In a hundred years, this sport has provided its cultures with boundless material for understanding, imagining, debating, and defying violence. Look at a hockey broadcast; see how much time is given to the display of these things. It’s not because they win games. I mean, maybe they do and maybe they don’t, but that’s not why we care. That’s not why they do it, and that’s not why we want to see it.

We need aesthetics of violence, because violence is about pain, and pain is something we all need to understand. We need something in our culture that tells stories about it. Inflicting pain, enduring pain, owning pain. Mastering it. Making it- this thing that all humans instinctively fear, this thing that entire moral philosophies have been invented to avoid- yours. This is a fantasy many of us have and a narrative most of us will sometimes need. Maybe it was needed more when hockey players were birthed in mining towns and logging camps and fans came to the games from the factories and docks, when everyone who came to the barn came from a world of grinding, exhausting, injurious physical labor. Once upon a time it may have been easier to empathize with the idea that sometimes you need to take a blow to make a living- or deliver one to protect you and yours.

The kind of aesthetics- the emotional moments- that hockey provides are not exactly flourishing in the modern world, which is perhaps why the defenders of old-time hockey are so terrified of seeing them eroded further. This kind of art is important to them. They need it, and don’t want it to be stripped away just because some other fans are unmoved. So they try to pretend it’s necessary for winning and losing, because no one will have sympathy if you simply say, “it gives me the sort of feelings I want to feel.”

Which is a shame, because providing the sort of feelings people want to feel is one of the best reasons for anything to exist. People- including players, in fact, especially players- find hockey’s narratives of toughness deeply fulfilling, both personally and professionally. This is the heart of the Bruins mystique. This team, more than any other in the contemporary period, has tapped into hockey’s aesthetic of violence. It’s figured out how to draw, in a very authentic way, on long-established, deep-rooted traditions that resonate across their roster, the fanbase, and the whole hockey community. Tarasov said that the most important thing for a player was to have a sense of identity, a sense of the role he plays on the team not only in the tactical sense but in the theatrical one- a sense of style, if you will, or character. The Bruins have managed to create that sense of identity for their whole team, and in doing so, have pulled together a performance that everyone, whether with adulation or revulsion, is watching. Who gives a fuck if it helps them win? It makes them better anyway.

Holy smokes, the Stanley Cup Final starts tonight! That means we broke down the final every which way possible, including:

* Who’s better up front?

* On the back-end?

* In net?

* On special teams?

We also listened to some player presser audio and chatted about that.

You can listen to it here:

Download it here, and subscribe on iTunes here. Facebook!

The Stanley Cup Playoffs provide us with some of the best drama in sports, with their greatest offering being the glory of sudden-death overtime. No sport makes you switch from oh-man-oh-man-this-is-good-this-is-good  to  THIS-IS-BAD-THIS-IS-BAD quicker than hockey, which becomes doubly painful when “this is bad” turns into “that happened” and the finality of your favourite team’s loss starts to hit home.

Sometimes we’re treated to an extra 100 minutes, sometimes 100 seconds, but at some point the game just…ends. Abruptly. The game is over, pack up your belongings and go, there’s nothing else to see here.

With the Stanley Cup Final getting under way tonight, it’s the perfect time to look back about how we got here (and to cross our fingers hoping we get more OTs). The two teams in the Final happen to show up below in nine of the 24 extra-time games.

***

April 30: Chicago 2 – Minnesota 1
Details: Bryan Bickell, 16:35 into the 1st OT

***

April 30 – St. Louis 2 – Los Angeles 1
Details: Alexander Steen, 13:26 into the 1st OT

*deep inhale*

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

The Kings obviously got it together and got themselves into the Conference Final, but yeah: haha to Jonathan Quick’s play there.

***

May 2 – Detroit 5 – Anaheim 4
Details: Gustav Nyquist, 1:21 into the 1st OT

***

May 3 – San Jose 3 – Vancouver 2
Details: Raffi Torres, 5:31 into the 1st OT

The craziest part of this goal was the pass Brent Burns makes because of the lack of smoke and mirrors. His slick move to sneak over the pass over was apparently:

A) Show pass

B) Make it look like he’s probably going to pass

C) Stare at the player he’s going to pass to

D) pass it

…And somehow that worked.

***

May 4 – Washington 1 – NY Rangers 0
Details: Mike Green, 8:00 into the 1st OT

***

May 5 – Pittsburgh 5 – NY Islanders 4
Details: Chris Kunitz, 8:44 into the 1st OT

***

May 5 – Minnesota 3 – Chicago 2
Details: Jason Zucker, 2:15 into the 1st OT

Actually, no wait, can make the punchline a .GIF of the Chicago defenders behind the net? They were hilarious on that play.

***

May 6 – Detroit 3 – Anaheim 2
Details: Damien Brunner, 15:10 into the 1st OT

***

May 7 – Ottawa 3 – Montreal 2
Details: Kyle Turris, 2:32 into the 1st OT

***

May 7 – San Jose 4 – Vancouver 3
Details: Patrick Marleau, 13:18 of the 1st OT

***

May 8 – Boston 4 – Toronto 3
Details: David Krejci, 13:06 of the 1st OT

***

May 8 – Los Angeles 3 – St. Louis 2
Details: Slava Voynov, 8:00 of the 1st OT

***

May 8 – Anaheim 3 – Detroit 2
Details: Nick Bonino, 1:54 of the 1st OT

***

May 10 – Washington 2 – NY Rangers 1
Details: Mike Ribeiro, 9:24 of the 1st OT

***

May 10 – Detroit 4 – Anaheim 3
Details: Henrik Zetterberg, 1:04 into the 1st OT

***

May 11 – Pittsburgh 4 – NY Islanders 3
Details: Brooks Orpik, 7:49 into 1st OT

***

May 13 – Boston 5 – Toronto 4
Details: Patrice Bergeron, 6:05 into 1st OT

***

May 16 – Boston 3 – New York 2
Details: Brad Marchand, 15:40 into 1st OT

***

May 18 – San Jose 2 – Los Angeles 1
Details: Logan Couture, 1:29 into 1st OT:

***

May 19 – Ottawa 2 – Pittsburgh 1
Details: Colin Greening, 7:39 into 2nd OT

***

May 23 – Rangers 4 – Bruins 3
Details: Chris Kreider, 7:03 into 1st OT

***

May 29 – Blackhawks 2 – Red Wings 1
Details: Brent Seabrook, 3:35 into 1st OT

***

June 5 – Bruins 2 – Penguins 1
Details: Patrice Bergeron, 15:19 into 2nd OT

***

June 8 – Blackhawks 4 – Kings 3
Details: Patrick Kane, 11:40 into 2nd OT

***

And there you have it: all 24 game-enders from the Stanley Cup Playoffs so far this year. You may have noticed that both teams in this year’s Cup Final didn’t just win their share of overtime contests, but they both won overtime contests in Game 7s.

Both teams have been rolling since their scares though, and will get the chance to avoid any more heart-attacks like these when the opening 60 minutes starts at 8:00 p.m. EST in Chicago tonight.

The concept of defensive “layers” is not unique to the Boston Bruins; in fact, it’s pretty ubiquitous around the NHL at this point. I first came across the system in the ECHL when I played for die-hard layer afficianado Davis Payne, now of the Los Angeles Kings. As far as the terminology goes when it comes to explaining it, the language of hockey is not universal, so it often feels like one coach is teaching something different when that’s not the case at all. Some people call a delay an escape, some people call a mid-lane drive a net-lane drive, and some people call layers “stacking,” or whatever the heck they feel like. Either way, variations of what we’re about to talk about (with different points of emphasis) exist all over.

The Bruins execute using layers particularly well, so I figured today would be a good day to explain the concept so you know what you’re looking for tonight.

On its face the idea is basic: just because a player on your team gets beat one-on-one doesn’t mean your opponent is free and clear. Without layers, that’s how it was for me in Junior B, the BCHL, and the NCAA. You had your responsibility, and if you blew, you were giving up a grade A scoring opportunity. You were killing the team.

As a right winger playing that older style, the left d-man was my responsibility. Black, white. I was to be within a stick’s length of him when on the strong side, and he was not to get a shot through to the net (mild exaggeration below, but you get the idea).

He often did because I was really not that fond of getting hit with frozen hockey pucks, but I faked doing my job pretty well.

That also meant that I was drawn out particularly high (and in turn, d-men tended to stretch the zone as much as possible to pull wingers up higher), so if an opposing player managed to walk off the wall or beat his d-men out of the corner, your team became your goalie’s biggest fans. There was no help. D-men (and low centers) played tight man-on-man entirely, so opposing forwards usually got smothered, but sometimes got a step and that trouble ensued.

Beautifully drawn offensive lane:

A layered essentially means you’re playing a similar system with more sag, and with more awareness expected of you. No easy buckets.

Where defenders in the corner used to play tight…

Now one plays soft.

You have a d-man or center man playing as aggressive as ever on the puck carrier, but the second defensive player in the corner doesn’t need to get too aggressive and risk getting picked. He plays soft in case his partner gets beat, then he becomes the second layer to thwart the offensive player from getting to the net. He’ll make the switch to prevent the free ride. It’s not “win your one-on-one battle and you’re in,” there’s another obstacle.

If the puck moves from one opposing player to the other and coverage is still good, the soft player moves in aggressively, and tight player steps back.

Still, sometimes there are total meltdowns where both players get smoked coming out of the corner, and there needs to be more safety measures.

When you’re playing in “layers,” the weak-side slot forward helps out on breakdowns a lot more than he used to when all his junior coaches told him “for the love of god don’t let YOUR d-man shoot.”

As coaches know, you’d much prefer a shot from 60 feet over letting a guy go one-on-one with your goalie, so basically, you concede a pass out to the three point line to contest the easy layup, given that the “three point line” is not a thing in hockey. That means that the d-man in front can challenge free players off just-won battles knowing that with the break-down, the weak-side slot forward can collapse down to help in front. Anyone who chooses to make that kick out pass also gives a scrambling defense an extra second to get back into their appropriate lanes, and grab onto any men they may have lost. So, you encourage that.

(LW has collapsed, so the other D can no challenge the threatening forward.)

Another way in which layers work is by allowing strong-side wingers to help on “cycling” forwards. When those wingers only pay attention to “their” d-men, there’s a soft spot above the low defenders and below the high wingers that can be exploited for one-timers and net-drives. With layers, those wingers are encouraged to sag and help on anyone who tries to cut in, because again, you’d rather force the kick-out pass up high than allow a guy to slash the lane.

Without layers, if your center or low d-man got beat, you could create a shot for yourself:

But with help, that lane no longer exists. The offensive player, again, can drive and kick it out, which is a great offensive play, but with the right sag that right winger in this example shouldn’t be too far from the shooting lane.

It’s not remotely unique that Boston does this. What is unique is that they have a team of players who “buy in,” who’ve seen it work for them before, and who are constantly responsible in providing help defense. Other teams seem to have a number of players who get distracted, or get too locked-in on the idea that “this is my guy, this is the area I’m supposed to stand, so I’m going to stand here,” instead of “HOLY CRAP THAT GUY IS ABOUT TO SCORE I SHOULD PROBABLY STOP HIM.” It’s common sense at some point.

Positional play provides guidelines; they shouldn’t lock you into a track like a bubble hockey player.

On Saturday night the Blackhawks did away with the Los Angeles Kings, setting up a Stanley Cup Final match-up between the 2011 Cup-winning Bruins and Chicago, who won the big prize in 2010.

With information from the NHL’s morning press release, here’s a glance at the match-up “tale of the tape” style.

***

Average Height and Weight: Chicago: 6’1”, 203 lbs.; Boston: 6’1”, 202 lbs.

Average Age: Chicago: 28.2; Boston: 29.1

Birthplaces:
Chicago: Canada – 13, Sweden – 5, USA – 5, Slovakia – 2, Czech Republic – 2
Boston: Canada – 16, USA – 3, Czech Republic – 2, Sweden – 2, Finland – 1, Germany – 1, Kazakhstan – 1, Latvia – 1, Slovakia – 1

Team Rank, 2013 Stanley Cup Playoffs:

Goals Scored, Per-Game: Chicago – 6th (2.76), Boston – 2nd (3.12)
Goals-Against, Per-Game: Chicago – 3rd (1.94), Boston – 1st (1.88)
Five-On-Five Goal Ratio: Chicago – 2nd (1.44), Boston – 1st (1.77)
Power-Play Percentage: Chicago – 12th (13.7%), Boston – 10th (15.6%)
Penalty-Killing Percentage: Chicago – 1st (94.8%), Boston – 6th (86.5%)
Shots For, Per-Game: Chicago – 6th (32.5), Boston – 1st (36.4)
Shots Allowed, Per-Game: Chicago – 4th (28.0), Boston – 10th (32.9)
Face-Off Winning Percentage: Chicago – 14th (47.0%), Boston – 1st (56.0%)
Hits, Per-Game: Chicago – 16th (26.9), Boston – 6th (35.7)
Blocked Shots, Per-Game: Chicago – 16th (12.8), Boston – 7th (16.0)

How much do they look like their Cup-winning selves of yore:

Both teams have the same coach and captain, but different goalies from their wins.

The Bruins’ roster has undergone limited turnover in the two years since their 2011 title. Seventeen of the 21 players who suited up during the 2011 Stanley Cup Final vs. Vancouver are still with the club: Patrice Bergeron, Johnny Boychuk, Gregory Campbell, Zdeno Chara, Andrew Ference, Nathan Horton, Chris Kelly, David Krejci, Milan Lucic, Brad Marchand, Adam McQuaid, Daniel Paille, Rich Peverley,Tuukka Rask (dressed but did not play), Tyler Seguin, Dennis Seidenberg andShawn Thornton. The four players no longer with the club are Tomas Kaberle, Mark Recchi, Michael Ryder and Tim Thomas.

The Blackhawks’ roster has undergone greater change since their 2010 championship. Of the 21 players who appeared in the 2010 Stanley Cup Final vs. Philadelphia, eight are still with the club: Dave Bolland, Niklas Hjalmarsson, Marian Hossa, Duncan Keith, Patrick Kane, Brent Seabrook, Patrick Sharp and Jonathan Toews. No longer in Chicago: Nick Boynton, Troy Brouwer, Adam Burish, Dustin Byfuglien, Brian Campbell, Ben Eager, Jordan Hendry, Tomas Kopecky, Andrew Ladd, John Madden, Antti Niemi, Brent Sopel and Kris Versteeg.

How they got here:

Chicago was a one-seed who beat Minnesota, Detroit and Los Angeles, Boston a four-seed who beat Toronto, New York (Rangers), and Pittsburgh.

Both clubs survived a third-period deficit in an elimination game AND overtime of a Game 7 to reach the Stanley Cup Final. Boston did both in the same game (Game 7 vs. Toronto in the Eastern Conference Quarterfinals), while Chicago did so in consecutive games (Games 6 and 7 vs. Detroit in the Western Conference Semifinals).

Goaltender (2013 Playoff Statistics)

Corey Crawford (12-5 in 17 games; 1 shutout; 1.74 GAA; .935 SV%)
Tuukka Rask (12-4 in 16 games; 2 shutouts; 1.75 GAA; .943 SV%)

Top scorers:

Boston forward David Krejci leads all skaters with nine goals and 21 points in 16 playoff games. He also led all players with 12-11—23 in 25 games during the 2011 Stanley Cup Playoffs.

Chicago forward Patrick Sharp shares the team scoring lead with 14 points and is tied for second in the League with eight goals. He had six tallies in 28 regular-season games.

Overall

The two teams haven’t played in over 600 days, so there’s not a whole lot of history between them. The Blackhawks are after the organizations 5th Cup, while Boston is after their seventh.

More on the match-up later from an opinion stand-point. I figured we’d kick things off with stats before I start speculating.

Jaromir Jagr is one interesting dude.

(S/t Kukla’s Korner)

And lo, there will be a barrage. We’ll start our finals coverage tomorrow, so we used today to discuss:

* Some loose ends from the Conference Finals

* Dallas Eakins hiring in Edmonton

* PK Subban’s apparently Norris Trophy

* Dustin Byfuglien’s trade-ability

* Reader emails

* And more

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