SIHR Blog Loafing Offside: An Over-Anxiety to Score

[sr edler]

Dictionary sources make the claim that a loafer, while in human form, is an idle person, or someone who does nothing.

The Vancouver Sun, while reporting on an offside infraction committed by star forward Fred “Cyclone” Taylor during a February 21, 1919 game in the Pacific Coast Hockey Association between the Vancouver Millionaires and the Victoria Aristocrats, instead used the euphemism “over-anxiety to score” to describe a similar type of behaviour.[1]

A more modern hockey terminology would probably refer to the same type of action as either “floating” or “cherry picking.”

But no matter how over-anxious someone was to score around the time when Cyclone Taylor was an active puck chaser, loafing offside was a punishable offense, much like cross-checking, slashing or tripping, and carried a standard minor sanction of either two or three minutes in the penalty box.

Fred “Cyclone” Taylor​

American hockey player Trafford Hicks, in his 1912 Boston Globe column “Hints for Young Hockey Players”, described the offside loafing infraction in the following words:

“An infraction of the rules called “loafing offside” should draw a suspension penalty. A player who is offside and waiting for some one to skate up to him with the puck and cause him to become onside is termed to be loafing offside.”

and added further:

“Likewise, waiting in front of the opponent’s net to score on a rebound from a shot farther back in the rink is a case of “loafing.” A player must always start to skate back on side.”[2]

Some leagues at the time also held a specific penalty for so-called “offside interference,” which was the practice of obstructing opponent players by skating in front of a teammate in possession of the puck.

Loafing offside was a quite commonplace on-ice sin among the forwards during the first few decades of the 1900s, but some of the worst culprits included Newsy Lalonde, Cyclone Taylor, Barney Stanley and brothers Harry and Tommy Smith. All of whom were also prolific in the goal scoring department.

Montreal Daily Mail, Feb. 15, 1915​

During the 1910s, the two highest competing hockey leagues in the world were the National Hockey Association (NHA) in eastern Canada and the Pacific Coast Hockey Association (PCHA) in the Pacific Northwest. The two leagues didn’t only compete with each other over hockey players and the coveted Stanley Cup, but they also, at various points in time, applied slightly different rules to the game. Not only regarding the six (NHA) or seven (PCHA) man game, but also regarding the offside loafing rule. And for the 1913–14 season, the PCHA came to apply a “no-offside-in-center-ice” rule, where a player could loaf freely in the neutral zone before moving into offensive zone territory, and with forward passing allowed within the same mid-ice area.[3]

The main goal of freeing up the 70 feet center ice area from the offside loafing rule, as stated by PCHA president Frank Patrick, was to hurry up the speed of the game, and also to cut down on the many delays caused by offside infractions in the neutral zone.

After a pre-season game on November 28, 1913 between the Vancouver Millionaires and the Victoria Aristocrats, referees Hugh Lehman and Frank Kavanagh weren’t much impressed by how the forward pass could improve the game. Lehman, also a netminder with the New Westminster Royals, claimed that it broke up combination plays and gave players too much of a chance to loaf offside. Also Si Griffis, a defenseman with the Millionaires, was unimpressed by the change:

“There is too much bunching of the players, less team work and the greater tendency to loaf offside.”[4]

– Si Griffis voicing his displeasure with Frank Patrick’s new offside rule prior to the 1913–14 PCHA season​

Lester Patrick, alongside his brother Frank the chief architect behind the PCHA, hoped that the new rule change would work by implementing stricter officiating, and he was quite satisfied with the result after the first game of the 1913–14 season between the Vancouver Millionaires and the New Westminster Royals:

“With stricter refereeing, the offside rule worked to perfection, and I think that after a trial or two, that the ruling will be officially adopted by the Coast League.”[5]

– Lester Patrick on December 5, 1913 after the first game of the 1913–14 PCHA season​

Despite some initial displeasure voiced by the players, the new offside rule was deemed successful enough to stick around, and after the 1913–14 season the NHA followed suit of the PCHA and adopted a moderated offside rule allowing mid-ice loafing, while importing the lines separating the three zones, but without the forward pass.[3]

Lester and Frank Patrick​

One prominent instance where the offside loafing rule came to play a crucial role occurred during the 1918 Stanley Cup Finals between the Toronto Arenas and the Vancouver Millionaires. The two teams were tied at two games each, and the fifth and deciding game at the Arena Gardens in Toronto on March 30, 1918 turned out a closely contested battle. Vancouver forward Cyclone Taylor tied the game at 1-1 in the third period, but his penchant for committing offside loafing infractions became costly for his team. When the referee ruled Taylor off the ice for his third loafing penalty of the game, the fast skating puck virtuoso had to sit helplessly between the timekeepers and watch Toronto forward Corbett Denneny waltz through the Vancouver defense and score the Stanley Cup clinching goal.[6]

Rather than an over-anxiety to score, it was the strenuous pace of the game that caught up with the 33-year old player, causing him to loaf just a little too much. Cyclone Taylor led the whole Millionaires team in penalty minutes in the Toronto series, and it wasn’t because of his rough play.

The National Hockey League, successor to the National Hockey Association, inherited the offside loafing rule from its predecessor league. But with the introduction of the forward pass at mid-ice for the 1918–19 NHL season the practice of loafing offside among the players became a bit less frequent going into the 1920s, although it was still regularly called both in the NHL and out west in the PCHA and the Western Canada Hockey League.

Ottawa Citizen, Nov. 25, 1918​

At the tail end of the 1920s the loafing penalty became obsolete on the biggest hockey stage when the NHL briefly abandoned the offside rule for its 1929–30 season, allowing players to enter the offensive zone before the puck, in a desperate attempt to increase scoring. When the rule was changed back mid-season due to too much loafing and parking in front of the nets, with the blue lines instead working as the new offside standard, it didn’t any longer make much sense to penalize loafing and the penalty fell into obscurity.


Sources:

[1] Vancouver Sun, Feb. 23, 1919
[2] Boston Globe, Jan. 27, 1912
[3] The Province (Vancouver), Apr. 6, 1914
[4] The Province (Vancouver), Dec. 1, 1913
[5] Victoria Daily Times, Dec. 6, 1913
[6] Ottawa Citizen, Apr. 1, 1918


Posted on Behind the Boards (SIHR Blog)

Click to read more...

 

[Theokritos]

It's quite interesting how different rules shaped the game at different times, and it's also interesting which impacts rule changes had (sometimes as intended, sometimes not quite).

Big changes like the introduction of the forward passing or the introduction of the blue line are widely known, but the loafing penalty isn't and I'm happy some light is shone on it as I've only become aware of it a few months ago (see thread: Ancient Video Footage: 1929-1941). Jeff Miclash (@TotalBruins) will publish a book about the 1929-1939 Boston Bruins this year that will also bring up loafing and this article is a great primer that I will certainly re-read ahead of opening his book.

 

[sr edler]

Jeff Miclash (@TotalBruins) will publish a book about the 1929-1939 Boston Bruins this year that will also bring up loafing and this article is a great primer that I will certainly re-read ahead of opening his book.

That's interesting.

I actually spent some time yesterday looking through one Asterix album online, trying to catch an instance of a Gaelic football game depicting offside interference, and the film version of him in Britain too, just for fun to include here in the thread, but I'm starting to think it was just a false memory of mine, because it wasn't there.

 

[overpass]

Thanks for the great read!

I was familiar with the concept of loafing from reading some old papers. I’ve also read about Tommy and Harry Smith being called out for loafing. But I guess I never realized how it was specifically tied to being offside.

 

[sr edler]

Thanks for the great read!

I was familiar with the concept of loafing from reading some old papers. I’ve also read about Tommy and Harry Smith being called out for loafing. But I guess I never realized how it was specifically tied to being offside.

I'm glad you liked it, op. And yeah, sometimes it's a bit hard to catch or follow all the nuances in the game back then, with all the different rules and rule changes, unless one really plows down into the various match reports over a full decade, et cetera.

I know this is a NA forum, but I get some Pippo Inzaghi (football/soccer player) vibes from a player like Tommy Smith, where he spends almost the entire game on the offside line, and then bam scores a couple of goals without participating overly much in the overall flow of the game, so to speak. Soccer's also been a game without line changes, such as 1910s hockey. So some of it must also have been for conserving energy. Today's forward players can catch their breath on the bench 2/3 of the game, but you couldn't do that back then as a regular/key player.

And in the 1910s you also started to see a more general flow in the game from all its participants, where players on defense also weren't just standing around and waiting anymore. I remember reading about Ottawa College playing Cleveland, I think in 1915, and the Ottawa papers complaining about Cleveland's defenseman Coddy Winters not joining his teammates on offense, just staying home, which would be a form "reversed loafing" or loafing on the defense. I've only caught that exact phrasing once though, in a Canadian paper, and you really couldn't be penalized for it (loafing on defense) unless it was blatantly lying down in front of your goalie or your net.

 

[Theokritos]

I remember reading about Ottawa College playing Cleveland, I think in 1915, and the Ottawa papers complaining about Cleveland's defenseman Coddy Winters not joining his teammates on offense, just staying home, which would be a form "reversed loafing" or loafing on the defense. I've only caught that exact phrasing once though, in a Canadian paper, and you really couldn't be penalized for it (loafing on defense) unless it was blatantly lying down in front of your goalie or your net.

I like that expression. And it leads to an almost philosophical thought. When did "reverse loafing" really began? Arguably on the very day one of the players on the ice started to guard the net and thus goaltending was born.

 

[tarheelhockey]

One of the things I enjoy about studying early-era hockey is that the rules were structured much more actual along principled lines, to encourage an interesting and fair flow of play. The referees were much more a "judge of play" than how we think of them today, and as a result we ended up with a much more colorful and opinionated set of referees.

When big money got involved circa 1925, the rulebook began to shift more toward objective measurements. We are still seeing that process taking place year-by-year, with increasing reliance on video replay and the increasing emphasis on millimeter-level scrutiny (which is not coincidentally happening at the same time that gambling money is becoming a primary source of revenue). The whole idea of "game management" is now strictly a pejorative, because referees are expected to hold no subjective opinions whatsoever.

Loafing is a great example of a rule that could exist in the former environment, but not the latter. Aside from being a technical violation it always had a certain judgmental aspect, like it was a character issue not to hustle back into the flow of play. When the concept of offside shifted to being objectively measured by a line on the ice, the concept of loafing stopped being a formal penalty and shifted more toward a vague disdain for cherry-pickers. Just an interesting shift in the psychology of the game, particularly toward the role of the referee and the concept of flow-of-play as being a character and fairness issue.

 

[Staniowski]

"Goal suck" is the proper hockey term for a player who has an "over-anxiety to score".

Good article.

 

[sr edler]

The referees were much more a "judge of play" than how we think of them today, and as a result we ended up with a much more colorful and opinionated set of referees.

It's interesting you bring this up, because they actually had an arrangement back then with two referees, with one of them acting as a judge of play. When I did research for this piece and came over the instance of game five of the 1918 Stanley Cup Finals, where Cyclone Taylor was ruled off thrice for loafing, I first read a match report on it and assumed it was referee Harvey Pulford who had given those penalties to him. But then I read another match report from another paper, of the same game, where it specifically says the penalties were given to him by judge of play Russell Bowie. Another paper just names them both as referees for the same game, so I decided to just put "when the referee ruled Taylor off the ice for his third loafing penalty of the game" in the text, but I think it was Bowie who ruled Taylor off for those loafing penalties and not Pulford.

I think Bowie was a guy with a fairly old school-ish hockey mentality, and famously refused to turn professional despite offers from the Wanderers, so I guess he could have been bit picky with Taylor's loafing.

They also had umpires acting as goal judges back then, so it wasn't just one referee doing everything. They didn't have instant replays, but it happened sometimes that the umpires were removed and replaced after complaints.

 

[Sanf]

Great stuff! And I do love those cartoony drawings of the time. I think I have some hundreds clipped somewhere.

Yeah Smith was somewhat notorious loafer. I believe late career Phillips and Ken Mallen got some reputation. And later Barney Stanley.

Complitely out of memory, but I tend to remember that WCHL at their inaugural season still had loafing on center ice forbidded? I think it partly explains Stanley´s reputation (Also Big-4 had loafing same loafing rule). WCHL early had the strongest ties to amateur rules I feel. They unified rules on the second season to play inter-league games with PCHA.

It has been long time goal to make some sort of compilation of the rule changes from the time. Fact that there weren´t unified rules and they honed them sometimes back and forth. It has frustrated me out of it to this day.

 

[sr edler]

It has been long time goal to make some sort of compilation of the rule changes from the time. Fact that there weren´t unified rules and they honed them sometimes back and forth. It has frustrated me out of it to this day.

That sounds like quite a project.

 

[Theokritos]

Loafing is a great example of a rule that could exist in the former environment, but not the latter. Aside from being a technical violation it always had a certain judgmental aspect, like it was a character issue not to hustle back into the flow of play. When the concept of offside shifted to being objectively measured by a line on the ice, the concept of loafing stopped being a formal penalty and shifted more toward a vague disdain for cherry-pickers. Just an interesting shift in the psychology of the game, particularly toward the role of the referee and the concept of flow-of-play as being a character and fairness issue.

But loafing offside was not just a judgmental call, right? If no forward passing was allowed, then the concept of offside was objectively measured too: by the puck carrier.

 

[GMR]

Not a single mention of the player in the OPs avatar?

 

[tarheelhockey]

But loafing offside was not just a judgmental call, right? If no forward passing was allowed, then the concept of offside was objectively measured too: by the puck carrier.

In my understanding, it was similar in principle to “intentional offside” today. Is the player making an effort to get back onside and make a legal play? If so, he’s simply offside and it’s a whistle. If not, he’s loafing and it’s a penalty.

 

[Theokritos]

In my understanding, it was similar in principle to “intentional offside” today. Is the player making an effort to get back onside and make a legal play? If so, he’s simply offside and it’s a whistle. If not, he’s loafing and it’s a penalty.

I see. Yes, there is certainly judgment involved on part of the official when making such a call.

I wonder how hard it was for the officials to call offside in a fast-moving game like hockey when they had to determine a players' position relative to a moving target, the puck carrier. Determing a players' position relative to a fixed line seems the much easier thing to do. And there were only two officials on the ice. They had to keep track of at least two other forwards and whether one was ahead of the puck carrier the moment a pass was made or not. I wonder if there were forwards who were deliberately skirting the (moving) line and stepping over it to gain a territorial advantage, and whether that too fed into the notion of loafing as a character issue (trying to deceive the officials), or whether that was a different issue altogether and loafing penalties were only called for obvious and blatant offsides.

 

[tarheelhockey]

I see. Yes, there is certainly judgment involved on part of the official when making such a call.

I wonder how hard it was for the officials to call offside in a fast-moving game like hockey when they had to determine a players' position relative to a moving target, the puck carrier. Determing a players' position relative to a fixed line seems the much easier thing to do. And there were only two officials on the ice. They had to keep track of at least two other forwards and whether one was ahead of the puck carrier the moment a pass was made or not. I wonder if there were forwards who were deliberately skirting the (moving) line and stepping over it to gain a territorial advantage, and whether that too fed into the notion of loafing as a character issue (trying to deceive the officials), or whether that was a different issue altogether and loafing penalties were only called for obvious and blatant offsides.

I really wish we had more of a paper-trail for officiating at the time. We barely even have evidence of how players were trained, let alone referees. It would be fascinating to find an old training manual, or some kind of memoir by a referee giving insight on how they made these decisions.

I really believe most of them had a personal role in the game, deciding where to draw the lines on subjective violations, how exacting to be on offsides, that sort of thing. One thing that often surprises me is the sheer number of whistles in NHL games in the mid-late 1920s (and maybe earlier?) so it would certainly seem that by the time blue lines came into play the refs had begun to really scrutinize the play rather than letting things slide.

 

[moreyhockey]

There was also a corrollary in the defensive zone. 60-minute players needed to catch their breath, so often times they'd hang out in their own zone. This led to the what they called the "anti-defense rule" which was called when their four players in the defensive zone when the puck is on the other end of the ice.

And despite the Regina Leader Sports Editor's proclamation that the rule was just a faceoff, there were several penalties issued for it - Dick Irvin was an early offender.

 

[sr edler]

There was also a corrollary in the defensive zone. 60-minute players needed to catch their breath, so often times they'd hang out in their own zone. This led to the what they called the "anti-defense rule" which was called when their four players in the defensive zone when the puck is on the other end of the ice.

And despite the Regina Leader Sports Editor's proclamation that the rule was just a faceoff, there were several penalties issued for it - Dick Irvin was an early offender.

View attachment 502743

Nice find, Morey. This would corroborate @Sanf's claim up thread the WCHL had some tighter loafing rules, apparently at both ends of the ice.

 

[Theokritos]

There was also a corrollary in the defensive zone. 60-minute players needed to catch their breath, so often times they'd hang out in their own zone. This led to the what they called the "anti-defense rule" which was called when their four players in the defensive zone when the puck is on the other end of the ice.

And despite the Regina Leader Sports Editor's proclamation that the rule was just a faceoff, there were several penalties issued for it - Dick Irvin was an early offender.

Thanks for this. Which years is that Regina Leader article from? I know that an anti-defense rule was introduced in the NHL in 1929, but the article is referring to the Western Canada Hockey League which ceased in 1926, so it has to predate the NHL anti-defense rule by at least three years.

Did anti-defense rules differed from one league to the other? Because I was under impression that the NHL anti-defense rule said three defending players in their own end where too many (as long as no opposing player entered the zone).

Also, Jeff Miclash has added the following in another discussion a few months ago:

The anti-defense rule had other components - once the zone was cleared, passing back into the defense zone incurred the penalty. There were more events which could trigger the penalty.

 

[Theokritos]

Do we know when loafing offside first appeared in the rulebook?

 

[sr edler]

Which years is that Regina Leader article from?

It's from the December 24, 1923 issue of the of the Leader-Post, so 1923–24 season.

Do we know when loafing offside first appeared in the rulebook?

Not what I know, but I guess you have to deep dive into the various rule books of the AHAC and the OHA, et cetera, 1880s/1890s, to get a clearer picture of that, and I'm not even sure if those rule books are widely available. It's mentioned in Hockey: Canada's Royal Winter Game by Arthur Farrell at least, from 1899, so it definitely predates the 20th century. Then one only has to work backwards from that. But I like @Sanf's suggestion of an early era rule compilation project, it's just the scope and availability of such a patchwork project is pretty intimidating, and would still probably leave some holes in the end. But it would still be nicer to have a puzzle with some holes in it than no puzzle at all.

 

[tarheelhockey]

Not what I know, but I guess you have to deep dive into the various rule books of the AHAC and the OHA, et cetera, 1880s/1890s, to get a clearer picture of that, and I'm not even sure if those rule books are widely available. It's mentioned in Hockey: Canada's Royal Winter Game by Arthur Farrell at least, from 1899, so it definitely predates the 20th century. Then one only has to work backwards from that. But I like @Sanf's suggestion of an early era rule compilation project, it's just the scope and availability of such a patchwork project is pretty intimidating, and would still probably leave some holes in the end. But it would still be nicer to have a puzzle with some holes in it than no puzzle at all.

Anyone know how much is available through the HHOF archives?

I called them a couple of years ago when thinking about this exact topic (a history of rule changes) but at the time they were shut down due to COVID. I know they do fee-for-service research, but it wasn't clear what kind of material they actually had to pull from.

 

[sr edler]

Anyone know how much is available through the HHOF archives?

I called them a couple of years ago when thinking about this exact topic (a history of rule changes) but at the time they were shut down due to COVID. I know they do fee-for-service research, but it wasn't clear what kind of material they actually had to pull from.

I haven't been in contact with the HHOF, so I don't know.

 

[Theokritos]

Not what I know, but I guess you have to deep dive into the various rule books of the AHAC and the OHA, et cetera, 1880s/1890s, to get a clearer picture of that, and I'm not even sure if those rule books are widely available. It's mentioned in Hockey: Canada's Royal Winter Game by Arthur Farrell at least, from 1899, so it definitely predates the 20th century.

Thanks. I was wondering whether it was from the 1920s or dating back earlier.

 

[Theokritos]

Anyone know how much is available through the HHOF archives?

I called them a couple of years ago when thinking about this exact topic (a history of rule changes) but at the time they were shut down due to COVID. I know they do fee-for-service research, but it wasn't clear what kind of material they actually had to pull from.

Although major rule changes would certainly be discussed in contemporary newspapers in Canada, this would be a worthwhile thing to pursue once we're back to normalcy. It's a neglected area, in general. An example: A few years ago I've stumbled upon an IIHF timeline making the following claim:

"1936 – The three zones of the hockey rink are introduced. Players must carry the puck to another zone, not pass it."

But a 1936 hockey book from England states the following: "It was only during the past season that forward passing was permitted, in Europe, in all three zones as compared with two in the previous season". Which shows that forward passing in the offensive zone was introduced by the IIHF for the 1935-1936 season while forward passing in the defensive and neutral zone was already allowed in 1934-1936. So clearly, the three zones were introduced to IIHF hockey no later than 1934.