IS YOUTUBE AND LACROSSE TYPE MOVES HURTING HOCKEY?
I am a “skills guy”. I have been teaching hockey skills for over forty years and I love to see how today’s players can be creative and stick handle like crazy. No one loves stick handling the puck more than I do. Just ten or fifteen years ago, stick handling was referred to as the “lost art”. However, it has become apparent that many players are so engaged in making a “highlight reel” play, that they are losing perspective of the object of the game which is to score and stop the other team from scoring. As a private lesson instructor, I had students who needed work on just handling the puck tell me that they wanted to work on the “Michigan move”! I am thinking that the Michigan Move(the lacrosse type move where the player scoops the puck on the blade of their stick and carries it on the blade) should be outlawed in hockey. Many youth players are watching this move on YouTube and it is consuming too much time of their skill development. Now when players go behind the net which used to be called “Gretzky’s office” because the net would protect and give Gretzky time and space to make a play, they now look to try the Michigan move to carry the puck on their stick to score. This is not creating skills! Even though the move takes a lot of skill to master, there are still many risks in trying the move and is still a low percentage scoring chance. Back in my day, the opposing team would hit a player so hard trying to show them up by using a Michigan move that they would be out of the lineup for awhile. I believe that coaches have to stress to their players to be more creative and give them the confidence they need to make a highly skilled move, shot, or pass but within a team concept. Young players are watching these stickhandling trickery masters on Youtube. They show you how to bounce the puck in the air using their stick and carry and shoot the puck using lacrosse moves but this is not applicable to the game of hockey. Also, these so called stick/puck masters have never even played hockey at a high level. We have to find a way that players are not so focused on the Michigan move and the variations from it. Maybe we should keep the game of hockey pure and not allow players to carry pucks around the ice like a lacrosse game. Maybe then players will focus on more game applicable skiils.
Robert Gergerich
IHC Hockey
