The Athletic Hockey Show - Answering more hockey questions you may have been afraid to ask

Episode Date: August 11, 2022

The initial response for listeners' hockey questions was so massive, Ian and Sean had to give the topic a second episode. This week, they discuss swapping goalies for shootouts, how face-off locations are decided, what the bumper position in a power play is, if goalies can cross center ice and much more!Have a question/comment for the show? Email [e-mail] or leave a VM [phone]!Save on a subscription to The Athletic: theathletic.com/hockeyshow Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We're back. It's another August edition of the Athletic Hockey Show on a Thursday. It's Ian Bennett of Sean McIndoo with you. And you know what? We're going to keep the theme going. Last week, we talked all about some of the questions that you were afraid to ask and didn't know the answer to that you wanted some clarification on. And we ended up getting so many questions, we split it up into two weeks. And last week, we handled all your penalty-related questions, offsetting penalties and instigator penalties. and goalie interference and all that stuff. Well, guess what? We had a lot of stuff on the cutting room floor

that had nothing to do with penalties. So over the next 30, 40 minutes, whatever we have here on this edition of the podcast, we're going to get right to it with more questions. And again, Sean, you and I are really surprised that the wide range of questions we got here, that you, I mean, really, you threw this out there. You said it last week.

I probably bears repeating. Like the sheer number of questions here is a great reminder that every so often as hockey fans and media, we need to just take a pause and maybe just do some explaining because there's clearly a lot of questions to tackle. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And a lot of, you know, some of these questions are tough. They have complicated answers and you've got to dig into the rolebook. And others are very, very simple. But it's just they never get mentioned because we all just kind of, we all just kind of assume that every hockey fan is a diehard.

and has been doing it for years. And, you know, that's, that's not the case. There's casual fans. There's new fans. There's young fans. And as we learned, there's also fans who've been around for decades who have just had something in their back pocket going, you know what? I've never understood this. And they were, it was, it's, it's been very cool to, to read through all the questions as they come in.

Even as we're, you know, even as we're doing this, I'm still getting more questions popping into my inbox. It's, there's clearly an appetite out there for it. All right. So like I said, last week we did some penalty theme questions. This week we're going to go with some other ones. Let's start with this one from Brandon, who writes in and says, hey, at the end of overtime, so after 65 minutes of gameplay, can a team swap out their goalie for the shootout?

Maybe you've got a goalie who's really good at shootouts on standby, kind of like a closer in baseball. That's from Brandon. Yep. The answer is yes, you can. that is legal. Has a team ever done it? Yeah, a couple of times.

Early on in the shootouts, teams did do that. And here's the problem. It didn't work. Or at least, to say it didn't work, they didn't win. And so that was kind of the end of it. I remember Ron Wilson doing it once with the Leafs. He put in, I don't remember who the starting goaltender was. It may have been Toskola, but it was Curtis Joseph.

He basically sent Curtis Joseph in. And it didn't work. The Leafs lost. And I think there were a couple other teams that did it. And same result, you know, didn't seem like an effective tactic. And so the NHL being a copycat league, nobody copied it. And it is one of those things. The reason that you wouldn't do it, first of all, even if you did have a goaltender who was significantly better at shootouts, they're going in cold.

So it is, you know, how much benefit are you really getting? And it's, the coach is putting his neck. out there. This is, you know, if I'm an NHL coach, if my team loses a shootout, hey, we got the point, fine, whatever. If anyone's going to blame, they're going to blame the goalie. They're going to blame the shooters. They're not going to blame me unless I do something crazy

like swap goalie. So it is legal. It could be done. There's nothing stopping them. But you just don't see it. One other thing related to this, that is interesting, what you cannot do is you can't do this for a penalty shot during a game. If you swap goalies for a penalty shot, the goal you swap has to stay in the game for

at least the next ship. So there actually is something in the rulebook to dissuade teams from doing this. You can't swap a guy in just for a penalty shot and then put the other guy back in the net. But you can do it for the shootout. You know, I remember it happening the very first year of the post-lockout era. It was the Ebbinton Oilers. And Craig McTavish was the coach. In fact, I looked it up earlier today when I knew this question. we were going to tackle it. Okay. So the 0506 season in a game, I think, yeah, I was against the Dallas stars.

Edmonton Dallas. And Ty Conklin was the starting goalie for Edmonton in regulation time, gave up three goals. And then when the shootout came in, McTavish tapped rookie netminder Mike Morrison. And Morrison was kind of good in the shootouts up into that point. But the Oilers, like you said, it didn't work. Morrison gave up a couple of goals. and the Oilers lost. What's funny is, first of all,

one of the goal scores against Mike Morrison was UC Yokinen, who was like the guy on shootouts in that first year. Remember he was like Mr. Shootout? But I got the quotes here from from Ty Conklin and Craig McTavish after the game. Because it's rare, right?

Like a goalie gets replaced for the shootout. Ty Conklin was asked about it. He's after the game. Conklin, who was replaced, said, quote, I don't make the decisions, but I would have made a different one. Okay.

So that's Ty Conklin. McTavish said there are a lot of teams looking for one more save every night and we're one of those teams. That was his answer. Yep. That was his answer. Yeah. So.

Yeah. There's your answer. There you go. There's another reason not to do it. Yeah. And I'm sure, you know, it's tough on the goalie going in too because you're, you take a loss in a game that you don't play any minutes in. That's, that's a tough one.

To literally take an L in a game where you get 0.00 minutes of ice time, that can't be fun either. You know what? I just realized, and I'm going to look this up kind of in real time as we're doing this. Okay. So that happened during the 0506 regular season, right? Yep. I'm trying to figure this out here. When did the Oilers trade for Duane Rawlinson that year?

That was at the deadline in 2006. Okay. Well, this incident happened in March of 2006. Like, is this the thing that caused a rift between Ty Conklin and Craig McTavish that forced the Oilers to go out and get the Wayne Rollison, who then took them to the Stanley Cup? It could have been, yeah. I mean, that Oilers team was a real good team that had really bad goaltending. But yeah, and I love, Ty Conklin is the Forrest Gump of the NHL. Like, this dude shows out every outdoor game, every weird. record, like there's always a Thai Conklin connection. So it's, of course, of course it had to be him that would be involved in that.

Yeah, because he was in like, how many outdoor games? He was in the first three. Yeah, he was in at least three. Yeah, he was always, he always seemed to be showing up on those. Yeah. And of course, for some reason here, I can't, on hockey reference, I can't pull up the date that Duane Roller someone was traded to the Oilers because there's a bad gateway coming back.

Yeah. Yeah, which by the way, that's not good. Okay. What do you got? How about this? Okay. Okay. We got something here.

This happened, according to newspaper reports, this, the Oilers putting in Mike Morrison in goal, okay? Happened on March the 7th. Okay, March the 7th, Ty Conklin is replaced for the shootout. Okay? March the 8th, the Wayne Rollsson traded 10th. Wow. Okay. something here? Did something happen here? That, you know what? This is, I might need to hear for some

Euler fans on that. Yeah, that is a spicy quote. That is a weird thing for a coach to do. That is a, a spicy, a couple of spicy quotes. I mean, I don't think, it's not like the Euler's goaltending was great. And then this happened and, you know, they, I, I don't doubt for a second that they we're looking for a goaltender quite a bit. But that's, I mean, that certainly, you know, I'll go ahead and say that that maybe is what pushed it over the edge. In fact, let's drop the, that's why it happened. That's why the Dwight, Duane.

There we go. All right. Another question comes in here from Scott B. Scott wants to know, why does the NHL allow hand passes in the defensive zone and not anywhere else on the ice? That's from Scott. So again, if you are in the defensive zone and you're, you know, you're a defenseman or a forward and you use your glove on the ice to kind of pass the puck ahead to a teammate, that's cool. You do that in the neutral zone or the offensive zone and they blow the plate down.

Which I'm sure is, again, confusing to new fans. Why is it sometimes a penalty and sometimes not? I don't really have a great answer for you other than the reason that we don't allow handpass is the NHO really doesn't want anything creating offense. that isn't the puck on the stick. You know, we don't let goals be kicked in. We don't let goals be headbutted in, you know, or knocked in with hands. They, you know, it might potentially look a little bit silly if we saw, you know, guys scooping pucks and, you know, throwing them or anything like that.

But in a defensive-minded league, I guess we had to carve out an exception for in the defensive zone that it was still okay, unless it happens on a face-off, which is a whole other thing. You can't play the puck with your hand there. But yeah, I'm, I'm, this is one of those where if you were rewriting the rulebook from scratch, I don't know that you would treat it differently.

You would just pick one. Either we allow them or we don't, and that's the rule. I think would be a much better way to do it. Yeah, like it is. It's so arbitrary. Like imagine the same thing would be like for, like, oh, you could kick the puck with your skate in one zone,

but not the other. Like that would make, it almost makes no sense, really, when you think about it. Yeah. No, it's, it's a weird one. And, you know, again, I'm sure it was the thinking was,

well, you know, certainly in your own zone, you're not doing something to create offense. But that's, what an NHL distinction, right? Like, as long as you're not, as long as you're doing it to stifle offense and not create it, then we'll allow it. But if you're doing it to create offense, then we have to call it off.

You know, you mentioned the kind of caveat involving faceoffs. And we got a question here about, faceoffs. And this comes in from an anonymous listener who wants to know, I never know why faceoffs are where they are. I get that they start each period at Center Ice. After that, it's a complete mystery to me.

I'd love a summary of the basics, especially when they decide to pick one side of the goalie versus the other. That's from anonymous. And yeah, listen, you probably get, you know, north of 8, 10, 12 faceoffs per period. You know, so it's certainly something that happens on a very regular basis. So how do we explain to this listener, the quick synopsis of how they place faceoffs on the ice? Yeah. So this is another one where there's a whole long section in the rulebook outlining this.

But essentially, yeah, start a period is center ice always. If it's an offside, it goes to the line outside of that zone, as long as it's an unintentional offside. and icing results in the puck coming all the way back into the defensive zone of the team that iced it, as well as penalties now, minor penalties of result of power play, give you a face-off that the power play will start in the offensive zone, unless the power play coincides with the start of a period, in which case you still get the face off at center ice, which I know some people find confusing or feels like it's wrong.

But that is how it's done. Other than that, other stoppages, it basically comes down to they place the face off to the closest place where the stoppage happens. So if, you know, if a puck is frozen along the boards, if, you know, the puck is frozen by a goaltender, then obviously it's the closest faceoff dot is going to be in the defensive zone. And that's where the face off will go. Now, as far as what side, that is based on what side of the ice the stoppage happened on. but obviously you can get into some weird judgment calls when you're dealing with, you know, a goaltenders in the middle of, of the ice.

But yeah, it's, it is based on the closest faceoff dot to where the stoppage happened, which, by the way, is different than it, how it used to be, because it used to be that in, you could have face-offs anywhere on the ice, kind of, if you, if you, if you, if you, almost drew a rectangle with the face off, the defensive zone faceoff circles. A faceoff could be anywhere in there. So if a player, for example, shot the puck out of the ice,

you know, in the neutral zone, they would actually go to the spot where he was and drop the puck right there. And I mentioned that only because it's, it's very confusing sometimes when a new fan is like looking at an old clip or something. And they're like, why is the face off like, you know,

halfway to in between those two circles? It used to be that way. but now it has to be at one of the face-off circles. There's no scenarios where you can have a face-off anywhere other than those, what, one, two, three, nine spots. You know what? A fun column would be you take a new hockey fan and then you sit down and you watch like the 1989 Adams Division semifinal with them.

And you're like, you have to spot for me, you know, find the 10 weird things in this game. Yeah. Or whatever. You know what I miss? You know what I miss so much? And I was thinking about this. you see in the old games.

When the glass was lower, remember in the linesmen used to jump up and grab the glass? Yeah. All the time, right. That was such a, that was a boss move, man. That was excellent.

Those guys would just like, you know, hoist themselves up. You don't, you don't get that. I guess they don't, they don't have the, the vertical leap anymore to get to the higher glass.

But that used to be, I think we should put little handles along the ice, like a little ridge or something. And just so that they can, they can still get up and do that. that because that was that was an a plus move big time yeah exactly you never you never see that anymore all right more questions here uh anonymous uh writes into the show can you please explain the difference between forechecking and back checking that's from anonymous and again we prefaced

this i think last week in the show we'll do it again one more time here i know that for some of our audience some of these questions might be easy answers but what we want to do is make sure that if we have new fans of hockey or people who don't quite understand, we don't want to mock you. We don't want to be like, oh, my gosh, I can't believe this person doesn't understand the difference between for checking and back checking. There's a lot of nuances to the game, a lot of things that are kind of sometimes just overlooked because you just assume that

everybody knows them. And this is a great question. So we're going to explain the difference between for checking and back checking here. Yeah. And I feel like everyone's got a punchline ready to go about some player on their favorite team. Or, you know, this is this is Phil Kessel writing in because he's the, try to figure out what these terms actually mean. Yeah, what are we, what are we doing here?

Yeah, forechecking and back checking. So the forecheck is basically checking in the offensive zone. And here when we're talking about checking, we're talking about like checking the puck. This isn't body checking necessarily. This is going after the puck carrier going after the puck. And the forecheck is the situation where the defensive team in their own defensive zone will have the puck potentially because you've just dumped it in, given it to them, and then you're going, you're going after them. And it's, you know, as the name implies, it's sort of a, you know, a forward-moving thing.

It's, it's aggressive and it's something that is done basically by the forwards in the offensive zone. That's forechecking. Back-checking is not quite the opposite, you know, because when you explain fore-checking, you would think, okay, so back-checking must mean when the other team has the puck in my defensive zone and I'm, it is that, but also it tends to refer to anything where you are coming back with the play and, and really chasing it down. So again, typically forwards,

we're talking about here because a defenseman is going to, usually not be in a situation where he's retreating like that. And you're going, you're trying to catch the attacking team as they are either in your offensive zone or moving towards it. and you're you're you're you're hustling and getting your butt back there to to try to break up a play um and uh yeah that's uh that's back checking and uh it's something that uh some players do and some players are are not as big a fan of yeah it's fine i always think of the there's a t-shirt or saying right for check back check paycheck right that's exactly yeah but i i laugh because in

canada the way we spell check like with paycheck it's c h que queue that's right that's right The phrase doesn't work in Canada. It doesn't work. Paycheck. Because paycheck, we spell it all weird. Yeah. It is. That is a problem.

We spell a lot of words wrong in this country. Yeah. Of all the words that we spelled differently than our American counterparts, like paycheck, like check is the one that bothers me the most for whatever reason. Because it's, you know, we're already using that word for hockey. So we had to come up with a different way to, you know, the far less important, version of the word. We got the secondary weird spelling.

Michael writes into the show. And you know what? This is a phrase that I feel like he's only come up in the last five to 10 years. But Michael wants to know, can you explain the role of bumper position on the power play? That's from Michael. And look, I don't think 10 or 15 years ago, we talked about the bumper position, did we? Not really because it's related to the evolution of power plays. and the one-three-one setup with a power play.

So the bumper on a power play is basically the guy in the middle of the ice when a team is using a one-three-one. And one-three-one means one player back along the blue line. Usually that's your defenseman. And then one player who's in deep, usually either in front of the net or just off to the side of it. And then sort of three players lined up along the front. front a little bit further out, one on each wing, and then you have the guy in the middle, and that's the bumper.

And that power play format has really only kind of become prominent in the last few years, which is why you may have never heard the term before. And the thinking with the one three one is it sort of by having that guy in the middle, it gives more space to the wingers, gives them more ability to be creative. of it doesn't, it's to some extent foils the classic penalty kill box formation and makes it tougher for for guys to go out and and play those wingers because you're opening up the guy and the bumper. And it also gives you the opportunity to do that that play where it's sort of the shot pass where you send a shot in, but the shot is directed towards the bumper. And then he he tips it. And it's a very difficult play if it's done well for a goaltender to stop.

But yeah, that is the bumper. The middle guy sort of in the plus sign of a one three one. That is the bumper. You know, one of the, the other evolution I've really noticed in power plays and not only, again, using the term the bumper position, is that, you know, back in the day, it was rare that you would find four forwards and one D on a power play, right? Like, it was often two defensemen, three forwards, wasn't it? Yeah, two defensemen and they, and the defensemen stayed at the point. And they bombed shots from the point. And you were, you know, either trying to score or, you know, to set up screens and deflections and all of that.

But yeah, you had your three best forwards out there, but it was two guys who could both shoot the puck hard going back, you know, passing the puck back and forth. And, you know, honestly, part of that was back in the day when goalies were smaller. You could actually score from the point. Like, that was a viable way to do it. Whereas these days, you're almost never. an NHL quality goalie clean on a point shot. But some teams still try. I know that's something that that gets sometimes gets people tearing their hair out

is there are certain teams that they still do run that old school power play where they're trying to bomb from the point and it usually does not work well. You know, one thing I missed too, like in the, from the way back in the 80s, when there was a lot in 90s, even early 90s, when there were kind of stand up goalies. Like you rarely see a goalie get beaten along. the ice now, right? Like, it's very rare. But back then, like, it was commonplace. Guy would just shoot the puck along the ice and score. Yeah, and the goalie was like, what do I do? I got, you know, I can't, I can't move my skate side to side. This is crazy. Yeah. No, I, I, look, man,

I, goaltending today is so much better, so much better. Goaltending back then was so much more entertaining. I mean, it, it just was more fun to watch these guys flailing their limbs around and, you know, not just, you know, getting hit in the chest because they had perfect positioning all the time. It was so much more fun. But yeah, some of those guys were, some of those guys were absolutely terrible. I mean, Wayne Gretzky was, you know, maybe the most creative, gifted offensive players ever lived. But he also has some goals where, I mean, he, you know, he just skated over the blue, the defenseman would just back right up, go, yeah, don't worry about it. It's only Wayne Gretzky.

No reason to have any gap control, no reason to get up on him. Take a slap shot right along the ice and just beat some goalie who would end up. like doing this little dance to try to keep his balance. And I mean, you'd watch the replay and you see Wayne wind up. And then you look at the net and it's like this, he's got 90% of the net available to him. And you compare that to what Alexander Ovechkin's shooting it now. It's crazy that anybody scores anything these days.

Yeah, my favorite example of that is Gila Fleur from the Montreal Canadiens scores this memorable goal late in the third period of a game seven against Boston. to tie it and comes down the ice and scores this iconic goal and the Bruins goal. I think it was Jil Jolbert at the time. Like if you watch the replay, like Lefleashat just goes along the ice, it beats him. But Jules Jolbert, you will swear that there's like a sniper in the stand that took out the Bruins goal. You're like, why did he react this way with a puck along the ice? It was a big.

It was a dramatic goal. I mean, that cost him the Stanley Cup. So he did sell it a little bit. But yeah, that's, boy, it's, I've said it before and I've certainly not the only one who's made the observation. If you put Austin Matthews or Alexander Rovetch getting in the 70s or 80s NHL, they would score 100 goals a year. Easily, easily. I mean, they, until somebody clubbed them over the head with the stick or, you know, did whatever to take them out of the game. I mean, they would absolutely, those goaltenders would think these guys were aliens from another planet.

It would just be ridiculous. Speaking of goalies here, we got a question that has come in. Hey, how come a goalie can't cross center ice? Yeah. So that's not quite the rule. The rule is a goalie can't control the puck across center ice. A goalie can actually cross center ice. And in fact, you see it on delayed penalties when they have to, in the second period where they've got the long change, the goalie has to cross the ice.

But he can't play the puck. Why is that a rule? I have no idea. That's definitely like a rule from the early days of hockey where, you know, some, we got to like make sure the goalies stay on their half. I'm absolutely in favor yanking that one out of the rulebook. If your goaltender wants to play the puck, hey, go ahead and do it. I've only ever seen it called once in my life. It was Patrick Waugh, of course.

Yeah. Did he deek Wayne Gretzky? He deeked out Wayne Gretzky. Yeah, partly because Gretzky was like, what does he even do it? But, like, he was leaving to go to the bench for. on a delayed penalty and the puck came to him. So he just took it. And he just kind of led the rush and he did this little spitterama on a very confused Wayne Gretzky

and got a penalty for it. And it's very funny because I think it's John Davidson is the color guy. It was against the Rangers, right? It was against the Rangers. Yeah, it's John Davidson. Of course, he was a former goalie. He's just, he knows exactly what he says, what do you doing, Patrick? He says that a couple of times because he knows it's a penalty.

But, you know, it's a very unnecessary rule I would get rid of it. Here's one other funny thing about that rule, though. You see from time to time where there's a line brawl in one team's zone and the goalie, you know, is a little bit involved or he's thinking of getting involved or, you know, whatever it is. And sometimes you will see the other goalie doesn't come all the way down to fight, but he will go right to the center line. and he'll stop right there. And you know, you get the big dramatic shot of him, like the goalie there waiting at Center Ice, you know, basically saying, you know, if I have to go, I'll go, but I'm not. There is nothing in the rulebook that says they have to stop at Center Ice when it comes to being in a fight. And in fact, the rule is you can't leave your crease.

Leaving your crease for an altercation is two minutes. There's nothing about Center Rice. I'm convinced that goalies in their minds somehow have conflated. at these two rules, the can't go across center ice with the puck during play and the can't leave your crease and have decided that there's a rule that says you can't cross center ice, there is no rule. And yet you get these like great awesome dramatic shots of like a Mike Smith or somebody ominously like, you know, and I would love someday to just ask them that question.

Like, why do you stop at center ice? Do you think there's a rule? Because there's nothing in the rule book that says you actually have to stop there. Oh, man. It's like one of those invisible pet fences that the goalies just. Yeah, exactly. Like they're going to get shocked if they don't. Don't, you know, like if they, or, you know, like when you tell your kids, like, don't cross that.

Like, okay, look, I'm drawing a line in the back seat and, you know, you don't cross that line. Walk the pinky across and, you know, see if you get told on. Yeah, there's, there's nothing in the rulebook that says you guys can't, you guys can go to the blue line. You can go wherever you want. You don't have to stop right at that line. We got a couple of other questions to get to here. And again, we're just taking all sorts of questions, wide range of questions from listeners, our audience, who just want to know answers to questions that some people.

might think are simple. Other people think, I don't know where this came from. And this is an interesting one here. Hey, can you please explain the difference to me between a two-way and a one-way contract? Mm-hmm. So a two-way contract is basically a contract that pays a different amount based on whether the player is in the NHL or in the minors. Whereas a one-way contract is guaranteed basically you get an NHL salary even if you're in the minor leagues. You know, minor leaguers typically make the guys in the HL make less money.

Those guys who are sort of in between, it's a situation where it's very often, you know, it'll be either league minimum or something like that. But when you hear about a two-way contract, that's a guy who's a tweener who might go back and forth between the NHL and the HL. He's making an NHL salary in the NHL

and at a lower salary in the HL versus a player who has a one-way contract. It's basically a little bit more security for a player. If you're one of those tweener players, it gives you more security because you know you're making an NHL salary

the whole time. Now, that haven't been said. There is nothing about a one-way contract that prevents you from being sent down to the minors. And there is nothing at all when it comes to one-way and two-way contracts. That has nothing to do with waivers. And that's a very common misconception.

And the reason it's a misconception is because in the old EA video games, the NHL series, for a little while, that was how they handled players being waiver exempt. It was if you had a two-way contract, you could get sent down. If it was one way, you had to go on waivers. That's how the video game handled it. So there's this whole generation of fans that think that one-way contracts have to do with waivers, they don't. There's absolutely nothing connecting one-and-two-way contracts. to the waiver process. That is something from a video game

that a lot of people have incorrectly assumed was based on real life. It wasn't. We got a Twitter question here from AW in, it looks like Virginia. Why are there so many left-handed shots in the NHL? I understand that most of these players are in fact right-handed,

but they learn to play hockey left-handed. Why is that? That's from AW. Yeah. This is a great question. And it's an interesting. because there's actually not only

are there significantly more left-handed shots than you would think in the league based on the percentage of people that are left-hand or right-handed, there actually seems to be a division here based on country, in that

there are a lot more right-handed American players and left-handed Canadian players. And there is a theory about why this is. and essentially the way it works is if you imagine yourself holding a hockey stick well which of the which of the hands is actually doing the most work which of the hands actually has the hardest job it's actually the high hand the the the hand up there that's you know that that that hand has the harder job of the two of them it's it's sort of controlling

it's you know kind of controlling um more of the stick than the lower hand is. So if you are right-handed, you actually should be a lefty shot in theory. Now, it's not a big difference. It's certainly not anywhere near as big a difference as, you know, handwriting or something where you can't overcome it. You can't learn to go the other way. But that's, you know, that's rare compared to golf or baseball where it typically lines up with, you know, if you're right-handed, it's the top hand does more work, so therefore you shoot right or you swing right. In hockey, it actually goes the other way. So that's why in theory you see more left-handed players because they're not actually left-day. They're right-handed,

which means they're at their right-hand on top of the stick, which means they shoot left, even though they're right-handed. Now, where you get into the distinction with country is, and this is a theory, but it makes sense to me. The theory is that in Canada, we pick up a stick as our first thing. That's, you know, not to be cliched or stereotypical, but, you know, as soon as you can walk, you got a pair of skates on and somebody hands you a hockey stick. So if you're going to naturally just pick up a stick, you're going to pick it up with your right hand, use the right hand on the top, and you're going to end up shooting left.

Whereas if you pick up hockey later in life, by that point, you probably already swung a baseball bat, you probably already swung a golf club, and you just assume you're supposed to do it the same way. So you end up shooting right because you tell the person, yeah, I'm right-handed, I'm a righty, I guess I'll shoot right. You know, your mom or dad buys you a stick. They don't know which way you shoot. They assume you're going to shoot the same way that you swing a bat or whatever else. So the theory at least is, you know, if you start early, which Canadians typically do, you're going to be what is basically the opposite. You're going to be, if you're right-hand, you shoot left,

your left-hand you shoot right, versus if you're someone who comes to hockey later in life, which very often are the American players, you're going to stick with the same way that you would swing a baseball bat, even though that isn't actually the way that you should do it if you were thinking through logically of which hand should be doing one. You know what? Just along those lines, Joe has a question for us about,

left and right shot defensemen. In fact, if you know anything about hockey, you know teams are dying to get right shot defensemen for the very reasons you laid out. Oftentimes, premier defensemen or more defensemen shoot left and they shoot right. Joe wants to know, why don't teams interchangeably use left and right hand defensemen? Why are they so, I guess, you know, stuck on the idea that a left shot has to put on the left side, right, has to play on the right. Joe wants to know is that mostly because you don't want players on their wrong side when pucks are rimmed in along the boards? It's part of that.

It's actually more to do with receiving a pass. If you picture being a right-handed defenseman, let's say on the right side of the ice, you're sort of in the right position to accept a pass coming across from the other zone, which could be either going back and forth with the defensive partner, some of the breakouts,

some of the sort of safety outlet plays the team's all have in their own zone. If somebody is on their off side, which is to say a right-hander on the left side, they either have to take the pass on their backhand or sort of have their stick behind them. It's a little bit tougher. Not impossible to do, certainly,

especially given the skill level of these guys, but that does tend to be why there is this preference. And that is also, by the way, why you will sometimes see defensemen flip and play on the other side when they're on the power play. Because then you want to be on your offside because that's when you're set up for the one-timer. So especially if it's a team that does that old point-to-point power play still and you're going back and forth, you'd see the two defensemen have actually flipped.

And now they're playing on their offside because that is how you get geared up for that for that slap shot. but because offense is not a big part of most defensemen's game, it's more about receiving the pass and then, and being able to then, you know, to quickly deliver a pass as well up ahead than it is about being in the right position for that big shot. And by the way, this lefty, righty defenseman thing, did you ever hear this as a kid?

No. Do you have any idea? Like, you never knew how many, who shot one? Chris Chelyos, if he was a left or right shot defense. When I was a kid, I mean, like now, you know, Oh, even now, like, I have to picture. I got to like, you know, okay, I'm trying to picture Ray Bore. Okay, I can picture him scoring that goal.

All right. Now, I had no idea. It's, I still blame Mike Babcock for this. Like, he was such, he, he was so adamant with the Canadian Olympic team. That was the first time I remember this being a thing where you're like, why are they taking these weird defensemen? And then somebody was like, well, they got to have a balance right and left. And you're like, oh, do they? Is that a thing?

And it's been a thing ever since. But I, I never, until the, the, it became like a thing for picking the, Canadian Olympic team. I had no memory of that being something we talked about up until a few years ago. Yeah, you know, I've had some conversation with DJ Smith. He's the, of course, Otto Senator's head coach, about, you know, why don't you sometimes put a left-hand shot on the right side or vice versa? And his thing, and DJ played as a defenseman when he made it to the NHL. And so I feel like he understands the position better than people like me and you. And his whole thing is, if you put a right-shot defenseman on the left side, not only do they have

a hard time, you know, keeping the puck in the offensive zone, right? Like, because you got to, you know, hold it on your back end. His bigger issue, he thinks is in the defensive zone where he says, you know, when you're trying to break out the puck, he's like, so just picture yourself, you're trying to break out the puck. And if you need to get it out off the glass and you're a right shot defensiveman on the left side, he's like, how are you going to do that? He's like, you could do it with your backhand.

But it's really not the preferred way to do it, right? Like you want to have your body kind of in between the defender, so you have a little bit of protection. You're going out on your strong. He says going out on your strong side is the way to do it. He's adamant that defensively, that's where the problem is. I love the idea that an NHL coach is just really concerned about putting his players at the best position to succeed in shipping the puck off the glass and out of the zone. That's just like that's what keeps him up at night is how can I make it easier for them to execute this boring safe play?

Yeah, that's that's the state of state of the game. One last one here to wrap this up. Like I said, we had so many questions here the last couple of weeks, we didn't even get to all of them. Kelly has written into the show. When players on the offensive team are in the zone and the puck comes out, a player can shoot it back in and the play isn't called offside unless one of those attacking players in the zone touches the puck.

So here's my question. If the player who shoots the puck back into the zone from the neutral zone happens to score on goal, what happens then? none of his teammates have touched the puck. There's no reason to blow it dead. Would that goal count or is that still offside? That's from Kelly. Yep.

And again, I love, I love questions like this, the sort of like weird little, okay, what happens if this and then that? Unfortunately, I do have to break the news to Kelly and other fans are maybe wondering this, that that goal would not count. I know. It would be great if it did. Man, that would be, imagine that if you could just like try to catch the other team off guard. on an offside like that. But no, it's essentially the, it is an offside at that point.

It's specifically in the rulebook that if that scenario were to happen, the puck goes into the net, that immediately negates the goal and it is treated as if the other team had touched the puck. There you go. We'll leave it there. And like we said, this is something maybe we can sprinkle in, you know, here in September, when September rolls around, wherever, you know, these are great questions.

And clearly, we may. maybe got to 50, 60% of them. There was so many we didn't get to. We got a ton. And again, that was the mailbag that I sent you. I haven't even got all the questions into that list. So thank you very much to everyone who sent questions in. That was, it was an overwhelming response and a great one.

Yeah. And listen, we got a couple of episodes worth of material. Thanks to you, the listeners. and this is what happens in the month of August. This is a perfect time for this. All right, we want to thank everybody for listening. Thank you for all your feedback. And again, if you got more questions for us

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