A GAME IN CRISIS: Part 3 of 12
Part 3 of 12
NHL sad model for youth hockey
Tuesday, April 7, 1998
By William Houston
Sports Reporter
THE problems that afflict youth hockey in Canada are learned and copied from the most influential organization in the game.
The National Hockey League sets the agenda, not just for professional leagues in North America, but for all levels of hockey in Canada.
Children imitate their favourite players, volunteer coaches use NHL strategies and association heads and parents look to the top pro league as the standard to which youth hockey should aspire. Today, that standard is based on size, aggression, obstructionism and, to a lesser extent, fighting.
“When we were winning, we brought a certain style to minor hockey and to junior hockey,” said Mike Bossy, who starred for the New York Islanders in the 1970s and 1980s. “And when the Edmonton Oilers were winning, they brought their style of play. Since then, the style seems to be big players and hitting.”
If hockey, as entertainment, has regressed because of defensive tactics and obstruction, Canadian hockey development has been devastated. By copying the NHL game, minor hockey has focused on winning rather than teaching skills. Learning defensive tactics is more important than working on offensive plays.
Canadian youth hockey, as a result, tends to produce poorly trained players who function best in an obstructionist system. Today, Europe, which stresses practice time and skills in its development system, supplies the NHL with most of its top talent.
Frank Mahovlich, who played from the 1950s to the 1970s, compares the NHL’s evolution to a war of escalation. In the 1950s, the arms buildup started with the slapshot, which intimidated not only goalies but also defenders. The curved stick increased the element of the danger and was a major reason for goalies wearing masks and players putting on helmets.
In the 1960s, forechecking emerged as a key offensive strategy and, along with it, an increased emphasis on intimidation.
“If you look at game footage from the 1950s and early 1960s, there was no forechecking at all,” said Toronto Maple Leafs president Ken Dryden, who played in the NHL in the 1970s. “Teams were allowed to get to centre ice almost unimpeded. I still have that phrase in my head from listening to games on the radio. It was Foster Hewitt saying, ‘It’s the Leafs at centre, three abreast.’ What the heck does three abreast look like? There hasn’t been three abreast in the NHL for the last 20 years.”
The Boston Bruins were the first team of the modern era to use size and fighting, in addition to forechecking, as a tactic. But in the 1970s, the big bad Bruins were outmuscled by the Philadelphia Flyers, whose gang attacks on opponents took intimidation to a new level.
In Canada, fighting and brawling increased in the junior leagues and in minor hockey, prompting the Ontario government to commission a report on violence in amateur hockey in 1974.
The report’s author, Toronto lawyer William McMurtry, a former amateur hockey player and boxer, wrote: “When coaches and parents hysterically demand victory at any price they seldom realize just how great the cost is. . . . Rather than a divisive force, fuelled by calculated animosities, [hockey] should be . . . a shared commitment to excellence.”
In the NHL, excellence meant winning, and for the Flyers the key was intimidation. Ulf Nilsson, who played against the Flyers in the 1970s, says the Broad Street Bullies set back skill development in hockey 15 years. Bobby Hull, Nilsson’s teammate in Winnipeg, describes the Flyer strategy as, “Bobby Clarke [the Flyers' captain] would send out the goons and the other kukaloos to beat people up, and then he and Bill Barber and Reggie Leach would go out and score the goals.”
By the 1990s, obstructionism had surpassed intimidation as the most effective way for mediocre teams and players to compete in a league diluted by expansion. Minor hockey followed the NHL’s lead in stressing defensive strategies. Children eight years old were taught the neutral-zone trap and left-side lock. Tactics became more important than creativity and learning skills.
In the NHL, teams became so proficient at neutralizing skilled players that the league’s top star, Mario Lemieux, finally quit.
“All the interference, the holding, the hooking — it doesn’t allow the good players to flourish,” he told reporters in Toronto a few months ago. “It’s the main reason I didn’t return.”
What astonished many was that a professional league would allow illegal tactics to drive its marquee player out of the game. Derek Holmes, the former head of Hockey Canada, said: “The NHL, in effect, forced him out. It’s amazing, hard to fathom. Here’s a guy who put people in the rinks, a superstar, and he quit.”
Dryden admits the NHL is guilty of dummying down its product. With an average of 5.3 goals per game this season, league scoring is at its lowest point in 28 years. Last year, only two players scored more than 100 points, marking the first time since 1969-70 that fewer than three players reached 100 points.
“We’re playing a style that makes players less skilled,” Dryden said, “and that’s outrageous.”
The league cracked down on restraining fouls after the Olympic break in February, but skeptics believe obstruction will slip back into the game as four new teams are added to the league over the next three years.
Still, the NHL’s task of ridding pro hockey of obstructionism pales in comparison to the challenge facing Canadian minor hockey. After decades of copying the NHL, it needs to throw out a win-at-all-costs philosophy and concentrate on skill development if it hopes to produce the best hockey players in the world.
