hockey Archives - Page 4 of 9

How does scoring work across sports?

Understanding how scoring works is one on the fundamental elements of beginning to understand a sport. I’ve written in the past about how scoring works in football and bowling and I will certainly get to other sports in the near future.

For today, I’ve created a simple chart that you can use as a reference as you watch different sports and wonder what types of scores are or aren’t possible.

A few things that may jump out at you as you read the chart.

Football has by far the most varied and complex set of scoring options. It’s also the only sport where a team cannot score a single point. The one point extra point is only possible in conjunction with a six point touchdown.
Hockey and soccer, the two lowest scoring sports, are also the only two where scoring more than a single goal at one time is impossible.
While the mechanism for scoring a point in baseball is solitary (a player runs around the bases and touches home plate without being caught out by the defensive team, it is possible to score one, two, three, or four runs at one time.
Football and basketball both use the term “field goal” but in football it refers to kicking the ball through the uprights while in basketball it’s simply the official phrase for tossing the ball through the basket. It’s possible for both field goals to be worth three points to the team making them but in basketball a two point field goal is also ordinary.
In basketball, a field goal plus a free throw is popularly called an “and one.”

Let me know if this is useful and what other sports you’d like to see added to the chart!

How do trades work in sports?

Dear Sports Fan,

I was watching Moneyball with my husband. We were curious how trading works in various sports. Can you explain the rules and how they are implemented. For example why do trades happen in the middle of the season for some sports, but not others?

Thanks,
Sarah

Dear Sarah,

At it’s heart, Moneyball is a story about how careful analytical thought can provide an organization an advantage over its competitors. The team at the center of the story, the Oakland Athletics baseball team, exploited its competition mostly by making unexpectedly smart personnel decisions. In any sports league, teams have three main ways of acquiring players: by drafting players not yet in the league, by signing players who are free agents, and by trading for players. As you pointed out in your question, trades work a little differently in each major sports league in the United States. While an explanation of the exact rules in each league could easily give even the most long-winded Russian novelist a run for her money, I’ll try to lay out a few of the major differences in a few mercifully brief paragraphs below.

Hard Cap, Soft Cap, or No Cap?

One of the biggest factors affecting how players are traded in a sports league is the salary cap structure. A salary cap is a value, set before the season, against which the aggregated salaries of all the players on a team are compared to. In leagues with a hard salary cap, like the National Football League (NFL) and National Hockey League (NHL), teams are (with very, very few exceptions) not allowed to exceed this value. In leagues with a soft salary cap, like the National Basketball League (NBA) there are a host of ways that teams can exceed the value set by the salary cap. Depending on how a team manages to exceed it, they may be assigned a financial penalty but not one that hurts them on the court. Some leagues, primarily Major League Baseball (MLB), have no salary cap. In baseball, teams can pay their players as much or as little as they choose and the market will bear.

These rules have a deep impact on the trading culture of the leagues. Having a hard cap restricts the possible trades teams can make. Any potential trade that would put a team over the salary cap is a non-starter. Having no cap, like in the MLB, means that teams are free to trade players pretty much however they want. The in between world of the soft capped NBA is perhaps the most interesting. NBA trades are often more about finances than they are about basketball players. Because teams are constantly in the process of manipulating their payroll in order to position themselves best within the complicated world of soft-cap exceptions, you’ll often see basketball trades that, if you don’t understand the financial and cap implications of them, seem totally crazy. For instance, one team might seem to give a player to another team for virtually (and sometimes literally) nothing. Or a team might send a good player to a team for a player who has had a career ending injury. In those cases, what the team is getting back is not the injured player or nothing, but some element of financial flexibility.

To trade a draft pick or not?

In all four major U.S. sports leagues, there are entry drafts each year where teams get to take turns choosing players who aren’t in the league yet. In all but one, teams can and often do trade their right to choose in a future year’s draft to another team. The one league where that is (again, basically) not allowed is the MLB. Teams in the other three leagues often get themselves in trouble by mortgaging their future for their present by trading a lot of their future draft picks away. One entertaining aspect of trading draft picks is that the order during drafts is set (more or less) by how teams did in the previous season. The worse a team does, the more likely they are to have a high pick in the upcoming draft. If the team you root for has another team’s draft pick, it’s order is still set by how that team performs, so a good fan will root against that team all year to optimize the chance of its draft pick being a good one.

Do the players get a say?

This all seems fine and dandy until you stop and think about players and their families who can get uprooted at any moment and forced to move to another city. This is definitely part of the business of sports and most players don’t have much control over their careers in this way. There are a couple major exceptions. When a player negotiates his or her contract, they can negotiate a full or partial no-trade clause. A no-trade clause, sometimes abbreviated as a NTR means that a player does have some say over whether and where they get traded. A partial no-trade clause means a player has to maintain a list of some number of teams they would be willing to be traded to. A full no-trade clause means they have complete veto power over any trade. Usually only veteran or star players have the clout to negotiate these clauses into their contracts. In the MLB, players who have played for 10 years and have been with their current team for five consecutive years are automatically given no-trade clauses. This is called the 5/10 rule.

How does the sport itself affect trading?

The final major factor that goes into defining the trading culture of a league is how easy it is for players to switch teams mid-season. You mentioned in your question that some leagues don’t seem to have mid-season trades. That’s only partially true. All leagues allow for mid-season trades (at least before a trade deadline) but there is one league where they rarely ever happen. That league is the NFL. This is mostly because football is so complicated and so reliant on the close-to-perfect collaboration of lots of interconnected parts. It’s really difficult for a player from one team to move over to another team in the middle of the season, learn their plays and their terminology, and make a difference to the team’s fortunes that season. Compare that to the NBA where teams often run similar plays and the individual talent of one player (of the five on the court at one time compared to the 11 in football) can make an enormous and immediate impact. NFL trades are rare. NBA trades are quite common.

— — —

Like I said, trading is such a complicated business in sports that a post about how it works from league to league could easily morph into an unreadably long essay. I think this is a good stopping point for today. These four factors probably account for the majority of the trading differences within the four major U.S. sports leagues.

Thanks for reading and questioning,
Ezra Fischer

Why do sports leagues have All-Star games?

Dear Sports Fan,

Why do sports leagues have All-Star games?

Thanks,
Greg

Dear Greg,

With the NBA All-Star game coming up soon, it’s a good time to tackle your question. All-Star games are an exhibition that many sports leagues put on in the middle of their seasons. Based on voting by fans, coaches, or some combination of the two, the best and most popular players are selected to play a game in mixed teams against each other. These games take many shapes and have different histories, but the common theme is that they generally lack the competitive nature typical of professional sports. They are essentially an entertainment, not a competition, and they are often accompanies by a host of other sports related competitions. All-Star games are loved by some fans, hated by others, and both loved and hated by a third group. They are more successful in some sports than others. So, why do sports leagues have All-Star games? Like any good child of children of the 1960s, my short answer is: follow the money.

From the start, All-Star games have been about money. The roots of today’s All-Star games can be found in games that were quite literally about money — benefit games. The NHL seems to have been on the forefront in this department. Wikipedia lists several early benefit games including a 1908 game to raise money for the family of a player who had drowned, a 1934 game to benefit a player who had his career (and almost life) ended in a violent hit, a 1937 game in honor of a player who had his leg shattered and died soon afterwards, and a 1939 game to benefit another drowned player. From raising money for a particular cause, All-Star games soon became about raising money directly or indirectly for the league itself.

Wikipedia tells us that the first professional league to have an All-Star game was Major League Baseball which held what they thought was going to be a one-time event in 1933 as part of Chicago’s World Fair. (quick side-note, if you haven’t read Erik Larson’s book about the fair, The Devil in the White City, you should!) History.com has a good article about the game, in which they claim that, “the event was designed to bolster the sport and improve its reputation during the darkest years of the Great Depression.” In the three years before the All-Star game, baseball’s attendance had dropped by “40 percent, while the average player’s salary fell by 25 percent.” Teams were experimenting with all sorts of promotions to try to bring fans and money back into the game and while Major League Baseball donated the proceeds of the All-Star game to charity, they surely profited indirectly from the attention it garnered. The All-Star game was a success, with hundreds of thousands of fans casting votes for which players they wanted to see and the top vote-getter, Babe Ruth, hitting a home run during the game. After the success of the 1933 game, baseball decided to make the All-Star game an annual tradition.

Other professional leagues in the United States soon followed along: the NFL in 1938, the NHL in 1947, and the NBA in 1951. For newer leagues, like Major League Soccer, the WNBA, and Major League Lacrosse, the inclusion of an All-Star game must have seemed like an obvious move. It seems like the All-Star game is primarily an American thing with some international sports leagues following along, but not all of them. The world’s most popular leagues — all soccer leagues, of course: the British Premier League, Spain’s La Liga, Germany’s Bundesliga, and the Italian Serie A don’t have All-Star games. The Canadian Football League had one on and off from the 1950s but has not had one since 1988.

The format of All-Star games and accompanying competitive side-dishes have been tweaked over and over over the years to try to make the games slightly more competitive and therefore more entertaining to watch. These innovations seem to have generally moved in waves. Early on, some All-Star games were between last year’s championship team and a mixed team of players from other teams. After that, the now standard game between two mixed teams based on conference or league came into fashion. Two other formats that have been experimented with in the hopes of ginning up some competitive juices have been teams based on geographic origin (often the United States or North America vs. the rest of the world) or having teams chosen by two players or former players alternatively picking from the pool of All-Stars. I’m not sure that either of these have been very successful. The more successful though rare and extreme version of this is to actually invite a foreign team to play against a team made up of All-Stars. This happened very successfully in 1979 and 1987 in the NHL when teams of NHL All-Stars played against a Soviet national team. It’s hard to replicate that success because it was so reliant on the Cold War. Major League Soccer’s All-Star team plays against a European club team which kind of works but also is an admission of how weak the MLS is in comparison to other leagues. All of these innovations are intended to make the game more competitive. Perhaps the most extreme attempt came in 2003, when Major League Baseball took the extraordinary step of awarding home field advantage in the World Series to the league whose team won the All-Star game.

All-Star games are not only an opportunity for professional sports leagues to attract attention and earn money, they are also great opportunities for players. Players on the NBA All-Star teams this year will make $25,000 for playing in the game and another $25,000 if their team wins the game. The side-show events like the dunk contest and three point contest have their own purses that go to the individual winners of those competitions. Like for winning the Super Bowl, players may also have negotiated bonuses in their contracts for making the All-Star game.

The NBA All-Star game, which takes place this weekend in New York City, is definitely the biggest and most visible of the professional All-Star games in the United States. Check back in later today for a beginner’s guide to all of its elements.

Thanks for reading,
Ezra Fischer

What is a power play in hockey?

Dear Sports Fan,

What is a power play in hockey?

Thanks,
Deborah

Dear Deborah,

Hockey has one of the more innovative ways of penalizing a player and a team for committing a foul. When a player commits a foul, a ref raises his arm, and as soon as a member of the player’s team gets control of the puck, the ref blows a whistle to stop play. The offending player is then escorted to a small, isolated compartment on the side of the rink opposite from where the teams sit, called the penalty box. Depending on the nature of the foul, he must remain there for some time, usually two or five minutes, or potentially until the other team scores a goal. While she is in the box, her team must play without her and they don’t get to simply replace her. They have to play shorthanded or “down a man,” which usually means they have four players plus a goalie against the other team’s five players plus a goalie. On rare occasions, one team may play with four players plus a goalie versus the other team’s three. Five on three is also possible, but the rules won’t allow things to get any more lopsided than that. The team that is has more players on the rink has a power play.

Power plays are extremely important in hockey because it is easier to score during one than in the normal course of “full strength” play. During a power play, the team with the extra player is often able to keep possession of the puck in their offensive zone and pass amongst themselves until they are able to get a good shot on goal. This is much more difficult without having the man advantage. Teams also have special combinations of players who they play during a power play. These units are, intuitively, called power play units. They’re usually made up of the best three offensive forwards on the team and the best two offensive defensemen although it’s not uncommon for a team to play with four forwards and one defenseman while they are on the power play. If a team choses to do this, one forward plays in the position a defenseman would normally be, up near the blue line that marks the dividing line between the offensive zone and the neutral zone. This gives the team more scoring punch on their power play unit but may also leave them vulnerable to a counter-attack.

20% is generally considered to be the dividing line between a good and a very good power play unit. A team that scores on more than 20% of their power play attempts is an extraordinarily good team with the man advantage. There are currently eight of the 30 NHL teams whose power play percentages are above 20%. Most of the rest of the teams range between 15% and 20% although there are three woeful teams that average a goal on less than 15% of their power play attempts. It’s no coincidence that two of these three teams have the two worst records in the league. It’s important to be good at converting power play attempts into goals.

When hockey games are at their most exciting and the stakes are at their highest, power plays begin to loom very large in fans’ minds. If your team is trailing, you hope desperately to be awarded a power play. If your team is winning, you just want the players on your team to play clean hockey and stay out of the penalty box. Once a penalty has been called, fans are launched into an even higher state of nervousness. If your team is the one with the power play, you barely make a sound for two minutes, except to scream pleadingly for a goal. If your team is the one that is shorthanded and killing the penalty off, then you just don’t breath until your team clears the puck away from their goal.

Power plays are wonderful theater and they’re also a great way to discourage foul play. I don’t know of many sports other than hockey that uses this type of deterrence (soccer has a similar rule for players who get red cards, but their banishment is permanent. I think water polo and possibly lacrosse have similar rules but with so many more players playing, the loss of one is less impactful) but I think more sports should adopt it. I recommended that football look into it during my epic series of articles on how to fix football’s brain injury problem. Until then, we’ll just keep enjoying it in hockey!

Hope this helps,
Ezra Fischer

What does "five hole" mean in hockey?

Dear Sports Fan,

What does “five hole” mean in hockey? I’ve heard announcers talk about “going five hole” and “protecting the five hole” and even “giving him the five hole and then taking it away.” What on earth is going on?

Thanks,
Alejandro

Dear Alejandro,

The “five hole” is one of those terms that has a very technical source but is used quite commonly. When used in the context of hockey, the five hole is the area between the goalies legs. If a player “goes five hole” that means they are an attacker who tries to shoot the puck into the net between the goalie’s legs. “Protecting the five hole” is something every goalie must be good at. When a goalie moves from side to side, she invariably creates some separation between her legs because she needs to push off her back leg to generate power. A goalie has to be able to push off powerfully and then get into a closed position quickly again. Sometimes goalies will intentionally lure shooters into thinking there is room to score between their legs (in the five hole) and then as soon as they begin to shoot, close that area down and prevent the puck from scoring. That’s “giving him the five hole and then taking it away.”

The source of the phrase is a numbering system that coaches and players use to talk about the location of shots. Area one is above the goalie’s glove hand. That’s usually the left hand, since most goalies (as opposed to other hockey players, oddly enough) are right-handed. Area two is the same side but below the glove. Area three is high on the other side, where the goalie holds her stick and rectangular blocker. Area four is low on the stick side. Area five is between the goalies legs. Areas six and seven are medium in terms of hight on the stick side and glove side respectively and may have been added after the system was initially developed. Each area can also be called a hole because it represents a potential spot where a puck can wriggle through the goalie’s attempt to create a solid defense of the net.

The reason for the terms popularity probably comes from two sources: first, it’s the easiest to remember. If you’re a hockey announcer and you see someone score a goal through another hole, you have to quickly figure out which side of the net it went into and then whether the goalie is a righty or a lefty before you can say with confidence which hole was exploited. The five hole is easy! It’s always in the middle. The second reason may already have occurred to you. It’s mildly funny in a sexual way. This humor has been enjoyed by members of the Five Hole Band whose music was featured in the Toronto Film Festival 2009 Top Ten Canadian Short Film, “5 Hole Tales of Hockey Erotica.” There’s also an unrelated book called The Five Hole Stories by Dave Bidini, another (shocking!) Canadian artist. There are also crass T-shirts that encourage you to “score through the five hole” or “show me your five hole.”

From the arcane to the commonplace to the obscene, the more you know, the more you know!

Thanks for your question,
Ezra Fischer

Why did the NHL get rid of the two line pass rule?

Dear Sports Fan,

Why is the two line pass rule gone in the NHL?

Thanks,
Jordan on Fancred

Dear Jordan,

The other day, I wrote a post about the history of rule changes in the National Football League. In football, the majority of rule changes have been intended to keep football players safe from injury. The National Hockey League (NHL) has been more split in its motive for changing rules. In hockey, some rule changes are intended to increase the safety of hockey players and some are motivated by a desire to increase goal scoring. I would say the rule changes are split pretty evenly between those two reasons. In 2005, following a year-long lockout that resulted in the loss of the 2004-2005 season, the NHL introduced a set of rules aimed at increasing the number of goals scored. The removal of the two line pass rule was one of these changes.

The two line pass rule, in place from 1943 to 2005, prohibited teams from passing the puck from their own defensive end of the rink to a teammate who was already on the other team’s side of the rink. It was actually very much like an offside rule. In our post on offside rules from sport to sport, we reduce offside rules to a simple trio: a line, an event, and an order. This works remarkably well. The two line pass rule stated that a player could not receive a pass from a teammate in their team’s defensive zone if he was over the halfway line before the puck crossed the line. Like the current offside rule in hockey or in some ways the icing rule, the two line pass rule was intended to prevent a team from cherry picking by leaving one player near the goal the team is trying to score on. Hockey is a team sport, the rules seem to be saying, you must move the puck up and down the rink as a team.

The problem was that defenses learned to use this rule to their advantage. They knew a team was not allowed within the rules to pass from behind the blue line that separates their defensive zone from the middle third of the rink called the neutral zone to the other side of the red halfway line. To stymie their opponents, teams would clutter up the area between those lines with as many players as possible to prevent passing. They didn’t have to worry about anyone getting behind them and skating easily for an easy chance on net because passing to a player in that position would be illegal. This tactic was called the neutral zone trap and it was both highly effective and passionately hated for creating low-scoring, boring hockey games.

By eliminating the two line pass rule, the NHL felt it was encouraging longer passes, more dynamic offensive plays, and eliminating a defensive strategy that made its sport less fun to watch. The jury is still out on whether it worked. There are three arguments against the rule change. First, scoring has not increased. After a short bump following the rule changes, the goals per game average fell back down to where it had been before the two line pass rule was eliminated. So far this year, an average of 2.76 goals are scored per game, which is right in line with the averages in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The second argument against the removal of the two line pass is that it goes against the other key motivator for rule changes. Getting rid of the two line pass rule has made the game more dangerous for its players by allowing for faster play that takes place over a larger area of the rink. As we know well from football, a faster moving, more free flowing game is exactly what causes brain injuries and concussions to be such a problem. Some have called for the NHL to bring back the rule to slow the game down and make it safer. Last, it’s also possible that getting rid of the two line pass has made the game less interesting to watch. Oh, sure, it seems crazy given that those neutral zone trapping teams were famously boring, but the alternative is not great either. Passing through the neutral zone is still a dicey proposition fraught with the dangers of having an opponent steal the puck, so teams have adopted a tactic where they send a player up to their opponent’s blue line, rifle a hard pass up to him, and have him simply deflect the puck into the opponent’s zone and then chase it. It’s safe and legal but it doesn’t have the artistry that was required when the two line pass rule was in effect.

Thanks for asking,
Ezra Fischer

How does icing work in hockey?

Dear Sports Fan,

How does icing work in hockey? No matter how much hockey I watch, I continue to be confused by icing. It seems like the refs will just randomly blow the whistle sometimes when the puck gets shot down the rink and then the announcers say it’s icing.

Thanks,
Gil

Dear Gil,

In hockey there are two types of calls that the refs make. There are penalties and then there are infractions. When the ref calls a foul, he or she sends one or more players off the ice into the penalty box for two or more minutes. Infractions are for lesser offenses. They are like the misdemeanors of the hockey world. Of all the infractions, icing is perhaps the most important one. In this post, I’ll explain what icing is and why it is so important in hockey.

Icing happens a player sends the puck directly from their side of the rink all the way past the goal line on the opposite side of the rink without one of the player’s teammates touching the puck and without any player on the other team having had a chance to play the puck. The team that shot the puck down the ice is penalized for icing the puck by bringing the puck all the way back to their defensive zone to restart play. Additionally, the team that has violated the icing rule is not allowed to change players while the other team can. As you might be able to guess from the rule’s description and penalty, icing is a rule designed to slant the game towards the offense by constraining the defense. Without the icing rule, a team trapped in their own end of the rink, frantically playing defense, would be able to blindly shoot the puck the length of the ice to relieve the pressure the other team is putting on them. With the icing rule, a team that does this is stuck with the same (usually very tired) players on the ice while their opposition gets to roll out a fresh set of players to set up on offense.

One thing that’s a little bit tricky about the icing rule is that it is not based on intent, only geography. It makes no distinction between a desperate defensive player who flings the puck all the way from their own goal line and a player skating up the rink on offense who dumps the puck into their offensive zone intending to retrieve it, but lets the puck go just inches on their side of the ice by mistake. Both players would be called for icing but the second scenario is much harder to see. That could be why the rule seems random to you.

Before we go into why the rule is so important, there are two key wrinkles we should cover. First — a team that is on the penalty kill (is playing with fewer players on the ice because of a penalty or series of penalties) is exempt from icing. Down a man, they can throw the puck all the way down the ice with a clear conscience. Second — it used to be that icing would not be called until the team not icing the puck had skated back to their end of the rink and touched the puck. That led to some exciting races, because remember that if a teammate of the player who iced the puck touches it first, it’s not icing. Unfortunately, it also led to a lot of horrible injuries. Normally players will let up a little if they are skating directly into the boards, but if an icing call was at stake, they didn’t. Two players, skating full speed towards unforgiving boards is not good. So, in 2013, the NHL finally adopted the “no-touch” icing rules that were prevalent in other leagues. These rules dictate that when a puck has been iced, the icing team can still race to negate the icing penalty but the end point of the race is the red face-off dot closest to the puck, not the puck itself.

Icing calls are frequently pivotal in a hockey game because, second to fouls that give one team a numerical advantage, icing is the most punitive rule in the sport. Hockey is not nearly as territorial as, say, American Football, but having a face-off in a team’s offensive zone rather than the neutral zone or defensive zone can be a big deal. The fact that icing creates this situation while also giving the offensive team an opportunity to substitute players while the other team cannot, can be a very big deal. If you want to do a little study, watch a few hockey games and keep track of the number of times your team gets a legitimate scoring chance directly from an offensive zone face-off following an icing call, versus any other offensive zone face-off. My guess is that icing will result in a much higher percentage of scoring chances.

Thanks for reading,
Ezra Fischer

Sports are an escape

As a sports fan, I pretty frequently am asked why I spend so much time following sports. I find this question to be pretty difficult to answer. It’s such a complicated question for me, but like, “how’s it going?” I don’t think people who ask it are actually looking for a ten minute answer. One of the reasons is that the sports world provides a consistent source of humor and inspiration. On days like today when you awake to news of a dozen artists being killed by men with AK-47s, that facet of sports is a real comfort. Sports doesn’t help you escape the horrible things in the world but it does remind you that there’s a balance. Today I want to share a couple of elements of sports humor and inspiration that cheered me up. They’re not the funniest or the most inspirational things ever but they brought a smile to my face today. Hopefully with some explanation, they will to you too.

The New York Times Trolls the New York Knicks

You wouldn’t expect irreverence from the Grey Lady, but yesterday, the New York Times took a shot at New York’s primary professional basketball team, the New York Knicks, it this short piece. The background of this piece is that the Knicks have lost almost all their games so far this season — 32 losses out of 37 games — and that was before they traded two of their best five players earlier this week to the Cleveland Cavaliers. In return, the Knicks got… basically no one who will help them win this year. Trades like this are a common peculiarity of the NBA, which has a relatively hard salary cap and therefore teams are frequently willing to make trades to benefit their financial situation even if it hurts their basketball situation. After the trade, the New York Times had this to say:

We feel it’s only merciful to give our Knicks beat writer, Scott Cacciola, a break from such woeful basketball. He deserves to see the game played at a higher level. For the next month or so, we would like to point him to some good, quality basketball, wherever it might exist. Any suggestions? Maybe there’s another N.B.A. team that warrants his attention, or perhaps a high school or a college squad. For that matter, maybe you know of a strong coed team at your local Y that Scott should write about. Tell us where to send him.

Coach suggests a reasonable strategy. Hilarity ensues.

Last night, the Detroit Pistons played the San Antonio Spurs in just one of the 2,460 NBA regular season games. It was a totally ordinary game, interesting perhaps to Pistons and Spurs fans as well as NBA junkies but what happened at the very end of the game transformed it into must-see TV; into an event; a happening. The situation was this: with less than a second left, the Pistons went ahead by 1 point. The Spurs were able to take a time-out so that they could talk about what to do once they threw the ball into play from the sideline just over the halfway line into the Piston’s half of the court. The game clock was set to 0.1 seconds. Two rules dictate what can happen here: first, the clock does not start until a player on the court touches the pass that’s thrown in; second, a tenth of a second is officially not enough time to catch the ball and shoot it, so the only thing the Spurs could try to do was to tip the ball into the basket; more a volleyball move than a basketball one. The Pistons coach, a man named Stan van Gundy who famously bears a slight resemblance to an infamous 1980s era porn star (this is already getting funny, right?) quickly recognized the situation and began to instruct his team to simply create a human wall around the basket and keep the opposing team on the outside. The exact phrase he used to convey this idea, which was caught and broadcast live on television, was equal parts profane and hysterical in its simplicity.

Mike Prada broke the whole thing down with game analysis, diagrams, screenshots, memes, and close reading for SB Nation. Give it a look!

NHL stars try their hand at sledge hockey

Okay, so this one is tainted slightly by its commercial association with Gatorade, but you know what… if a brand wants to spend money to inspire people, I’m okay with that. In an idea that was surely ripped from Guinness’ moving commercial last year that showed a group of friends playing basketball in wheelchairs so they could compete on an even playing field with the one of their group who actually needed a wheelchair, Gatorade arranged for a handful of NHL players to play in a sledge hockey game. Sledge hockey is the ice hockey equivalent of playing in a wheelchair. Players play from a seated position on a sled with a single blade running down the middle. They have two short sticks which are used for propulsion around the rink as well as stick-handling, passing, and shooting. The best part of this video for me is seeing the sledge hockey players skate circles around the NHL players as they try to adjust to playing without their legs. Still, by the end of the game, it looks like the NHL stars had picked up some tricks.

Watch videos of game highlights, the day from the perspective of the sledge players, and the NHL players.

2015: Winter Classic plot and characters

In 2015 Dear Sports Fan will be previewing the biggest sporting event of the year in each of the 50 states in the United States plus the district of Columbia. Follow along with us on our interactive 2015 map.

Washington D.C. — The Winter Classic

NHL Hockey — January 1, 2015 — Chicago Blackhawks at Washington Capitals, 1 p.m. ET on NBC.

The first thing to know about the National Hockey League’s Winter Classic is that it is aspirational in every aspect. The game is not a classic, it’s simply a regular season NHL game that is played outdoors on New Year’s Day. This tradition began in 2008 with a game between the Pittsburgh Penguins and Buffalo Sabers in Ralph Wilson Stadium, Buffalo’s NFL arena. An NHL spokesperson would probably argue that the word “classic” refers to the traditional aspect of playing hockey outdoors. I think it’s more about the NHL trying to make this a classic element of New Year’s Day for the sports-aware public. For the most part, I think it’s been a success. I’m looking forward to it! Here’s a few things I know about the plot and characters.

What’s the plot?

The plot of the Winter Classic has very little to do with the teams playing or the possible result of the game. Frankly, no one cares too much about the outcome of a one of 82 regular season games for two teams likely to make the playoffs. What the Winter Classic is about is pageantry and spectacle. I think I’ve watched some part of all seven Winter Classics and they’ve all provided stunning images in different ways. The games in football stadiums are amazing because of how many people decide to spend their New Year’s Day watching hockey in the freezing cold. The capacity of a football stadium is four to five times more than that of a hockey stadium. The football stadium games also feel more outdoors because the rink is placed right in the middle of a big rectangular field with lots of grass on all sides between the rink and the audience. The baseball stadium games have been cool because of their unique shape and history. Games have been played in the two oldest and most famous baseball parks, Wrigley Field in Chicago and Fenway Park in Boston. Both stadiums are so recognizable that they bring their own sense of cool to the games hosted there.

Aside from just putting a game outside, the NHL does other smart things to promote the game. From 2011 to 2013, the NHL arranged a partnership with HBO who filmed a near real-time documentary about the two teams playing in the Winter Classic and aired it weekly leading up to New Year’s Day. This was a great way for fans to learn their favorite teams (or rivals) and a pretty good way to introduce hockey to non-fans as well. HBO decided not to film another series this year and, although Epix took up the mantle, the results have not been as good. The teams always wear special issue throwback jerseys during the game which adds to the novelty, the classic feel (they’re usually homages to a previous era of uniform), and to the visual spectacle (they chose brighter colors).

This year’s game has a distinct (and to my taste, slightly unnecessary and tacky) flavor of Americana. It’s in Washington D.C.’s baseball stadium, where the Washington Nationals play, and not only have the hosts constructed a model of the U.S. Capital Building which the players will enter through, but they’ve also hired Lee Greenwood (much to some fans dismay) to sing his song, “God Bless the USA” between periods. The Winter Classic is a great showcase to market hockey to non-hockey fans but this year’s pseudo-patriotic pitch seems a little pandering to me. Nonetheless, Mike Emerick, who will be commentating this year’s game, is the absolute best in the business and I’m sure he’ll do a great job selling it.

Who are the characters?

Alexander Ovechkin — Known as “The Great Eight”, Alexander Ovechkin is one of the best goalscorers in hockey. When he’s on, his speed and power is only matched by his enthusiasm for playing hockey. Within a sport that values stoicism, Ovechkin shows more passion that most players, even the great ones. It’s hard to imagine a player more suited for responding to the rare thrill of playing outdoors with an explosive, joyous performance than Ovechkin. I expect him to score a couple goals, get penalized for a reckless hit, and be shown on TV, flashing his trademark toothless grin, at least fifty times.

Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane — The Blackhawks have won the Stanley Cup twice in the last five years, and the two players who have meant the most to the team in that time have been Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane. They are a great study in contrasts. Toews is a center, Kane is a winger. Toews is Canadian, Kane is American. Toews is a responsible, defensive player, Kane is a free-lancing offensive specialist. Toews is a soft-spoken captain who leads his team by example, Kane is a party-boy extraordinaire who has sported a playoff mullet and been arrested for drunkenly assaulting a cab-driver. Together, this odd couple has made the Blackhawks perennially a championship contender and there’s no sign of them stopping.

Who’s going to win?

Who cares? I mean, I guess I’d go with the Blackhawks if I had to choose, but the bigger question is how well will this game serve the NHL? The Winter Classic is an important marketing vehicle for the league and they cleverly scheduled it before the two big college football playoff games (the Rose Bowl and Sugar Bowl). The only problem is, there are already reports that the game might be postponed an hour or more because of glare on the ice. If that happens, it will be hard to get the game in before all the general sports fans in the country switch the channel.

2015 in the United States of Sports

With the new year approaching, I wanted to do something to celebrate the last year and look forward to 2015 with you all.

2014 has been an enormous year in sports and also for Dear Sports Fan. The year began with the NFL playoffs and a decisive Super Bowl win by the deserving Seattle Seahawks. The day after the big game, I took a train to John F. Kennedy airport, where I, like almost everyone who had been to the Super Bowl in New Jersey, waited while our planes were delayed by a snow storm. It was actually a pretty funny sight. All the gates to the Denver area were full of depressed people wearing orange and the gates to the West Coast were packed full of hung-over but happy fans wearing neon green. I flew off to Barcelona where I eventually and slowly made my way over to Russia for the 2014 Winter Olympics. In Russia, I got the chance to watch a bunch of men’s and women’s ice hockey plus some speed skating, curling, and cross-country skiing. It was all good, even when the United States lost to Canada 1-0 in the semifinals of the men’s Ice Hockey. Just a few months later, the nation’s imagination was captured by the most exciting World Cup in my memory. The United States Men’s National team did the country proud, more by generating bizarrely exciting soccer games than by winning, but still. The United States found itself in the throes of a soccer passion that mimicked, if not met the rest of the world’s normal experience. The summer was notable in the sports world for LeBron James deciding to return to the Cleveland Cavaliers, a tectonic shift in the power dynamics of the NBA. For Dear Sports Fan, and for myself, the biggest move of the summer was my decision to leave my job of seven and a half years and throw myself into working on Dear Sports Fan full-time. Since then it’s been a roller-coaster ride. The Kansas City Royals rode their way, bunting and bunting some more, to the World Series before falling to the San Francisco Giants. The focus of the NFL season blurred when off-season issues like domestic abuse, child abuse, institutional idiocy, and the long-term effects of concussions overwhelmed the normal focus on football, fantasy football, and gambling. Like these issues made football seem like an insignificant side-show, so the great cultural issue of police brutality and our legal system’s inability to properly deal with it made sports in general seem like an insignificant side-show.

That’s where we are as we begin to hurtle towards 2015. 2015 is a year of great promise and plentiful sports. To celebrate it with you all, I’ve created a map with the biggest sporting event in each state in 2015 labeled. The events were chosen by me, so your results may vary of course, but I’ll be happy to hear from you with all disputes of import. The events vary in size and national stature, of course. Minnesota may not have anything to match the national profile of Arizona’s Super Bowl, but that doesn’t mean their Star of the North Games in June are anything to sneeze at. In fact, with four to six thousand athletes competing in around twenty sports, the Star of the North Games are a massive undertaking. The sports range from the expected big four of football, baseball, basketball, and hockey, to more unusual events like New Jersey’s international Fistball competition and Delaware’s World Championship of Punkin’ Chunkin’ where teams compete to build the best pumpkin throwing machines.

The United States is truly a great sporting nation and 2015’s sports will truly range from the sublime to the ridiculous. Enjoy them all year with a copy of Dear Sports Fan’s 2015 in the United States of Sports map. If you’d like a copy of the map, sign up for our email list and I will send you either a link to download a high quality .pdf or mail an actual physical copy to your home or office! If you’re already a subscriber and want a map, send me an email to dearsportsfan@gmail.com.

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Thanks for the support,
Ezra Fischer