#Radar tends to a good ‘PONY PUCKS’

[youngpettyqueen]

Headcanon based on nothing but I have because I think it’d be really funny is 4077 members absorbing Potter’s curses into their vocabulary and continuing to use them post-canon without even realizing it

[csykora]

Hey hey hey! I was wondering how i could find that post ab Kuzy and the struggle to adapt for North American hockey?? My dad is saying international hockey is easier to play than North American (as a justification for why Nylander is doing better @ worlds than this szn but that’s a diff story) and I’m trying to prove a point (Russians aren’t bad hockey players just because they (historically?) struggle in North America!) thanks xxx

Hey there.

**The following is not an opinion on Willam Nylander. I am agnostic. I suspect he may exist and you all cannot make me do more than that.**

Lemme chat with your dad a min? I got questions.

what does he think makes one game harder?

Factually we know what the difference is, right: one rink is wider than the other. 

how does that then make that game different?

Restricting the width of the rink, the skaters’ room to move, changes the goals of the game.

Any moment that I have the puck and you do not seems like it should be good for me. If I have it, you aren’t scoring a goal with it. If I try to score a goal with it, maybe I score, but maybe I mess up and you get it and you score a goal and that’s bad. Shooting is giving up possession in a meaningful way.

But in a narrow rink, we’re always closer together, it’s easier for you to smash into me, so you have more chances to take the puck away from me. Some of the time you’ll manage and then you’ll have it and you can score goals with it. I just plain probably won’t be able to keep possession all game, trying to do that would be risky for me, so it makes sense for me to try to score goals before you do.

In a big rink, if I’ve got the puck—oh, I’m so sorry! I didn’t hear you across all this ice, wide enough that I can push off and hit peak speed going any direction, not just end to end. Did you say you want this? Did you want to smash me and take it and try to score some goals with it? Sure, you can try. Catch me and my several speedy friends first.

Corner work and board battles are less practical for you, so holding possession becomes more of a virtue for me. Goals still happen, but they happen when one team outshines the other enough in skating or passing that it makes sense for them to award themselves a point. An equal or even ultimate goal is to keep control until the clock runs out.

With more ice on the wings, wingers become more like centers. They have to spend more time managing their space, rather than mostly finishing plays that their center managed down the middle. They’re judged more for what North Americans see as classic center beauty (speed and awareness, as they’re expected to travel the full length of the ice, puck control as they skate, passing). Kuznetsov and Malkin were wingers in Russia, because they suck at faceoffs, and in Russia that’s seen as the only thing centers really do that wingers don’t, to the point that Kuznetsov and Malkin on the wing didn’t seem like a waste.

What North American men call ‘overpassing’ starts to happen: instead of the first person in with the puck aiming for a goal, the puck carrier will pass back and forth with other players until someone feels secure to shoot. This slows goals, which, remember, aren’t the only goal.

The other two NHLisms that Kuznetsov struggled with, by his own account, are the idea of dumping the puck and the idea of shooting over passing. These are not hard for him to do. They are foreign to him, hard for him to remember to prioritize doing. He thinks they’re irresponsible and rude, because they don’t contribute to the goal of his game.

In the NHL, they do. And that’s fine! The NHL plays on small ice and has its own goals and values and skills, and they’re awesome. They are no more or less awesome.

Now your dad might say, G, if non-North American hockey is better adapted for big ice than North American style, 

how come Canada does so great in competition, huh?

What do we know about Team Canada?  Sidney Crosby can have Steven Stamkos and Patrice Bergeron on his wings if he wants. You don’t crack that roster if you’re not a top 10 center, even on defense.

I think North Americans tend to know that and think, “well centers are good so more centers is just better,” but if that were always true we would train all wingers to think like centers. A three-center line doesn’t work well on narrow ice, where the winger needs board skills and finishing skills (and, frankly, to be less of a diva). It does work as a bridge when the two games meet in competition.

I just described what international hockey is, not how hard it is.

which is harder, jumping a horse or jumping on a bike?

Now, I might say riding a horse is easier, because I know how to do it. Or I might say it’s more complicated, because again, I know what all it takes to do it.

Both those answers are honest and both are less useful than I don’t know how to ride a bike.

When my brother does well in a bike race, I’m not gonna ask him hey if you’re so “good” at this why’d you fall off the pony that one time then huh? I’m not gonna make him race me.

Or if I did, and I crushed him, I wouldn’t say my sport is better, I’d say oh right I’m on a horse, they big. If he won at 50 yards and I won at 200 yards and at 5 miles and he won at 50 miles, I’d say wow, it’s like a bike and a horse are good at different things in different situations.  

Different kinds of hockey aren’t as different as that, but my point is that it’s possible for two things with two different goals to have two different ways of doing them well. And someone coming over from one thing to judge how you’re doing the other is silly.

Another question to think about:

If international hockey is easy, why do North Americans who go to the KHL also suck?

I don’t think your dad has heard their stories, because let’s be clear I don’t think your dad knows international hockey, but those players exist and have the same darn struggle as Russians in the NHL.

Now, your dad could argue that that’s because we’re pitting North American D-listers who have to go to the KHL against a league of Russia’s A-listers, but frankly that’s offensive to Amur, who’ve assembled a crack team of Russian D-listers and are also very bad.  

Americans who go to Russia don’t immediately dominate with scoring. They take a while to learn the game, and then they start to excel in the ways that you can excel in the KHL’s game.

why have Russian players historically struggled?

We’ve seen individual players have trouble adapting. We’ve also seen Alex Ovechkin, so, you know, he fucks any generalization. Kucherov’s doing okay. Svech sure looks alright.

Russian players make up a very small percent of the NHL today. “Russian NHLers” is barely a big enough test group to sample flavors of toothpaste, much less make sweeping claims about people’s experiences.

And there are so few of them because historically speaking, Russia is real big and not real friendly to North American business interests (which is what NHL teams are), so NHL teams don’t maintain scouts there.

Can you name a player from East Russia? I guarantee it’s not cause there’s no ice there! But it’s a wild huge amount of space to cover. When KHL teams take days and–I can’t stress this enough, have repeatedly died in travel accidents–just to get to games, the NHL is not investing in that.

The NHL doesn’t try to draft Russians unless they’ve already made a name for themselves at international tournaments. Imagine if only the Canadian boys who got to go to Worlds and scored points there were on anyone’s radar. The NHL’s business model is to get quick dibs on obvious talent and let the rest bubble up.

Which is one of many things that makes the modern NHL and NHL fans’ devotion to the draft difficult. There are good reasons that some kids go undrafted who are as good as the drafted kids, so fans have the idea that non North Americans who are left to develop are devalued. (The idea that anyone should be ready for the NHL right out of the draft is really new and really, really wild, like, biologically-speaking. 18 years is the age you can sign a contract, it has nothing to do with your physiological or athletic development).

Big question: does your dad like international hockey? Does he follow the Swedish or Russian leagues? Does he like William Nylander?

You say ‘that’s a different story’ but honestly I think that is the story.

Because if we agreed that actually, Nylander is talented at some things, then the argument that anything Nylander does well must be easy to do doesn’t make sense. It’s a bit like seeing Nylander ride a bike and asking why he couldn’t ride that pony. Maybe Nylander is better at one thing than the other thing. This rests on Nylander being bad, and/or Swedish hockey being bad.

If your dad is honest, he doesn’t like William Nylander, and he doesn’t like Swedish hockey. And that’s fine! He didn’t have to justify that. 

But he is back-engineering an argument to justify not liking them that rests on already not liking them. 

And he’s kind of digging at the value of anyone who likes what he doesn’t approve of: “easy” is a heavy word. The implication is almost that Nylander is worse for doing something “easy” well but being too lazy to work hard in North America

I swear if I get a single comment asking me to think about Nylander beyond his hair I am turning this blog around

Your dad isn’t behaving well in this argument. Relatable, but not well.  

I’m not saying shame your dad! I hope he’s otherwise great. But I encourage you to ask questions that encourage him to self-reflect, more than trying to feed him facts. Mostly because that won’t work. And it won’t be a failure on your part when you don’t say the perfect facts in the perfect way to make him acknowledge them. This is between him and his hockey gods, you know?

I think a lot of us could stand to learn not to argue like he’s doing, but a lot of us could stand to learn how to talk to someone who is arguing unfairly without taking too much on ourselves, trying to justify what we like back to them when neither of you have to justify shit. 

So if it will bring you joy to shove these points at him, good luck, have a ball. If not, go watch some Swedes be good at Swedish hockey, and have a blast.