An Interesting Technique

Me (#11) playing defence with a rather off balance stance in front of Sean (#33)

Wayne Gretzky once said:  "If you can't skate, you can't play our sport.  Skating is an art."

If I could do it all over again, I would have stuck with my figure skating lessons.  When I was a kid growing up in the 1960s, boys played hockey and girls figured skated.  My parents didn't prevent me from playing hockey, it never occurred to them or to me, that hockey was an option.  What was an option for me was figure skating and I hated it.  My lessons took place on an outdoor community rink, thus every Saturday morning in the winter I was bundled up to look like the Michelin Man and carted off to the rink to 'shoot the duck' and 'choctaw' with other overdressed six year olds.  My mother sat inside the community centre chatting with the other mothers, while I slowly froze to death as I tottered around the rink.  That the lessons occurred at all, were a result of my parents trying to be conspicuously fair and because I think my mother always wanted to figure skate.  By the age of seven, I declared I no longer wanted to figure skate and since it was taking all of my mother's energy to keep me practicing the piano, she decided the figure skating lessons could go.  In retrospect I should have stuck with the figure skating and let go of the piano, but seven year olds lack foresight and I didn't like the cold.

Well here we are forty-one years later.  I can play a mean Clair de Lune by Debussy, but I can't do a backwards crossover to save my life.  When you take up a sport later in life, you learn the basics, but that's all you really get.  You learn to stop (both directions, but like most players I prefer one over the other), frontwards crossovers (both directions, but like most players I prefer right foot over left, since it's something you can practice while pleasure skating), basic backwards skating (the C cut), then you move on to basic stick handling. 

Anooj (#15) & Brad (#18) in front of Sean

Some of the beginners that I started out with, have more natural skill (they're also younger, and truth be told, they practice more).  Hockey requires each maneuver to be performed with speed, agility, mobility, power, quickness, explosiveness and efficiency.  Brad (#18) in the above picture, has a natural ability, his technique incorporates the mantra that John preaches "Shoulders over knees over toes."

If you look at Sidney Crosby's stance, it stands in stark contrast to my own at the top of the page.  Crosby has had the benefit of a lifetime of training.  Today's stars fly down the ice at speeds unheard of even ten years ago.  Players who are agile and explosively fast dominate the game.  Crosby learned correct skating technique from the get-go!  Moreover he practice and practiced and practiced until the muscle memory was ingrained within him.  He doesn't have to think about force generation, center of gravity, acceleration, momentum, inertia, velocity, centrifugal forces - he just skates!

I lack the strong foundations upon which I could build hockey skills.  I sigh when I watch John effortlessly (OK it appears effortlessly to me at the time) accelerate backwards with efficient crossovers.  He knows and utilizes proper positioning, whereas I feel like most of the time I'm on the ice I'm the chaser in a game of "keep away".  John can shoot a wrist shot that hits the top corner of the net, whereas mine slides ineffectually across the ice.  John has technique from years of practice, Jamie has technique from practice and instruction.

I can play Rachmaninoff's C Sharp Minor Prelude, but I'd trade it in for a good wrist shot or the ability to do a backwards crossover!