Hockey / Dump the dump-and-chase

Dump the dump-and-chase

Date:  Source: Minnesota Made AAA

By Jack Blatherwick
Let’s Play Hockey Columnist

It started as a routine NHL play, one of those “safe” plays the TV commentators advocate with mindless reverberation. Team No-Name (I’ll protect the guilty here) “made a wise choice,” meaning they intentionally gave up the puck to Edmonton, their opponent, deep in the Oilers’ zone. 

They “took no unnecessary chances. Got it deep. Made the defense go all the way back.” You know the vocabulary; you hear it every game from TV talking heads and coaches who brag about their “systems.” (A parenthetical note is in order: Last time I looked, none of the commentators are Wayne Gretzky or Pavel Datsyuk, and you know what those two would say about “dump-and-chase hockey” if they were doing the color commentary).  

Anyway, the No-Name guys blindly followed the “system.” They got it deep – and oops – there was Connor McDavid in the corner near his goal line – no doubt chuckling to himself that Team No-Name chose to give him the puck. He sprinted straight up the ice along the wall at blinding speed, and without even a head fake, flew past the forecheckers, around the D (who were in perfect position for a brief second), cut in on goal, deked, scored and celebrated the gift from his opponents.

Did the TV guys call it a turnover? Good question: Is it a turnover, no matter how strategic it is? Watching it over and over on video that night, did the No-Name coaching staff find someone to blame? 

We will probably never know what they thought. No one questions their regressive, but popular strategy – giving up possession of the puck intentionally – of planning an offense around mistakes by their opponents. Never mind that it insults the talents of their own players, or that it removes the fun of hockey and demonstrates the insecurity of leadership – or that it might even be a good way to avoid losing.

That’s their business; their job is at stake, it is said. It has also been said that coaching out of fear means you have already lost.

But to impose this strategy on a youth hockey team simply because kids make lots of mistakes while they learn – quite simply it should be illegal. Teaching “no-turnover” hockey to win games at youth levels, removing the fun of creative plays, dwelling on negatives, and abandoning skills that can be learned only by trial-and-error turns hockey into an adults-first activity, not one that belongs to kids.

It may be a sound strategy if your goal is to be average in the NHL, but it fails completely the reasons to coach young athletes who are dreaming of making highlight spin-o-rama passes like McDavid’s a week ago – the one no TV commentator ever thought of. That play probably reminded Datsyuk and Gretzky of their youthful dreams – the ones that drove them to the outside pond to try crazy, fun plays – the gifts they brought to the hockey world.  

Are we adults removing the fun that motivates kids to act out their dreams on the pond?