Friday, February 1, 2008

I'm no puck tease!

Phollower (and my hockey coach) are always telling me to go right at the defenseman with the puck and show it to the defenseman like I am about to shoot. This is often called "offering the defenseman the puck" although truly I am not going to give it to him/her. For those of you who do not play hockey, it is like offering your piece of bacon to your dog - you are not really going to give it to him, but he thinks so. This theoretically gets the defenseman to commit to the puck - try to block the shot or get the puck away from me. The idea is that when the defenseman commits, I can, supposedly, pull the puck back around the defenseman and shoot, using the defenseman to screen the goalie. Or I can, again theoretically, pull the puck back and go around the defenseman to the net. One problem...if I offer the puck to the defenseman, I'll never be able to pull it back. Really, it's not a problem of scruples, more of poor stick handling skills.

1 comment:

Phollower said...

I'm breaking the Defenseman's Code by telling you this but that "offering the puck" thing just doesn't work. Defensmen of yore made it up and infiltrated the ranks of the Forwards and convinced them it's a great idea. We, as today's Defensemen, are simply profiting from the hard work of our elders. You guys keep trying that "go right at the defenseman" thing and we keep smiling to ourselves and thanking those Defensemen who came before us for creating a system where you don't exploit how slow we are and just go around us.

Don't tell or they'll turn me into a left wing. I'm nowhere near fast enough for that.