I’ve been meaning for awhile to write a bit about the Minnesota Wild, and how nice it is to have the NHL back this season. Well, not nice exactly. Just another demand on my time, actually, but at least there is TiVo. I wrote last year that there were no truly great hockey writers on the continent or in the language–at least not since Ken Dryden–and I wanted to take a stab at a new sort of hockey writing that honored the flow of the game, the rich metaphors, the blah de blah blah. I’m not gonna be that guy, but just as an exercise, I thought maybe I’d type something up now and again.
There really can be no good hockey writing without good play-by-play recall; and beyond describing assists, goals, saves, and penalty shots, good play-by-play is very difficult to write, because hockey is a game of intense serendipity. Writing about the general direction of a period, much less a game, is an exercise in extreme editing and summarizing.
In hockey, as in basketball, there are basic “plays” for breaking out, configurations for two-on-ones and so on, channels and lanes, and general philosophies. But in hockey, what results when these plans clash with the plans of your rival, mixed with funny bounces, breakdowns in communication, referees of varying degrees of watchfulness, unforeseen matchups, unintended rebounds, slop around the goals–well, the complexity of any given situation is boggling. In Basketball, each rush results in either a basket or not. Hockey is so much more complicated than that.
I missed last nights win against the Islan ders, which seems a shame, because I have lately been operating in a cloud of suspicion that the Wild are losing because I am watching, and this is confirmation. But I did see Saturday’s (Firday’s?) heartbreaking loss to the Flyers– heartbreaking, of course, because of their winning goal in the final minute of the game, but heartbreaking too because the Wild had dominated play for most of the game, anbd they’d done it in a very interesting way that, to me, represents the future of the game.
I’m talking about forechecking, the positive/aggressive half of dump-and-chase, which is the much derided style and philosophy of Jaques Lemaire. In enemy territory, this style of play seeks out the corners rather than the open ice. When the puck is behind the goal line, in particular, you see Wild players collopase on the puck and on the net; you see a lot of scrappy hitting and scrumming, short quick passes, one-timers at the net, jabbing rebounds. It’s not the prettiest form of hockey, although there are occasionally glorious bursts from the top of the circle, or from the slot, which has become an open channel. That’s because the defense and opposing wingers are forced into the corners.
But when I say “the future of the game,” I mean the open-ice form of forechecking– the seemingly futile runs at loose pucks, forcing the pass from behind the defensive net even when the zone has been conceeded and all have fallen back for a clash in neutral ice. What I saw Friday (or Saturday, or whenever the hell I got around to watching the game on TiVo) impressed me, because Minnesota forwards–especially Marian Gaborik–were forcing a lot of plays on the forecheck in open ice, and getting the bounces. It is very easy for a player in this situation to make the perfunctory run and cycle, a swipe with the stick– a gesture more than anything that is one of those little things you do to look like you are working. It’s a longstanding tradition of hopelessness, but a mark of honor at least that you make these sorts of gestures, or risk being singled out for being a laggard long before you’re ever celebrated for being a realist. The odds are very much against you, but it also becomes one of those parts of an otherwise unpredictable game where hustle eventually DOES payoff, and where you can determine your own fate and take the game into your own hands for a few brief moments. Which is all it takes to shake the frost off the back of the net.
By the way, I find it very gratifying that the Flyers have held firm with their traditional uniforms–that classic logo and the fire-hydrant orange (yes orange–fire hydrants were never red in my neighborhood). In my mind, this provides historical continutity, and pays tribute to what I think of as the golden age of the Flyers circa 1976, with Bobby Clark, Kenny” The Rat” Linseman, Bernie Parent, and that big thug Dave “the Hammer” Schultz.
Great traditional uniforms let every hockey fan recall their own private golden age. The Wild, of course, don’t yet have a golden age–except maybe the magical first and third seasons–but I still love their retro red jersey the best, for reasons I’ll go into some other time.
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