csykora

[csykora]

#tom wilson #kirill kaprizov #all star 2024

[csykora]

I see that Wild fans are once again Going Through it, and I can never give Rusko enough props, so I wanted to mention a little context to these photos. Kaprizov is smiling like that because the photographer has known him since he was about 15, and she loves to sneak up on him (she titled these photos “The Hunt for Bubbles”).

I think she’s a really brilliant sports photographer; her work is silly, often deeply intimate and focused on players’ hands, bare skin, smiles, or exhausted postures, and artfully composed.

(That last, if it isn’t clear, is Kaprizov learning to fly)

Kirill Kaprizov is here to blow bubbles

(photo by Lena Rusko)

#kirill kaprizov

[csykora]

I wanted to add an overhead closeup of Ty Juvinel’s design, because his use of the holes and structural shapes of goalie helmets is so satisfying!

He has also previously painted a goalie helmet with a Kraken in Coast Salish style, including elements from the Seattle Mariners history. I like seeing the different compositions and the elements he used around the kraken for Grubauer/this event, including the salmon, bear, and of course Grubi’s eagle, and the different color schemes! Personally I love the weathered blue, but the black and white will hopefully be very visible and recognizable on the ice

Beautiful man 🥹

BEAUTIFUL design too!

#philipp grubauer #seattle kraken

[csykora]

Protas politely trying not to squish Bedard is the narrative I care most about

#caps lb

[csykora]

I need a better shorthand for this line than what I have been yelling, which for the record is “Chonker Sandwich!”

#caps lb #anthony mantha #aliaksei protas

[csykora]

I’m glad that Joe and Locker are keeping the marriage fun and fresh by sharing their love of big boys, but…still

#caps lb

[csykora]

I feel like if an opponent does his own goalie that dirty, it does deserve to be a goal. Just to make sure he suffers

#caps lb

[csykora]

Emily Kaplan: How’s your season so far?

Grumpy pigeon she picked up off the street: Amazing

#caps lb #sorry kuzy but it’s not your best look #evgeny kuznetsov

[csykora]

rankings are in! Charlie Lindgren is number five on the list goalies who don’t know their teammates’ names

#caps lb

[csykora]

well it’s 1 minute in and they haven’t given up any goals, this is…progress

#caps lb

[csykora]

With all my love, and just because I’ve been seeing a number of comments on this one about gay fans and gay rights in relation to the NHL’s recent decisions: I want to highlight that Twin Cities Queer Hockey Association and Team Trans Twin Cities are teams for lesbian, gay, trans, nonbinary, two spirit, ace, and other queer players. Team Trans is entirely trans and/or nonbinary players. No shade to anyone who is focused on their own identity group right now! but I want everyone to know that trans players and queer athletes are here.

I got to watch the Twin Cities Queer Hockey Association championships this weekend! Great games, with the Narwhals ultimately winning over the Unicorns, who just didn’t have the scoring, but do have quite a good goalie, (who moved better than I remember from last year and really stole a couple saves under pressure from the winning team).

The Wild’s Jon Merrill volunteered as a linesman, and I’m not sure whether he understood the assignment better than anyone or whether he just doesn’t own full-length skating pants, because he showed up in a pair of black skinny jeans

(This was not an accidental cling giving that impression; they were definitely jeans and his borrowed zebra shirt was also too short, leaving his belt loops and a strip of tummy visible)

Those, my friends, are not badly fitted skinny jeans: those are pants struggling to contain the magnificent hilarity of D-Man Legg. (If anything I think they were loose around his calves??)

Not since someone made me look at those photos of Jamie Oleksiak smuggling bananas under his skin have I gotten to such a disconnect between the thigh and calf muscles of an otherwise intact person.

Them’s the backwards skating muscles right there. Absolutely delightful.

[csykora]

Sids skating in that 2009 clip, and his line of attack is partially because his early career was one continuous ignored hooking penalty, seasoned with ignored slashing penalties. He’s have players just riding along us g their sticks as reins on him . He was also flanked on both sides.

Whatever you’re looking for, I’m not it, I don’t post about Sidney Crosby. Good luck with that 👍

[csykora]

are there any teams that you're excited to watch this upcoming hockey season?

I’m lucky to live somewhere where I can go out to several local high school and college teams’ games, which I love because you get to really see the impacts of development and little differences in skill. I also might be able to watch a local PWHL team later in the winter.

I also love to watch goalies and defenders, so some of the teams I’m most excited to watch might not be, ah, conventionally good at hockey. Shestyorkin makes any game a show and I do like the fierceness of some of the Rangers’ D-men, even if I’m not sure what their forward core…is. Vasilevskiy is always Vasilevskiy to me; I don’t know if I can bring myself to watch the Senators but I’ll be excited for matchups with them because I do love Korpisalo’s Finnish style.

In terms of whole teams, the Florida Panthers have been so sparky; I’m interested to see what, if any, changes they make to their game plan. And in thinking about this question I somehow suckered myself into being interested in the Boston Bruins, who obviously have a great goalie, have really solidified their D, and seem to be making some of the right moves to reinforce their older forward core from the bottom.

#as usual I would be excited for the habs if they didn’t make it so hard

[csykora]

Speaking of hot behavior, he checked in with the goalies after they let in goals to give them a pat on the back and some words of reassurance. Otherwise he drew basically as little attention to himself as it was possible for him to—I genuinely think he was there to spend time with the players and also to obligate the NHL to give Team Trans money—but did do a couple wiggle-dances to the music.

I got to watch the Twin Cities Queer Hockey Association championships this weekend! Great games, with the Narwhals ultimately winning over the Unicorns, who just didn’t have the scoring, but do have quite a good goalie, (who moved better than I remember from last year and really stole a couple saves under pressure from the winning team).

The Wild’s Jon Merrill volunteered as a linesman, and I’m not sure whether he understood the assignment better than anyone or whether he just doesn’t own full-length skating pants, because he showed up in a pair of black skinny jeans

(This was not an accidental cling giving that impression; they were definitely jeans and his borrowed zebra shirt was also too short, leaving his belt loops and a strip of tummy visible)

Those, my friends, are not badly fitted skinny jeans: those are pants struggling to contain the magnificent hilarity of D-Man Legg. (If anything I think they were loose around his calves??)

Not since someone made me look at those photos of Jamie Oleksiak smuggling bananas under his skin have I gotten to such a disconnect between the thigh and calf muscles of an otherwise intact person.

Them’s the backwards skating muscles right there. Absolutely delightful.

#having now almost walked into him I can also confirm he is much cuter than I realized from photos

[csykora]

I completely agree with your thinking pointing to Federov. The older CSKA players’ most distinctive skating was behind them by the time they came to America, both because of age+injury and because for almost all of their career they played as a unit where everyone had the same handedness and shot in the same direction, which for hockey players simplifies the process of positioning and passing and encourages more skating focus.

Federov was also just absolutely the cool kid in ‘90s hockey, with his coolness linked directly to his skating: you just have to say “white Nike skates” to a hockey kid of a certain age and they know exactly who you mean. By this point he is more of a ‘classic’ who hockey kids would have watched in highlights, but he’s still iconic in a way much closer to how I’d usually use that word outside a sports context. He was glam. At the time Bure was pretty cool too, right behind and competing with Federov, but I do think his popularity hasn’t lasted as well past the generation of kids who watched him at the time (saying that Bure was “right behind” Federov has just made a bunch of approximately 38 year old men in western Canada frothing mad).

And when we talk about younger players being inspired by older players, it’s not just the technique they show on the ice but the athletic training behind it. A lot of coverage of Federov in the ‘90s focused on his body, how his body compared to other players, and how he trained for skating and not just for overall strength. He wasn’t directly responsible for the shift in North American athletic training, but he was kind of a poster boy for what the now-current style of training makes possible, how it makes it easier to make the most of better skating technique. If you study skating technique like him and train and cross train skating-relevant muscle groups like him, those will feed each other.

you said “i feel like it's really clear watching them that they're kind of built in similar molds, in terms of who they grew up watching and what the expectations were.” in the connor and natemac post and i was wondering if that meant you could pull clear lines between how they skate and how sid skates?? or if im totally reading how you meant that wrong

that's such a good question! i feel pretty confident that they both trace back to similar places, but i don't know that it's really crosby?

it's a weird thing to me because of the way crosby seems to have changed his skating? like, crosby early career:

brendan shanahan was still playing for the rangers in this clip, so it would've been 2009 or before?

there's a little bit of feinting left & right in there, but for the most part he's kind of just skating straight forward and relying on his.. lol... deeply mediocre forward stride. he's characteristically inside edgy – weight between his feet, not a lot of weight shift, which hampers his ability to do much with his feet. (he's always been sort of a weird case where i think he can develop speed – but it tends to be super muscular strength based vs real technique.)

vs this one's from late 2010:

this is a dramatic example lol, but he's kind of maintained this same general style for a long time – some acceleration, but a lot of wheeling around

i think you see elements of the c-step and turning thing in mcdavid and mackinnon, but more in their practice drills than in how they actually skate in games? which i feel like makes sense, since like, they were already 13 and 15 in 2010. i think natemac and mcdavid both almost got "left behind" by this more turning based era, in a weird way. like, sid managed to learn new technique really late – but i think it was because he didn't have a sustainable technique in the first place and had to hunt for a physical strategy that matched the way his brain works. i suspect that by the time sid picked this up, a lot of the kids that were mid teens at that point had already kind of established the mental/technique tornado loop of like... straightline speed is the technique that got them to where they are so therefore straightline speed gets prioritized & feels less risky in high stakes situations.

clips of mackinnon and mcdavid, both in the last few years:

they vary their strategies a little bit, but they both tend to rely a lot on more old school rushes. it's definitely reminiscent of sid really early on, but it works better for both of them bc they have better skating technique? (in a fairly similar way too – natemac's crossovers are worse than mcdavid's imo, but they both have a solid side-to-side swing and foot placement on straightaways).

which like – since sid cannot forward stride to save his absolute life lmao, i don't think either of them got it from him.

i'm not totally sure who this traces to, but i have a couple general ideas:

someone who was probably in the NHL a little bit before crosby – i'm thinking like 2000-2005 but ideally with longevity

someone with enough mythologizing and success that people would have studied their style

just stylistically, almost definitely european

i honestly don't know as much about the players from that pre social media era, off the top of my head, so i could be skipping a swede or someone who would have been in the right spot at the right time – but just looking at that list, the obvious answer is the CSKA Moscow kids that defected to the NHL in the late 80s / early 90s? @csykora has written a lot more thoroughly about that history than I possibly can, but that group was just so tightly drilled, and imo they had a very specific skating style – very chill on one foot, solid bend, a lot of weight transfer. even amongst other russian players i think you can spot the CSKA skaters for just like how controlled they are. they were also definitely kind of mythologized – in good and bad ways – and most of the guys that ended up on the Wings had a ton of success. there's also a ton of articles talking about the CSKA skaters of that era as like basically magical lol

i know it's a little bit of a curveball since i think when guys talk about "favorite players" that they grew up watching, there tends to be a lot of loyalty to the older players from their own countries – but i think if you had to specifically say like who had The Cool Skating Style in the early 2000s, that seems like the best answer? i think it's hard to pinpoint a specific skater since they were kind of grouped together anyways. a few – larionov etc – are probably slightly too early in the time frame. i do think though that that generation would have affected any coaches that were trying to help the mackinnon/mcdavid gen with skating – so maybe it's a once removed thing. pavel bure and alexander mogilny are another two that stick out as constantly mentioned for skating ability – but mogilny struggled a bit with injuries that hurt his skating after the early 90s, and bure also struggled with injuries and was done by 2002 or so.

i think the guy that stands out as like. The Guy is probably fedorov? he was on a line in moscow with Bure and Mogilny, and the three of them were all absurdly fast. fedorov was the one that ended up on the wings, won three cups there, got all star fastest skater multiple times, had stevie y. basically lavishing praise on his skating and general ability – on and on, and then he was still kicking around the NHL at 40 in 2009.

this is him with the caps in the last couple years of his career:

just a ridiculous ability to build and carry speed for a 40 year old. definitely a guy that even now sticks out for having incredible technique, almost 15 years after his retirement, and he has that ability to just like methodically travel on his outside edges that i think you see a lot of the mcdavid era skaters trying to copy with varying levels of success.

#sorry it has been A Long Time since this was originally posted #I had thoughts and then it took me a while to get back

[csykora]

If you don't mind me asking, what does 'type 1 muscle' mean? If this is a basic question, I apologize -- I'm very curious about sport science, even though I know very little :)

Type 1, Type 2a, and Type 2b muscle cells describe the different ways that muscle cells produce energy. They are also known as slow twitch, fast oxidative, and fast glycolytic cells or fibers (individual muscle cells are commonly referred to as ‘fibers’). Type 1 fibers produce energy efficiently for a long time without fatiguing, but are literally slow to contract, while the Type 2s can contract quickly and powerfully but also get tired fast.

There are a couple important principles to understand when thinking about muscle fibers:

we all have some of all of them

different muscles in your body have different amounts of each of them

the ratio of each type in each muscle is pretty consistent between people

different people may have more of one type overall

(most people are pretty similar, though)

(and if you are a human, you cannot meaningfully change your type 1s into 2s or vis versa, only develop the ones you have)

Basically, some people have a lot of type 1 cells in their body, and some people have less, but everyone has certain muscles that have more type 1 cells. The muscle at the back of your calf always has the most type 1 fibers in your body, because type 1 cells have endurance, and that muscle works to keep you upright all day.

In endurance sports, it benefits you to develop the muscles that have lots of those type 1s, and, if you’re lucky, to have a lot of type 1s to develop. In hockey, it benefits you to have way more type 2s (to the point that potential high level players used to be tested with muscle punch biopsies, and still sometimes are. More often, players with more average amounts of type 2s just can’t keep up and drop out along the way). It just also means that most of them have relatively goofy scrawny calves.

[csykora]

I got to watch the Twin Cities Queer Hockey Association championships this weekend! Great games, with the Narwhals ultimately winning over the Unicorns, who just didn’t have the scoring, but do have quite a good goalie, (who moved better than I remember from last year and really stole a couple saves under pressure from the winning team).

The Wild’s Jon Merrill volunteered as a linesman, and I’m not sure whether he understood the assignment better than anyone or whether he just doesn’t own full-length skating pants, because he showed up in a pair of black skinny jeans

(This was not an accidental cling giving that impression; they were definitely jeans and his borrowed zebra shirt was also too short, leaving his belt loops and a strip of tummy visible)

Those, my friends, are not badly fitted skinny jeans: those are pants struggling to contain the magnificent hilarity of D-Man Legg. (If anything I think they were loose around his calves??)

Not since someone made me look at those photos of Jamie Oleksiak smuggling bananas under his skin have I gotten to such a disconnect between the thigh and calf muscles of an otherwise intact person.

Them’s the backwards skating muscles right there. Absolutely delightful.

#minnesota wild #jon merrill #who needs calves? not the nhl #I wil admit that I love this because I have a really easy time building type 1 muscle my calves have always been the easiest #so this is a completely opposite pattern to me