#but something about johnathan kovacevic….

[puckpocketed]

27/10/2024 - ANA @ NJD

yoink!

gif description and some rambling commentary under the cut.

[ID: Gifset of Anaheim Ducks player Trevor Zegras (#11) vs the New Jersey Devils; the sequence is a takeaway beginning in the Ducks' d-zone. Devils forward Jack Hughes (#86) cuts across the points to receive a pass from teammate Johnathan Kovacevic (#8).

Simultaneously, Zegras steps up to challenge him. As Hughes attempts to escape the pressure Zegras pokes the puck out from under his stick. The puck, now loose, jumps up. Zegras uses the heel of his trailing leg to kick it up to his awaiting stick.

Zegras then handles the puck as teammates Leo Carlsson (#91) and Olen Zellweger (#51, behind Leo) fall in to begin the transition through the neutral zone. Carlsson crosses over and comes up behind Zegras. Hughes, having had the puck stolen, circles back to attack Zegras as he crosses the blue line out to the neutral zone. Zegras sees the pressure and he drops the puck between his skates to Carlsson. /. End ID.]

loved this one. i love all takeaways of course, no matter how they're executed, whether it's via poke check or stick lift, an intercepted pass or even a well placed body check. but this one found the nuclear codes in my hindbrain: the kick. the kick. fun !! :3 i love to see players kick the puck with their skates, that's still so novel to me <33 also, the slowed down gifs are for viewing purposes but you gotta know that the entire sequence played out over 4 seconds of real time. it happened FAST and that makes it so much cooler.

do you ever think about the amazing feats of coordination these guys are pulling off. idk. sometimes i get complacent about it because it's so normal at this level of play. but then i see something like this and i'm reminded that, oh, right, they're doing sicknasty shit constantly!!!!!

speaking as someone who can barely skate in a straight line: the idea that people can be so at ease on the ice, in control of their body and stick, and furthermore so aware of where everyone else is - it absolutely blows me away. when i say i love ice hockey it's these little details. i mean it quite literally: the beautiful game!!!!

hey. hey. did you know takeaways are some kinda phantom stat? <3 well if you didn't, now you do! here's a fun little reddit thread about it. which is responding to this jfresh tweet about the subjectivity of takeaway stat tracking:

if you ever want to bring your peripheral awareness about the subjectivity of stat tracking RIGHT to the forefront of your mind, think about ice hockey i guess? also do you ever think about how other data is tracked? data that's used to inform medicine and algorithms and policy making!! EYE do! i got a friend working for my government's stats gathering arm. by their reports: it's bleak as hell. (numbers are so beautiful and real and true until you realise the people using them are imperfect humans </3 BUT THATS NOT THE POINT HERE. sorry. sorry.)

anyway! i wonder who has inflated stats because of human error/bias? probably everyone in limited capacities... but if i could ask the hockey gods to answer one question: is there a guy who is simply such an outlier because the stats people either liked him so much they credited him with too many takeaways, or they hated him so bad they simply didn't credit him with a bunch he had? curious. SO curious.

and of course, we'll never know because we can't go back in time and crack the stat tracking teams' brains open for every game day to peer inside -> check if they were being biased or not . we'd first have to decide on some final, prescriptive definition of "takeaway" to compare it to - and then where would the takeaways dialectic be?? </3

waaaahhh okay. okay. we skidded dangerously close to completely off-topic. time to steer into the skid!! yay <3 would you like a peek behind the curtain? :3

this sequence i've gifed doesn't even end in a successful zone entry (my gifed sequences rarely end in anything <3). I didn't end up gifing it but here's what happens: Leo cuts diagonally with Z instead of taking another route, and they both end up a little tightly packed near the boards as they try to cross into the o-zone. Leo holds onto the puck right up until he's at the blue line instead of taking up the passing option earlier. He passes to Z with very little space left between them, and then Kovacevic intercepts the pass to poke it out to neutral ice.

i realise this is making it sound like i think its Leo's fault the play didn't amount to some sicknasty extended o-zone time. truthfully, i don't think it was. it may have looked like he could've done something different, but that's easy to say from the comfort of my office chair. plus. i dislike results-based conclusions... just because something failed doesn't mean it wasn't a good choice to make under those circumstances.

what then are the components of a successful zone entry? speed? fakes? agility? your teammates giving you puck support? good passing? how does this differ going by each type? <- not actually asking for any answer here, i expect to do some digging myself <3 (though. if anyone has helpful papers on hand please see me in my office??) unfortunately im tired and i have gone into the relevancy DITCH with this skid (tokyo drifted into it, even!!!!) so i'll wrap it up here.

if you made it this far, expect some kind of research dump after i'm done churning through the backlogs of my favourite substack writers and podcasts and other reference materials. have you ever tried to understand something you only have the vaguest tangential irl experience with. im doing the equivalent of trying to understand the taste of black tea and the effects of caffeine, whilst having only ever had decaff vanilla lattes.