Comments on: Dave Tippett not a huge fan of “hits”

By: danphipps01

danphipps01 — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 05:39:12 +0000

Huh. Interesting to hear about the giveaways. Actually, that all makes quite a bit of sense. If a team’s really succeeding on sustained attack, they actually SHOULDN’T have a lot of blocks and likely not all that many hits delivered. The latter’s circumstantial – part of what made the Canucks good last year was their cycle play, which involved getting the puck in, working it into and out of the corners and setting up plays right on or behind the goal line – meaning that they were highly physical on the attack as well as the defense. But generally, neither of those things should happen much when you’re controlling the puck – and Vancouver generally made a point of firing it in, then RECOVERING it in the zone rather than controlling from the start, so it still partly fits.

By: davebabychreturns

davebabychreturns — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 00:55:31 +0000

err that should read “don’t know better than to skate with their heads down.” or “know to keep their heads up.”

Ales Hemsky knows what I’m talking about.

By: davebabychreturns

davebabychreturns — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 00:54:13 +0000

It’s kind of like former Canuck Ryan Johnson and shot blocks.

Sure it is a statistical measure that you can’t pile up without having some guts, but it gets to a certain point where constant opportunities to sacrifice your body simply means that you spend most of your time chasing the play.

Ironically having huge numbers in a statistic like giveaways often means a player is a big part of their team ; last year’s leaders were Ilya Kovalchuk and Joe Thorton.

In the same vein, it would be interesting to see which players would lead the league in being hit rather than in delivering hits – I suspect you’d see a lot of key players at the top of that list, well that and a lot of players who don’t know better than to keep their heads up.