#on opposing sides screaming their name and swinging their sports equipment

[seagull-scribbles]

💥Loud and Proud💥

#TMNT #TMNT 2012 #rottmnt #Casey jones 2012 #rise April O’neil #love these two #I doubt Nickelodeon would ever do a crossover with their two shows #idek if josh peck would return #but I’d love for them to meet one day #on opposing sides screaming their name and swinging their sports equipment #they’d maybe have a personality clash idk but Casey would tell April how amazing her life if her best friends are mutants and yokais #shed think it was cool he went to space and turned into a vampire #all the good stuff #confidence and positivity radiates off these two #need it in my life #also humans are too hard and i tried to not take Casey’s gear off him sooo instead i made them chibi #im building up to drawing his full gear one day i Pwomise #saveRiseOfTheTMNT #also btw if you couldnt tell i love casey jones and this versions not my favourite but they are #and then this april is the best april no question i dont take feedback your wrong

[csykora]

hockey, a primer

Hockey is a quick game to start watching. Fundamentally there’s a goalie guarding the net, two defensive players guarding the goalie, and three offensive forwards attacking the other team’s net.

Unlike normal sports, hockey players break the rules a lot. Common infractions include smacking another player with your stick, pretending they smacked you with their stick, poking them in the dick with your stick when you are not on the ice, licking them (yes we need this rule) and tripping them. This happens every couple minutes, and the player is punished by having to sit alone for a couple minutes while the teams continue to play with an uneven number of players. 

This is called the man advantage, powerplay, or, regrettably, the PP for the team who didn’t do a crime, and the penalty kill for the guilty team. There aren’t a lot of set plays compared to something like football, and what strategy there is in the game depends on this. Listen closely and you will hear someone’s dad already screaming more information about special teams into your ear.

You do not need to know the names of the formations used in special teams. Just watch how the puck gets from one person to the next, or how it doesn’t, and you will start to see the important things.

Rosters

Each forward line has two wingers, who are expected to skate fast up and down the sides of the ice and take the most shots, and the center, who manages the middle, passing the puck between the others and directing them into the right series of positions so the puck can be bounced to where it needs to go: they’re the brains of the operation (with the goalie also using their unique view of the full rink to direct play by banging their stick and swearing at the players in front of them). 

Sometimes multiple players who usually play the center position are put out at the same time, with some of them taking up the wing position. This strategy is called a ‘two-’ or ‘three-headed monster’ in the NHL, because a ‘natural center’ is thought to be a smarter strategy player.

Defense is organized in pairs, so one person takes each side. Compared to forwards who mostly skate...you know...defenders have to be able to skate equally well going forwards and backwards, which requires a different skating stride. Their main goal is to isolate and disrupt the other team’s forwards, by positioning their bodies in the ‘passing lane’ between two opposing players so they can’t pass to each other or in the shooting lane in front of a player so they can’t shoot, or by knocking the opponent out of position.

Often you’ll see one defender will tend to “stay at home” guarding the net while the other swings out wide or follows the forwards into the other team’s zone as a second wave of offense. 

A team has enough to make three pairs of D and four lines of forwards, which are numbered. Flashy stars are expected to be in line 1 and 2 (the ‘top’), workmen in 3 and 4 (the ‘bottom six’), and by tradition the 4th line in particular are your rowdy boys who lay the most hits and start fights. Everyone knows those ranks are kind of imaginary, but players getting moved up or down the hierarchy gives us Drama. Hockey players mate for life, and usually play with the same D-partner or linemates, but they can also be swapped around into different combinations when the coach sees fit.

Structure

The NHL plays a bonkers number of games. Most years, the hockey season starts in the fall and grinds with games every other day or so through the winter until the players are all dehydrated and exhausted, at which point the playoffs start. The Stanley Cup playoffs are four rounds of best-of-seven elimination series, and it’s often described as the most intense championship in sports. This year, we’ve just wrapped up made-up qualifiers to pick the teams that will start the first round of the playoffs tomorrow.

Please follow a smarter blog than me for current updates on the North American women’s leagues. I am going to refer to the North American women’s game, but I’m not the best source on it.

The KHL and ZhWL play a slightly less bonkers number of games, but make up for it by being weird as shit and incorporate live music, even live-er pyrotechnics, and swords. You can buy access to games for about a cup of coffee.

The EIHL is in Britain, and I don’t know when they play but they do, so if you’re one of the British people who ask me this question, good luck

North America vs The World

International hockey is played on a larger and wider rink than North American hockey. More space means that passing accurately and skating efficiently become more important, and it’s statistically less likely that players will bump into each other, so hitting is less important than in North American men’s hockey. The greater width means that wingers in the Continental Hockey League (KHL) and other national leagues are expected to control a decent chunk of open ice, not just the lane along the boards, so they’re more like North American centers, running the “three-headed monster” play all the time.

When men’s Team Canada plays on international ice, they’re able to fill their roster with centers, bridging the two styles.

Overpassing

Overpassing is a buzzword used to critique both women’s hockey players and Russian men’s hockey players. In North American men’s hockey, there’s a principle that the person who carries the puck into the attacking zone should be the one to shoot it, or make at most one pass: passing back and forth in the offensive zone ‘wastes time’ and increases the risk that the defenders will intercept one of those passes and take possession.

But this is something Russian men’s players are actually taught to do. They are expected to be more accurate passers, so the risk of the pass being intercepted should be low anyway. Shooting is almost guaranteed to give up possession, after which the other team will have a chance to shoot and score on you…so why not keep passing it around we either have a perfect opening or we run down the clock?

Women’s hockey players are similarly good enough skaters (young girls often come into the sport with figure skating experience and they all receive a high level of skate training) and passers that they can hold possession. They are trained to be very aware of how their teammates are positioned, and so they will pass more in the zone.

Think of it like this: North American men think, “I gotta shoot the puck to score goals before the other guy smashes me and takes it and scores goals with it!”, women think, “I’ve got a 50/50 chance if I shoot, but my girl over there is 100%” and Russian men think, “Aw, you want this puck? You wanna shoot it and score goals with it? Okay…catch me first.”

More on different styles

the hockey puppy mill

In Canada, players go through a junior league system that has several tiers and leagues. At 16, they’re typically drafted into major juniors in the Canadian Hockey League, which has three branches, the Ontario Hockey League (“the O”), the Quebec Major Junior League (the Q), or the Western Hockey League. At that point they often move away from their family to ‘billet’ with a family who either work for the team or whose own son was drafted away to a different team.

Because players are paid stipends and players over 18 who have already signed with NHL teams are allowed to play in major juniors, this is considered a professional league, so they are not allowed to play NCAA sports after playing in major juniors. Others choose to play in Junior A (smaller than the CHL) to preserve their pro-virginity for college.

In the US, the United States Hockey League runs Tier I hockey. Players’ equipment expenses are covered and they are often billeted, but because they’re not directly paid, USHLers are allowed to play NCAA sports in college.

If a player is drafted by an NHL team at 18, they may choose to play in the NCAA while getting a degree, continue in juniors, or be sent to the NHL team’s American League (AHL) team. Players who weren’t drafted do the school or junior thing and might be able to sign with an NHL team independently. While players are eligible to play in the NHL at 18, it is a very weird and recent development for them to actually do that; generally 20-22 is a common age for forwards to debut, 22-24 for defensemen, and 24+ for goalies.

North American women often play high school or with boys in juniors up to the AHL, before going NCAA and then to European women’s leagues or if possible to the North American women’s leagues.

In Russia, players take classes at hockey schools, usually affiliated with the local KHL team, after their ordinary school lets out for the say. They start with a combination of skating technique and playtime to encourage creativity, with the hours increasing as they grow up and are promoted through the team’s own junior levels to MHL (the AHL equivalent) and the main KHL team. Players are eligible for the KHL at 16. While they often stay in their hometown, they can choose to go to a different team’s hockey school at certain points, in which case they or their families move to school housing.

More on culture

Equipment

Skates

Skates have a firm boot and a blade which has two sharp edges with a hollow in between. They do not have toe picks, so skaters have to use a two-foot parallel stop or “hockey stop”

Hockey stops send up a cloud of snow so they’re a great way to be a dick to your teammates, and they make a swoosh swoosh SWOOSH sound that’s just great.

You will be able to see who is a great skater, trust your eye. There are lots of different ways to be a great skater that you can start to appreciate. Some people are fast on the straightaways, some people can pick up speed more quickly over short distances, some are more mobile with lots of fine turns, some have endurance.

Sticks

Hockey sticks are made of different materials with different levels of whippiness. They have a shaft, which is cut to measure from the ground to somewhere between your chin and your eyebrows. Forwards tend to go shorter for control, defensemen longer for reach. No player is allowed to carry a stick over 63” unless they have a height exemption, which is why Colton Parayko has to carry a Certified Big Boy card and his own teammate once got a penalty for coping a feel of his stick. The blade curves forward away from you as you hold it, and the blade and top of the shaft are wrapped with slightly grippy tape. Some people care a lot about tape.

Your dominant hand usually goes at the top of your stick to control it, with your non-dominant hand on the shaft providing the power for most shots. Your hockey-handedness is named after the side of your body the blade stick is on: if you are right-handed, your right hand is on top, left hand is on the shaft, and you have a left-handed shot. 

That makes for a lot more natural left shooters than natural right shooters. Because you have the wall on one side and passes coming from another, it’s in some ways difficult for a left shooter to play on the right side of the ice. That means that the people who do have to play their “off wing” learn to switch how they hold their stick and will usually be very good at it, and can surprise the other team in certain ways, but there are strategic advantages to natural handedness, especially on defense. Coaches fantasize about having three pairs of perfectly matched right- and left-side defensemen, so right-shooting/left-handed d-men are hot shit.

The whippiness or stiffness of your stick helps you with your choice of less powerful, more accurate wristshots (which make the pretty ting! sound off the goalposts), medium one-timers and snapshots, preferred by forwards, or the big booming slapshots that defensemen use when they don’t much care for whoever’s between them and the other team’s goalie.

Pads

If you are going to shout an opinion about injuries, hits, fights, concussions, exemptions for young or small players, etc, please, you need to understand pads. This shit matters.

Hockey pads for skaters cover the lower legs and wrap from the shoulders across the upper chest and down the arms. This is why certain plays are held to be more or less dangerous than you might instinctively think. (More on weird injuries: here and here)

There are chinks in the armor at the knee/calf, wrist, and none at all on their belly, so a slash to the wrists or a blow/blade coming anywhere near someone’s stomach is very different than one landing elsewhere. The modern skate boot is also very stiff and ‘locks’ your foot in a certain position relative to your leg, so trips and falls can easily lead to foot injuries. Slashing, tripping, and especially kicking have a really good chance of hurting someone, which is why they are treated that way even if by good luck no one was hurt this time.

Pads are soft-cap or hard-cap: soft-cap is a thick layer of padding, hard-cap is a literal hard plastic shell armor. Hard-cap pads are illegal at major junior levels of competition and in rec leagues, because you can’t really feel through them: if you’re wearing soft pads and lay a hit on someone, you’ll both feel it, so there’s an upper limit on how much force you want to hit them with, but in hard pads you can smash someone into oblivion without hurting yourself. This is the same reason why you drop gloves before fighting: hitting someone with an armored glove on hurts you less but lets you hurt them more.

Concussions are a type of traumatic brain injury when a large force moves through the head and neck, causing the brain to slosh around in the skull. It is not just caused by direct blows to the head, but by intense movement of the head when the body is hit elsewhere. Men’s hockey is a leading sport for concussions in men, and women’s hockey is a or the leading cause of concussions in women. This is a problem, because concussions are bad. This is not just because fighting is allowed in men’s hockey, but because of the forces and collisions in both games. 

Statistically, an individual NHL player lays hundreds of hits per season, and fights between zero and a dozen times. Across the league there might be about a hundred hits in each game, and there’s a fight about every other game. Each fight lasts about 6 seconds and involves about a dozen shots. So while fighting is not safe, about 60% of concussions are linked to the much more common shoulder and head hits.

I deeply, dearly do not care if you do or don’t like fights. It is fine. You do you. But if you say banning fights would cure concussions while ignoring the role of hits, I will hunt you down and smack your phone out of your hands with a foam roller.

Jerseys Because they’re standing on ice, which is slippy, players grab each other’s jersey sleeves or collars during fights to hold them in range and punch with the other hand. In the past, players would not only drop their gloves before a fight but try to strip their sweaters off as well: if you were totally topless, he wouldn’t have a handhold and wouldn’t be able to hit you effectively. Now, jerseys are hooked to hockey pants with an elastic “fight strap” to stop the stripping.

Also they’re fun to fuck with.

Hockey socks are actually two pieces: a normal sock that goes on your foot and in your skate and then a tube with no foot in team colors that you pull on over it. Some NHL players do not wear the sock in their skate. I’m not going to name names, but I feel very, very comfortable saying that it is only the men that do this.

Note: OMGCP is not a depiction of athletic practice, injuries and safety, or Northern North American communities/culture (much less Russian). I desperately do not care if you like it as what it is, but the plays that are presented as normal and the mechanisms of injury shown are not accurate, and might be dangerous to apply to real injuries. Please do not base your opinions of rule calls or injuries that affect the safety of real people on it.

Bonus facts:

Hockey is a sweaty, sweaty game. However much you are imagining: it’s more. Skaters lose an average of 1.5 liters of fluid in a game, and some lose 2 to 3 liters. Goalies lose about 3 liters every practice. Braden Holtby specifically sweats off 9 pounds. This is why you see them chewing bubblegum during the game, and why rubbing a glove on someone’s face is a playful (or not) insult

Athletes don’t eat pop “health food”. They do not eat salads every meal. Hockey players today are typically on protein-heavy diets during the summer and early season to put on weight (both muscle and fat, which plays an important role in hydration and metabolism!), then switch to carbohydrate-heavy diets to make up for the amount of energy they burn in the later part of the season. Many are on “low sugar” diets because…well, that was pop science in the era that their coaches trained in, but many are not. Exercise anorexia and overtraining are increasingly epidemic in the sport because of the focus on body fat and form that is institutionalized in many programs. More on body fat here: X

“Indian head” logos commemorate the practice of white settlers trading the severed heads or body parts of Native Americans for cash. This is bad. Support Indigenous and First Nations fans in changing the name.

#long post