Recently, I’ve been treated to watching youngsters sharpening their hockey skills at seasonal tournaments. A sure sign of youthful exuberance is the kids’ tendency to hold onto the puck for as long as possible, a pass really being more of a panic move when too many defenders close in.
Of course, Chicago’s Patrick Kane has won three Stanley Cups doing this precisely, but when you’re among the top scorers in the NHL, the rules are different for you on the ice.
Passing is a skill that comes later, but it’s essential. It’s one of the things that make college basketball, in my view, vastly more interesting than the NBA, although defence is making a comeback in the pro ranks, which means passing is too. After a decade-plus of being glorified pick-up ball, the NBA is almost watchable again.
By passing, I don’t mean the art of the Magic Johnson no-look pass or the brilliance of a blind drop pass in hockey. I mean the simple act of moving the ball or puck around in the hopes of finding the player with the best scoring opportunity. Think of Spain’s men’s soccer team and its famed “tiki-taka” system, characterized by short passes and quick ball movement, which has resulted in a World Cup and two Euro championships.
Still, you can see it in kids’ eyes, the desire not simply to win, but to be personally responsible, to be the Kane that scores a Cup winner off an impossible shot from an approximately three-degree angle from the net.
Back in the 1970s, eminent economist John Kenneth Galbraith hypothesized in Harper’s magazine that team sports was responsible for socialism because of its group ethic.
I think he had it wrong, although he wouldn’t have seen puck-hog Patrick circle laps around the offensive zone like an Andean condor on his way to three Cups with Chicago, and I’ll say nothing of salaries here.
If you know anything about the Chicago Blackhawks, though, you know their recent success is not simply because of superstars like Kane, who does have plenty of assists, but of the third- and fourth-line guys, the grinders that do the little things, and one of these little things is knowing when to lean on a teammate with a simple, perfectly connected pass.
