Among other things here, Clarke is famous for the low number of even strength goals against when he was on ice. He might have used his skillset quite optimally considering what you seem to think?
Being from Sweden I'm curious about what you mean by this. Potvin is a top-10 all-time defenseman according to the core members here. What was so good with Persson?
If you wish, you are also welcome to give your thoughts on Nicklas Lidström. Fact is that his presence on DET coincides with them being the by far best team in the league (not every season but in the long run).
I got quite flamed here a year or so ago, when I pointed that out here. Names like Yzerman, Fedorov, Zetterberg, Datsyuk, etc, etc. come up. Yes they had many great players (unlike how things usually were in BOS where Ray Bourque played).
It seems most people here rate Bourque higher (I'm not saying it is wrong). I think most people also find Bourque to be a better player according to the eye-test. It's easy to see his greatness. Lidström might look a bit less impressive. But then I hear the experts praising Lidström, talking about all the "little", "subtle" things he did. A pro Lidström approach might be that he played half the game, in every key situation, laying the foundation for the team as a whole to succeed. Or replace him with prime Bourque and you would likely get even better team success?
Is Lidström among the players you have looked into? If so, what's your take on him?
Edit: And how good defensively was Bourque, compared to Lidström?
New Jersey with Brodeur is another interesting theme. Was NJD able to build their success from his presence. Or did he somewhat benefit from a great team defensive that helped his save percentage and goals against stats? (Yeah, likely a mix of both. But I still ask.)
Yes I think all things considered, Clarke made the most of his career. He played on the right team in the right era. Today maybe he'd be a Ryan O'Reilly or a Courturier type.
Persson had very good scoring numbers but I was equally impressed with his ability to defend the rush and in his zone. He reminded me a lot of Serge Savard, actually. A player who covered a lot of ground with his skating and who had a good eye for the game.
A long time ago Michael Farber told me how he always thought that Mats Sundin was the best and most noticeable player of that generation when they came together for the Tre Kronor, whereas Lidstrom took a bit of a back seat. I could see how the subtleties in his game could get washed out in those situations.
I haven't studied Bourque in detail but I've always had a hunch that maybe he was a tad overrated if you only looked at scoring and individual awards. Every year he would be among the top in the NHL for shots on goal, and if you're doing that as a D then most likely you're taking a lot of point shots rather than distributing to your Fs (like a Lidstrom would look to do).
As for Brodeur, one of my favorite blogs from about 8 years ago was called Brodeur is a Fraud. I think his legacy came more from his durability (maybe the standup style) and his team context rather than his personal outputs.
Jack, thanks so much for publishing this, this sort of approach was sorely missing in most material about old teams and players, which tends to focus on anecdotal and biographical information on players (understandably for those cases) or results, stats, and awards voting with very little talent evaluation and team tactics. The diagrams are especially well chosen and done.
The games in the period were well chosen, and I'm wondering if you have a plan to pick a particular team from the past to follow for several seasons and build a narrative of its tactical evolution. Or perhaps follow a particular coach?
Looking forward to part two and part three which if you continue with the decade long purview would make excellent topic studies for this series (even a part zero as someone mentioned though that might be difficult given the paucity of video).
Finished reading the book last night and absolutely loved it. I'm going to write up something more in detail a little later, but for now I have a few quick questions for the purpose this thread:
- Any observations on the technical variations between 70s goaltenders like Parent, Crozier, etc, and guys who peaked closer to the early 80s like Liut, Bouchard and so on? I think a lot of ink gets spilled about the revolutionary qualities of Patrick Roy and those who came after him, and less about the (relatively weak) transitional cohort right before that.
- There were a few references to expected goals in the text -was this based on modern data, or did Cory/anyone else use trends found in old games to estimate the value of an "outside the dots Lafleur shot" taken in a 1970s game? I would imagine that "closer=better" still holds, just curious about the methodology at work.
- Not a question, but I was weirdly excited to find out about your inspiration behind shifting Engvall to centre. I distinctly remember having a Facebook conversation about how Engvall reminded me of Pete Mahovlich (specifically Pete as a depth forward on Team Canada, a role more akin to Engvall's NHL role), and I hope @ImporterExporter can back me up on that story being true, haha.
- And finally, do you or have you ever played a musical instrument? I've been trying to fix some of my hand and arm movements on cello lately, and your writing about the craft and pedagogy of athletics has been a source of inspiration to me, even if it doesn't directly tell me how to hold a bow.
What are your thoughts on the BUF top lines of the last half of the 1970s?
They had the french-connection line, which is often mentioned in hockey as one of the greatest of the decade.
But what about the line with Don Luce and Craig Ramsay, who put up excellent +/- and was known for their great defensive play?
(I think they also had Danny Gare, once the league leader in goals.)
Their +/- was very high, season after season, including compared to the Perreault line.
For example: 1974-75 Buffalo Sabres Roster and Statistics | Hockey-Reference.com
Luce is +61, Ramsay +51. The french connection line +7, +5, +1. (This is the season with the biggest difference.)
To an extent that could be explained by
special teams, where PP guys see their +/- suffer because of SH goals against, and SH guys see their +/- benefit because of SH goals for. But this doesn't make up for the difference.
We also have the common argument that "The first line had to face the opponent's best players/checkers", a statement I often find exaggerated since teams play half the season on home ice and having the last shift. Plus that it often goes both ways, because if Perreault had to face the opponent's best players, then Luce might have had to face their best players. (Or maybe the top-lines played each other, so that Luce's line got to play against second lines, which I believe would be easier, but...)
I've read somewhere (I though it was Robert Pelletier, but can't find it) that one of Luce's seasons might have been the best season ever by a BUF player (I think it was meant at least during the 1970s).
Pelletier however do write ( Buffalo Sabres Legends: Don Luce ):
"It is unfortunate that the NHL did not award a trophy for best defensive forward until 1978, as Luce likely would have won the trophy at least in 1974-75, if not in other years."
1973-74: "Luce was named as the team's MVP"
If we sort by ES (even strength) regular season points, the Luce line stands up very well against the french connection line.
For example: NHL Stats The difference in overall point production seems to be because one line was chosen to play PP while the other was chosen to kill penalties.
Later on, Perreault started to produce a bit more ES points than the other BUF players, but the other kept scoring about equally.
Regular season ES points for BUF during 5 seasons (1974-75 to 1978-79): NHL Stats
Perreault 318 (386 gp) +57 --5th if including all players on all teams
Luce 269 (394) +188 --11th
Ramsay 257 (400) +191 --18th
Robert 254 (361) +55 --19th
Martin 246 (352) +47 --21st
Gare 242 (332) +127 --24th
Luce, Ramsay and Gare really seem to produce as good, while having much better +/-.
And, the pattern is the same during the playoffs too. NHL Stats
Gare 26, Luce 25, Perreault 23, Martin 23, Robert 20, Ramsay 19 (all with 41-43 gp).
Regular season, special teams...
BUF penalty killing (Net PP%) during 1974-75 to 1978-79 ranked: 2, 7, 3, 1, 5. Average 3rd, basically tied 2nd, closer to 1st than 4th.
BUF power play (Net PP%) during 1974-75 to 1978-79 ranked: 2, 6, 6, 5, 12. Average 4th, basically tied 5th, closer to 6th than 3rd. (4th also if excluding 1978-79, but then close to 3rd but far from 2nd.)
So BUF's PK actually was quite better than their PP.
So what do you say? Was the Luce line actually as valuable and good as the Perreault line?
Hockey Tactics Retrospective Part 1: 1975-1986
By Jack Han
No more bullshit. That's the mantra Jack Han lays out at the beginning of Hockey Tactics Retrospective Part 1: 1975-1986. Both this book and its recent companion, Hockey Tactics 2020, are a strike against the vague and moralistic cliches that dominate mainstream hockey discourse. Sharp and specific, they both aim to describe exactly what's happening on the ice and the thinking behind those actions. Hockey Tactics Retrospective extends that approach backward, looking at some of the greatest games played in the early stages of widely available colour video.
The style is fairly singular. In Han's writing, the action and the analysis happen simultaneously. Plays unfold beat by beat, with insights into what each player is thinking, and where the risks and opportunities lie around them. It's said that the game's great players see the game in slow motion – one imagines seeing the game that way is a little like immersing yourself in this book's prose. The illustrations by Bruno-Clement Boudreault are at once minimal and lifelike – think table top hockey figurines coming to life on a coach's white board, and they add to the experience.
There's no shortage of Xs and Os, but rather than laying out an exhaustive guide to systems and structures for each team, Han drops in diagrams where they're needed for illumination – in hockey, situations develop on the fly, and tactics shift to meet them. Data tracker Corey Sznajder also lends a hand, tallying micro-events in each game, which Han uses to double check and support his observations.
The most rewarding part of reading this book is the way it fleshes out players into three-dimensional athletes instead of abstractions. You may know that Bobby Clarke was a skilled stickhandler and passer, and his assist totals bear that out, but you might not have ever observed that his feet don't move independently of his stick, making him more valuable in small areas than the neutral zone. Even an archetypal old-school defenseman like “King Kong” Korab is noted as much for how he moves the puck and adjusts his skating when defending entries as he is for his size and physicality. When it comes to what's in front of Han's eyes, he does not bullshit.
Hockey Tactics Retrospective shouldn't be viewed as a work of sweeping historical context. There's a tendency to declare, without evidence, teams and players “the first” to try or execute ideas, and statistical analysis is occasionally parachuted into the mix in ways that don't entirely fit. But there are other books that one can read to find a broad survey of great players and the play styles they were known for, other accounts of the genealogy of ideas throughout the history of the game. Multiple websites provide pages and pages of numbers for every high level league ever put on ice. But I don't know of any that do exactly what Han's book does.
This will be a book I go back to. It was a good read cover-to-cover with a pot of tea, but I'll read it again as I re-watch each game and connect the analysis to what's on the screen. I'll read it again in tandem with coaching manuals from the past, to compare and contrast the language used and value systems applied. I may even just read it for no reason at all.
Hockey Tactics Retrospective Part 1: 1975-1986 was published as an eBook by Gumroad press and can be found at Gumroad's website.
This site uses cookies to help personalise content, tailor your experience and to keep you logged in if you register.
By continuing to use this site, you are consenting to our use of cookies.
