Evolution of the Power Play

[tarheelhockey]

I checked the game recaps of Montreal playoff games in the Gazette in 1927 and 1928, but found no mention of five-man attacks or any indication that more than three players at a time were in the attack. It seems likely that the new rules of 1929-30 made a five-man attack possible, whether it was with a man advantage or while trying to tie the game at the end.

Also noteworthy that Eddie Gerard resigned as Maroons coach in July 1929 after five years behind their bench. Gerard was 10 years older than Dunc Munro and had been trained in the era of clearly-defined point and cover-point positions. I hope it's not condescending to Gerard to suggest he may not have had Munro's flexibility of imagination about how the back line could be used to support the forwards in the offensive zone.

Some time ago, someone posted video of a Red Wings scrimmage from the 1920s. The defensemen were still standing perfectly still in their own end, rather than moving with the flow of the game. The rules allowed a maximum of three players including the goalie to remain in the defensive zone once the puck had moved up ice. That suggests to me that putting forwards in those positions and bringing them up-ice was a fairly radical change in the concept of a hockey "position" per se.

To draw another football comparison, this would be kind of like the newfangled Wildcat formation, where a running back stands in the quarterback's position and assumes the duties of both roles. The first time you see it, if you're used to traditional alignments, it just seems "wrong". I'm sure the five-man attack seemed like a gimmick to a lot of coaches when they first saw it, particularly since it appeared to backfire often.

If in fact this was Munro's innovation or that of another Maroon, the timing of its debut after Gerard's departure and during Munro's first season as a coach makes a lot of sense.

 

[tarheelhockey]

From the New York Times, 1/19/1929:

As it is played now, hockey is strictly a defensive game. Even with two men short, a team time and again has been able to hold off a five-man attack with a three-man defense.

That is pretty much a description of a modern-style power play, right?

And just for kicks...

To this observer it seems that a simpler method of getting more scoring would be to widen the net or cut down the size of the goalie's defensive armament.

Other references to 5-man attacks in the NHL in early 1929:

In a last desperate dying attempt to draw level the Americans hurled a continuous five-man attack at the Maroon net but Benedict was enjoying one of his best nights and could not be beaten.

The Leafs sent up a five-man attack, but could not again beat Roach in the short time.

During the final ten minutes the Bruins staged a five-man attack and most of the vicious play was staged inside the Chicago blue line. When the final bell rang, however, all the Bruins had to show for their desperate drive was half a dozen broken sticks.

^ One of the defensemen moving up on that attack was none other than Eddie Shore.

There is a definite point in December 1928 and January 1929 where the term "five man attack" appears in NHL articles. Presumably this is the period when it was codified as a specific strategy?

Edit:

The earliest record I can find of a team bringing five men up the ice in a massed attack, attempting to outnumber the opponent on the offensive side:

Princeton was now playing its entire team on attack, trying for a goal, and Langtry had a busy time at the Toronto cage.

 

[SealsFan]

Whew, that's some extensive research, much appreciated. I'll have to bookmark this and come back and read it when I have more time.

 

[tarheelhockey]

Could we do one of these for the PK too?

One would think that the concept of "being on the power play" would develop simultaneous to the concept of "being on the penalty kill". Intuitively, they seem like two sides of the same coin.

Oddly, it would appear that the phrase "penalty kill" actually came into parlance in the mid-1940s. The earliest mention I can find is in 1946, and it's used in the modern sense of a player having the specific role of killing off penalties.

Anybody else know of earlier usage?

 

[nik jr]

it seems that no one noticed this from post #10.

Noranda helped matters for the Kirkland gang by picking up 2 penalties in 3 minutes. One to Gendron for using his stick like an ax, and the other to Marcotte for making love to Roche.

To follow up on my earlier post, I checked out the game recap of a Montreal Maroons game from 1930. Specifically, their first playoff game against Boston.

Montreal Gazette, March 24, 1930:

But "in the dying minutes of the game"...

Another summary of the game put it this way, giving us some times for the events.


In this case the five man attack was not on a man advantage, but an attempt to come back from a 3-1 deficit with eight minutes left in the third period of a playoff game.

This game took place in Montreal just six days before the Gazette writer wrote of the Rangers trying the "Maroons' trick of putting on five forwards." It's likely that the writer of the latter article, C.H. Peters, was referring to the Maroons' comeback attempt listed here.

And that comeback attempt was probably not the origin of the five-man attack. Regular season Maroon game summaries are not as detailed as the playoff writeups, but of their January 9 game against the Rangers it says "Bill Phillips broke away from (the Rangers') closing five-man attack long enough to tally what proved to be the deciding goal."

I checked the game recaps of Montreal playoff games in the Gazette in 1927 and 1928, but found no mention of five-man attacks or any indication that more than three players at a time were in the attack. It seems likely that the new rules of 1929-30 made a five-man attack possible, whether it was with a man advantage or while trying to tie the game at the end.

The sense I get is that five-man attacks were seen as a bit risky - almost like pulling the goalie today, although not to that extent. With the changing rules, defencemen probably weren't used to defending the rush all the way back from the opposing blue line, and goalies weren't used to seeing opposing players coming in on clear breakaways with no defenders standing in the way.

OP has a bit about that.

A tie seemed impending when Art Ross, manager of the Bruins, gave the signal for the power play which so often had been ridiculed and so often had proved a boomerang.

Down the ice came Shore, carrying the puck and driving it into the corner where Weiland hurried after it and, quick as a flash, passed it out in front of the net where Shore took a shot.

i have not done more research on this topic recently. even when a PP is described, it is not in such detail to get a good picture. some video would be very helpful.

One would think that the concept of "being on the power play" would develop simultaneous to the concept of "being on the penalty kill". Intuitively, they seem like two sides of the same coin.

Oddly, it would appear that the phrase "penalty kill" actually came into parlance in the mid-1940s. The earliest mention I can find is in 1946, and it's used in the modern sense of a player having the specific role of killing off penalties.

Anybody else know of earlier usage?

i have read many old newspaper reports, and i don't remember seeing the phrase PK in '30s or earlier.

 

[overpass]

i have read many old newspaper reports, and i don't remember seeing the phrase PK in '30s or earlier.

The specific phrase wasn't used, but the concept was certainly there.

In the 1930 Canadiens playoff game recap I quoted from the Gazette, the writer noted that Georges Mantha (a Montreal substitute winger) came on the ice every time Montreal was down a man, and performed well. Teams have probably had key penalty killers for as long as there have been man advantages and substitutes.

"Ragging" the puck, or playing keep-away, was a popular tactic while shorthanded. You can find mentions of Johnny Gottselig and other skilled stickhandlers being used while down a man to rag the puck.

 

[Theokritos]

Have to bump this excellent thread. Art Ross himself did comment on the matter of "pressure hockey" in April 1942.

Art Ross, Montreal Gazette 1942/4/9:

I do not like the hockey at it is played today in the N.H.L. It has gone beyond reason. These pitch-and-toss manoeuvres with the puck have created a prolonged mad scramble of 11 players inside one blue line all the time; for if it is not at one end of the rink it is at the other. There is not enough really good hockey left in the game now.

The various phases of evolution and development of the game have all contributed to bringing this type of scramble into being. We in Boston must take the blame for the power-play, which was introduced in the days of Eddie Shore and George Owen. Forechecking, at first employed by the Rangers, and perfected and given prominence by Tommy Gorman at Chicago in 1933-34, when the Black Hawks won the Stanley Cup for him. The so-called stream-lining of hockey by the Rangers. All these things, plus new rules and other new departures, each in itself an improvement, have been added together with the result that what is termed pressure hockey is now the vogue. Actually, it is merely one prolonged scramble; a constant milling and muddled attack. It is high times something is done about it.

His own take on how to solve the issue:

One rule change can eliminate all that sustained gang-play and can alter the entire aspect of the game, returning it to the normalcy we used to know as hockey. It is very simply: just let the defending team forget its own blue line for offensive purposes. (...)

Well, here is what I mean, abolish the offside pass by members of the defending team over their own blue line. That is to say, if your team is under pressure and penned behind its own blue line, the puck could be passed right from the back boards, or by the goalkeeper, right out into the central zone and up as far as the other blue line to a waiting teammate.

There is your answer, that would break the back of pressure hockey, because no team could afford to send a full five men charging into the enemy's defence zone for fear of being caught cold by such a pass. All clubs would be forced to keep men back to guard against that ever-present threat. (...)

Fourth months later the NHL and the CAHA would adopt this idea, albeit in a more moderate elaboration: passing over the blue line was now permitted, but not up to the other blue line but only to the newly-introduced center line.

An additional remark by Art Ross might give as a clue why the term "power play" became a synonym for playing against a short handed opponent:

Incidentally, that same play, if adopted, would minimalize the potential costliness of a penalty because a penalized team could not be hemmed in so thoroughly. It would, indeed, remove some of the teeth from the attack and strengthen the defence.

"Power play" (sending all five of your skaters into the opponent's end on an attack) was a tactic that could be employed at any stage of the game in the 1930s/40s and was regularly used in 5 vs 5 situations by certain teams and/or coaches. Using it when the opponent was a man short however must have been particularly promising and popular. It's easy to imagine that this phenomenon would have encouraged the identification of "power play" with "playing with the man advantage".

 

[Killion]

Bumped Again...

Excellent thread started on this subject some time ago 66871...

To clarify. Teams now have a pretty developed way of playing with a man advantage. And some of those are distinctive from how they normally play. For instance, you will see snipers moved back to the point (so four forwards on the ice) or in the case of the B's last night, a defenseman parked in front of the opponents net.

I can imagine that it wasn't always this way after the man-advantage was introduced (but perhaps I'm wrong). But even when I was a kid, I don't think there was as much as of a conscious effort to get the puck to a PPQB (though that might have been a by-product of watching the Pens pre-Mario). And thinking back to when the man-advantage was first introduced I can imagine teams playing pretty much like they did 5-5, just with a bit more success due to the advantage. Or am I wrong?

Any light that could be shed on this would be of great interest to me. Thanks in advance.

 

[Beef Invictus]

" Originally Posted by John Kieran
To this observer it seems that a simpler method of getting more scoring would be to widen the net or cut down the size of the goalie's defensive armament."

HA! Especially since, at that point, isn't this like asking goalies to go naked?

Sorry if I missed this in the thread...but how did PPs work before forward passing? I would think that would make the PK's life much easier.

Was it possible to intentionally shoot wide as a means of moving the puck up? Or did the other team have to touch the puck first?

 

[66871]

Great thread and great research.

(Also, thanks for finding it and bumping it, Killion)

 

[Theokritos]

Art Ross, Montreal Gazette 1942/4/9:

The various phases of evolution and development of the game have all contributed to bringing this type of scramble into being. We in Boston must take the blame for the power-play, which was introduced in the days of Eddie Shore and George Owen. Forechecking, at first employed by the Rangers, and perfected and given prominence by Tommy Gorman at Chicago in 1933-34, when the Black Hawks won the Stanley Cup for him. The so-called stream-lining of hockey by the Rangers. All these things, plus new rules and other new departures, each in itself an improvement, have been added together with the result that what is termed pressure hockey is now the vogue.

Some historical background:

Development of Modern Forechecking:

13.4.1934 - The Telegraph:

Forechecking, a new development in professional hockey, instead of the usual rushes and back-checking won the Stanley Cup for the Chicago Blackhawks according to Manager Tommy Gorman. The radical idea developed in the last six weeks of the season, will be generally used throughout the National Hockey League before the end of another season, he added.

The idea of "forechecking", he explained, is to bottle up the opposing forwards in their own defensive zone. Our system consisted of the center and wings doing right down into the opponents' territory while our defense men moved over our own blue line. The Canadiens gave us more trouble than any of the other clubs because of the speed of Howie Morenz and the great stickhandling of Aurel Joliat.

13.4.1934 - The Border Cities Star:

"Forechecking" Becomes Latest Hockey Style
Tommy Gorman Discusses Success of System

Forechecking, a new development in professional hockey, won the Stanley Cup and world championship for Chicago, Tommy Gorman, manager of the victorious Black Hawks, explained today. Before leaving for his Ottawa home, Gorman told about the system he believes will be generally used by National League teams next season.

The Hawks, he said, used a revolutionary idea for the last six weeks of the season and in downing Montreal Canadiens, Maroons and Detroit Red Wings in the playoffs. Perhaps it explains why the Hawks had more shots on goal than their foes and yet played near-perfect defensive hockey.

"True, our backchecking was great," said Gorman, "but it was our forechecking that downed all our rivals. About five weeks ago, just prior to playing the Rangers in New York, we conceived the idea of bottling up the opposing forwards - not letting them our of their own zone.

"We studied and developed a system which consisted of the centre and wings going right down into their opponents' territory while our defensemen moved over our own blue line. Canadiens gave us more trouble than any of the other clubs because of the terrific speed of Morenz and the great stickhandling of Joliat and Gagnon.

"In Montreal, in the first game of our series against Maroons Johnny Gottselig scored the first goal for us in less than a minute when he dashed in and stole the puck off the goaltender's pads. We carried the play right to them and scored in 40 seconds.

"In the third period, when they expected us to lay back, having obtained a lead of one goal, we again gave Maroons the works and scored twice in less than two minutes. When Maroons returned here we tallied the opening goal in 25 seconds. Against Detroit, we carried out the same system with equal success. We scored on them in 28 seconds in last Sunday's battle here and would have made it three straight if Chuck Gardiner had been himself.

"Jack Adams was the first of the opposing managers to see through our new system. He tried to beat it by having the defensemen trap the puck and then whip it over to their forwards at the blue line. In Sunday's game it looked as though Jack had us bewildered, but our forwards kept on going in and the Red Wings could never get organized.

"The forechecking of the Black Hawks in Tuesday's game won the championship. Weiland, Lewis, Aurie and other Detroit forwards were completely baffled. Lewis became so disgusted on one occasion that he golfed the puck down the ice. Goodfellow could never get going as MacFayden followed in like a leech and kept poking the puck off his stick.

"It was necessary to change our attack every minute or so, but all three lines stood up wonderfully well. In each playoff series we steam-rollered our opponents and wore them down. Instead of backing out of the enemy zone, the Black Hawks kept charging in. The system worked much better than we expected.

"Here are examples of what our prowling forwards did in close. Thompson's winning goal in the first overtime game at Detroit was scored after Romnes had poked the puck off Teddy Graham's stick. In the instance of March's winning goal here, our defensemen moved up and refused to let Detroit get the puck out of their own territory.

"Conacher finally trapped it behind the Red Wings' net and then March held it against the boards. Both Coulter and Conacher moved up and when Romnes drew the puck from Weiland, he had three men to pass to. Goodfellow was off at the time and March was uncovered. Then followed his winning shot."

Gorman, who built the Hawks into a championship outfit in one season, said he expected every club in the NHL would employ some variation of forechecking next season. "They will have to," he said, "just as they had to follow suit when Major McLaughlin, owner of the Hawks, introduced his three forward lines four years ago."

17.4.1934 - The Saskatoon Star-Phoenix:

While Joliat was the pick of the sports writers he was not without competition. Big Lionel Conacher, defensive bulwark of the Hawks, around whose bulky figure Tommy Gorman built up the strategy which resulted in the Stanley Cup going to the Western United States city for the first time in history, ran Aurel a close race.

Adoption of System and Resulting Rules Changes

21.3.1936 - The Windsor Daily Star:

Both Sudbury goals came on ganging plays. They sent five men on the attack and kept play in the Hamilton defense zone for minutes at a time.

21.3.1938 - The Calgary Daily Herald:

Cecil Duncan, president of the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association, last night gave out a decision regarding the rule about "icing" the puck in amateur hockey. The rule has been enforced to date this season with a view to preventing a team from deliberately delaying the game, play being stopped and the puck brought back and faced-off in the defending team's zone when a shot from that zone has crossed the second blue line.

11.11.1938 - The Montreal Gazette:

Toronto's Maple Leafs, noted for their penchant for an incessant attack, did an about-face last night at the Forum and resorted to strictly defensive hockey. The strategy was immediately successful because it enabled the Leafs to shut out Canadiens, 2-0, but it failed to provide a crowd of 7,000 with much in the way of spectacle.

...

Thomas Patrick Gorman, the Forum's manager who this year looks on at hockey as merely another spectator, must have had his eyes opened by the Leafs' display of a defensive system he evolved at Chicago in 1933-34 which helped the Black Hawks win their first Stanley Cup, said system being forechecking. For the Torontonians gave a remarkably effective demonstration of this type of play bs repeatedly, at Canadiens' blue line and in the centre-ice area, before they were well started.


...

The Leafs, despite their defensive attitude, had more good chances than the Habitants, because they broke faster, but they managed to capitalize on only two of them. Busher Jackson, skating as smoothly and as fast as ever on left wing, started the play for the initial goal. He went in on the left after a loose puck and passed to Gus Marker, the ex-Maroon on right wing. Marker bumped into Thoms on the play, touched the puck, but Thoms grabbed it and drove an off-chance backhander at Wilf Cude. Cude kicked at the low shot and missed, and the puck entered the net on the short side.

11.3.1941 - Ottawa Citizen:

NHL May Try It

Irvin predicted here two weeks ago that National League teams soon would adopt the two-goalie system and said Canadiens might put the idea into force before the end of the season. Smith said Rovers will experiment with two netminders here next Sunday in a league game against Atlantic City and "we're also going to experiment with only one blue line - at center ice - in an effort to cut down offsides and bring the rules in alignment with the modern, faster play, with its ganging attacks."

"I think that if the new rules are adopted, we'll certainly need two goalies."

The only time an attacking player will be offside is when he steps over the center blue line ahead of the puck. At the same time, it is planned to place linesmen on ladders as tennis umpires at the net - at the side of the rink at center instead of skating with the play.

...

Speaking of the "one blue line" experiment, Tom Lockhart, league president, said:

"Every team is putting on ganging plays, so why not give them a larger area to work in. We believe that by doing so we'll be cutting down offsides and speeding up the game. Maybe other leagues, including the pros, will benefit by our experiments. Anyway, we'll give it a trial with a view to adopting the rules for next season."