When Hockey Folks Talk In Code

If you’ve noticed my absence for a few days, it’s probably because nothing has really ticked me off over that stretch.  That’s what I need to get me going sometimes, ya know — so I can rant or rave about something with some real passion.

With that, I’ve had plenty to set me on fire lately, and I’m feeling like my keyboard just might burn-up over this one…

Up front, two things…

1)  Before they closed their doors, I wrote one (and sometimes two) advice columns per issue for “Hockey/USA” magazine.  And hardly a month would go by over nearly 20-years without me receiving some kind words from my readers.  For sure they liked the content I regularly provided, but just as often one of my faithfuls would compliment my writing style.  Oh, I don’t know a past participle from a parenthetical expression — trust me on that.  But I have always tried to write so that my readers could understand me.  Come to think of it, a number of my old readers dubbed my style “folksy”.   (Ya, that’s me, still the farm boy at heart.)

As an aside, I suspect some of my old high school English teachers are rolling over in their graves as I type.   For, despite all the great students they poured out their classroom doors, I’m sure my teachers never dreamed their favorite jock would make part of his living authoring books, advice columns, video scripts and a blog.  (Of course, my old teachers never saw the advent of SpellCheck coming, either!)

Oh, ya…  When I transferred my engineering credits to get a degree in Physical Education & Coaching, I was disappointed that the new school was going to make me take dawgoned English again.   (Geeeeeze…  I just wanted to get on with the coaching courses!)  Anyway, after a few writing assignments in that course, the professor called me aside as a class ended.  (Gulp.)  Instead of what I’d feared, she whispered, “I really apologize that you’ve been made to take this class.”  (Phew!)  And she went on to bemoan trying to help most of her younger students string together a few words.

2)  Speaking of college — and guessing that I may have told this story before…  I had a great guy as my Anatomy professor, and I continued to see him from time to time as he followed his young grandson around the local rinks.  Anyway, if you can picture it, a lot of physical education courses are pretty close to what doctors might take in their earliest years — with lots of scientific or medical stuff, I mean.  And his Anatomy course was geared to having us learn the Latin terms for almost all the body parts.  So, one day I kinda needled my prof about the fact that I’d have to as quickly unlearn all those terms if I was going to survive in my chosen field.  The poor guy wrinkled his nose, and I could see a huge question mark engulfing his face.  “Ya know,” I said, “I deal with regular folks around the rinks, and I’m not about to snow them with fancy words they won’t understand.”  (And in the real hockey world, no fancy Latin terms are needed to warn my older players about the butt whipping they were about to get!)

That was the truth, though, what I told my professor.   And that’s not taking anything away from my customers.  I’ve had tons of doctors’ children skating with me, and as many players who belonged to lawyers, skilled mechanics, technicians, construction workers and housewives.   And, I can tell you that each of them knew far more about what they did than I ever dreamed.  Still, just as you and I would hope that a specialist would spell-out our problems in the simplest of terms, I’ve never been one to heap a pile of snow on my customers’ heads when what they really needed was advice.

Now, as for that “I Hate It When Hockey Folks Talk In Code” thingy…

I first noticed this many, many years ago, when I attended a coaching seminar at a college on the outskirts of Boston.  For, throughout his presentation, the head coach at that college kept using the expression “goal line extended”.  I mean, he had to have used it a good twenty times over about an hour’s talk.  And all the while I’m sitting there trying to figure what the heck he was trying to say.  ???  I did, of course, finally figure it out.  Probably even non-hockey readers know a red goal line is painted into the ice and across the front of each net, and the line actually does extend outward and across the ice to the side boards.  So, ya, I guess, we could call that part going from the net to the boards something like the “goal line extended”.  What I think the logical question would be is, whatever dawgone for?   The rest of the world understands that line’s existence — and where it runs, even if you just call it a dawgoned “goal line”.   Grrrrrrr…

In later years, a new term emerged.  Yup, it wasn’t good enough that all of us understood that a rink is surrounded by “boards”, but someone decided it best to redefine the “side boards” as the “wall”.  And, if you watch and listen to televised hockey games lately, you probably can’t avoid hearing a play-by-play guy using the term “half-wall”.   Well, just in case you feel the need to sound politically correct — or to impress someone with that kind of stuff, the half-wall is the general area in each end zone about halfway up the rink’s side boards.

As another aside here, I am thinking that a lot of this craziness stems from college campuses in the United States.  To be honest with you, I never felt inferior to professors when I coached in college — hey, they’re good at what they do, and I’ve always been pretty good at what I do.  Maybe others, though, have felt the need to complicate matters and invent new terminology just to elevate themselves.

With all that, you ought to know that most televised hockey games don’t excite me much anymore.  Naw, I half-listen to the announcers nowadays.  

What also gets me going are some of the hockey forums I’ve been scanning through lately.  There, I find even more destruction of the hockey language, but it’s even sadder than what I’ve explained to this point.  You see, a lot of hockey dads and youth coaches in those settings are tossing around terms and phrases that even they probably don’t understand.   And I know exactly where they (half-)learned them:  from attending coaching seminars led by college coaches.

So, another phrase that kills me is “time and space”.  Ugh.  And, it’s being used (and abused) in ways that suggest that simple collection of words — sprinkled here and there in a paragraph — makes the speaker or writer sound intelligent.  In other words, one doesn’t have to say much of anything over a hundred words or so, so long as he or she occasionally offers that “time and space” answer to a given problem.

And, while I suppose someone is going to want me to define that, I can only hope to do it well.

In effect, though, in a game such as ours, a lot of players are moving at a relatively frantic pace.  All the while, they’re attempting to do what they need to do, with their success quite often based on the fraction of “time” they have to execute, and the amount of open “space” they have to negotiate.   A guy carrying the puck is hoping for enough time and space to do what he wants to do, while a nearby defender is most often trying to limit those two conditions.

So, if there’s something else I pride myself in, it’s the proper use of hockey terms.  For example, what does the word “check” mean?  Oh, if I ask a little hockey player, he’s bound to tell me it means to scrunch someone against the boards (or smash their face off the glass) — gotta love the little ones.  So, it seems, will most hockey parents and inexperienced coaches explain it close to that very same way (or at least that’s how most folks within hockey forums seem to be using the term).  Ha…

In reality, “check” can be either a verb or a noun.

In general, the term “checking” could be used to cover just about everything a player or team does defensively.   (You’ll understand more about that in a moment.)

Used as a noun, I might tell one of my guys that #12 on the other team is his check.  In other words, that’s the guy he should cover.

As a verb, I could similarly tell my guy that I want him to check #12, again meaning I want him to cover that guy.

Then, because checking encompasses just about everything a player does in his or her defensive game, check becomes a root word for defensive terms like poke-checking, forechecking, backchecking, and body-checking.  (Note, if you will, that all of those things take place when the other team has the puck, or when our team is on defense.)

Personally, I’m very careful when I use any of those words, whether talking to my players, hockey parents or other coaches.  First, I want to be correct when I speak with anyone about the game.  Secondly,  however, I want to perpetuate the right use of terms, in hopes others keep it going.  Those in the forums, on the other hand, seem just plain lazy in this regard, and lots of kids are bound to lose something in their development for that very reason.

Lastly, I was moaning a bit to a Facebook friend just the other day, about how much all the talking in code annoys me.  And, since that friend is also a member here, I felt comfortable telling him that I’ve yet to use those kinds of perceived fancy terms in any of the (kzillion) articles I’ve posted here.  No, I’m writing and producing videos for my members because they want — and deserve — answers.  And, the very last thing they need are misused terms or a snow-job.