defensively many times by doing anything but hit.
Defensive play often worked. It made us lose by two goals instead of four. At a certain point it broke apart anyway. And it broke apart because no matter what kind of team we sent to Europe our gut instinct told us that this was not us. No matter what the philosophy behind the bench was. Yet for years we tried this.
And we tried this defensive system for more than just hockey
on
the ice. We tried this system for public relations in Europe and at home. We tried this so the newspapers would be nice to us.
“They played a nice — clean game, with good backchecking, and lost 4–2 — the one thing I can say is that they acquitted themselves like gentlemen. But don’t the Russians just dazzle —”
The idea was that we couldn’t beat them but we could stop them from beating us. Too badly. This was the philosophy, and it got us some bronze medals in international play. And made me sick at heart.
For everyone was on pins and needles all through the late seventies and eighties when this philosophy was at its high water mark. We were on pins and needles because we were told — as we had been told for years and years and years — to stay out of the penalty box.
With a defensive system, we might clear the puck a half a dozen times, but sooner or later we’re going to get caught in our own end. Sooner or later my friend we are going to take a penalty for holding or tripping the man. And then what else are we going to take, when trying, shorthanded, to clear the man screening the goalie in front of our net? A crosschecking penalty. So we are two men in the box for 3:22.
If you have relied on defence and you have two men in the penalty box and you have the Russian sharpshooters buzzing about — that’s the game right there. Because the one thing we did when we relied on defence is for some peculiar reason not rely
on offence
. Even on a breakaway we would seem to be unsure of ourselves.
Team Canada, of ’72 fame, two men short was still dangerous because they never had the man behind the bench telling them not to be. And they knew, like the Trail Smoke Eaters, that the last thing fair, in Europe, or in Russia would be a penalty call.
I am not meaning to slight these National teams of the recent past. They worked their guts out playing against great Soviet teams. Only such a system caused them their second-guessing. I know they tried their damndest. But they were notonly fighting the great Russians or Finns, they were fighting their natural instincts, to take the other team to task — take the body hard and push the puck forward.
And sooner or later their natural instincts would bubble over and they would upend someone, or deek with perfect balance, and find themselves in the box. The game was lost anyway. If you are so terrified of penalties, that you mention it to everyone who ever wrote a line for a paper, you are almost bound to get more of them than you deserve.
As long as we play at our best, we are going to get penalties. This will be as true in 1998, as it was in 1958. There are always horror stories about refereeing from players who played in Europe. The first eleven penalties called would go to Canada.
This idea that you can make hay by blasting Canada, has been around for years. No team ever complained about Canadian backchecking on sensitive virtue alone. Virtue has nothing to do with it.
And it was always there. It followed the Penticton Vees and the Trail Smoke Eaters — just small town Canadian boys going over to play for the world, when all of Canada, like the old Colonel by his radio, knew what was really at stake.
Part Three
EIGHT
I WOULD LIKE TO MENTION THIS: I heard a song once by an old black man, from the south. And I said to myself: that does sound familiar — those guitar riffs, that old refrain; ah, yes — I remembered it was sung by a white rockabilly boy that winter of 1961
It was not made famous by this old blues man — this sad
Defensive play often worked. It made us lose by two goals instead of four. At a certain point it broke apart anyway. And it broke apart because no matter what kind of team we sent to Europe our gut instinct told us that this was not us. No matter what the philosophy behind the bench was. Yet for years we tried this.
And we tried this defensive system for more than just hockey
on
the ice. We tried this system for public relations in Europe and at home. We tried this so the newspapers would be nice to us.
“They played a nice — clean game, with good backchecking, and lost 4–2 — the one thing I can say is that they acquitted themselves like gentlemen. But don’t the Russians just dazzle —”
The idea was that we couldn’t beat them but we could stop them from beating us. Too badly. This was the philosophy, and it got us some bronze medals in international play. And made me sick at heart.
For everyone was on pins and needles all through the late seventies and eighties when this philosophy was at its high water mark. We were on pins and needles because we were told — as we had been told for years and years and years — to stay out of the penalty box.
With a defensive system, we might clear the puck a half a dozen times, but sooner or later we’re going to get caught in our own end. Sooner or later my friend we are going to take a penalty for holding or tripping the man. And then what else are we going to take, when trying, shorthanded, to clear the man screening the goalie in front of our net? A crosschecking penalty. So we are two men in the box for 3:22.
If you have relied on defence and you have two men in the penalty box and you have the Russian sharpshooters buzzing about — that’s the game right there. Because the one thing we did when we relied on defence is for some peculiar reason not rely
on offence
. Even on a breakaway we would seem to be unsure of ourselves.
Team Canada, of ’72 fame, two men short was still dangerous because they never had the man behind the bench telling them not to be. And they knew, like the Trail Smoke Eaters, that the last thing fair, in Europe, or in Russia would be a penalty call.
I am not meaning to slight these National teams of the recent past. They worked their guts out playing against great Soviet teams. Only such a system caused them their second-guessing. I know they tried their damndest. But they were notonly fighting the great Russians or Finns, they were fighting their natural instincts, to take the other team to task — take the body hard and push the puck forward.
And sooner or later their natural instincts would bubble over and they would upend someone, or deek with perfect balance, and find themselves in the box. The game was lost anyway. If you are so terrified of penalties, that you mention it to everyone who ever wrote a line for a paper, you are almost bound to get more of them than you deserve.
As long as we play at our best, we are going to get penalties. This will be as true in 1998, as it was in 1958. There are always horror stories about refereeing from players who played in Europe. The first eleven penalties called would go to Canada.
This idea that you can make hay by blasting Canada, has been around for years. No team ever complained about Canadian backchecking on sensitive virtue alone. Virtue has nothing to do with it.
And it was always there. It followed the Penticton Vees and the Trail Smoke Eaters — just small town Canadian boys going over to play for the world, when all of Canada, like the old Colonel by his radio, knew what was really at stake.
Part Three
EIGHT
I WOULD LIKE TO MENTION THIS: I heard a song once by an old black man, from the south. And I said to myself: that does sound familiar — those guitar riffs, that old refrain; ah, yes — I remembered it was sung by a white rockabilly boy that winter of 1961
It was not made famous by this old blues man — this sad
Similar Books
