Alas, the Attack has come to the
end of the road. My hometown team, the
junior hockey Owen Sound Attack, came up against the powerhouse Erie Otters,
the onetime club of phenom Connor
McDavid, and couldn’t find an answer to get past them. The Otters will now play
in the OHL Finals against the Mississauga Steelheads (yep, that’s their name).
The winner of the
Otters-Steelheads series will move on to play for the right to win the Memorial
Cup. That was what the Attack was gunning for, after defeating both the
Kitchener Rangers and the Soo Greyhounds. No Owen Sound team has won the
Memorial Cup since a team called the Mercurys did so in 1927.
So, that Cup destiny will just
have wait for another year. Owen Sound Attack, Memorial Cup winners of 2027,
100 years later? That has a nice ring to it!
One more hockey thought before I
go. About the two-hundred-foot game.
This year’s Stanley Cup playoffs
have been notable for this development. As if hockey weren’t the fastest, most skilled
game on the planet, teams with professional players who have mastered the
two-hundred-foot game are proving to be the jewels of the current tournament.
Back in the day (not 1927, but
1967), only Bobby Orr played a two-hundred-foot game (or the full length of a
professional hockey rink). Shining in his ability to not just start in his own
end and rush down the ice and score in a solo effort, but to dictate play from
behind the goal line, through the middle of the ice to below the opposition goal
line.
Now contrast Sidney Crosby’s
game with Alex Ovechkin’s. Crosby, a recent master of the two-hundred-foot
game, often will be winning battles for loose pucks, then start plays from his
own end. Ovechkin usually lets his defense do that heavy lifting. He is an old
school forward, and by and large, the Caps are an old school team in the way
they defend and attack.
Others who are excelling at the
two-hundred-foot game include Ryan McDonagh and Brady Skjei with the Rangers, the
Senators’ Erik Karlsson and all the D players from the Nashville Predators who
are burning up the Western Conference playoffs, having dispatched the Chicago Blackhawks
and now are thoroughly outplaying the St. Louis Blues.
This is not exactly a
foolproof measure of who will win and who will lose these Stanley Cup playoffs.
But when it comes to reaching the full potential of this amazing
sport, give me players and teams that excel at the two-hundred-foot game any day.
Next: Running for Your Life: Through
a Glass, Darkly
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