As the hockey season progresses, it becomes a lot more difficult to pick up goals, let alone get chances. And with opportunities to score dwindling, you have to face the harsh realization that your odds of potting an Ovechtrick aren't looking so great.
For veteran players at any level, the first couple months of the season are like a buffet of all-you-can-handle scoring opportunities. The rookies, not so shockingly, play like rookies -- they're out of position, tentative, and most aren't used to the step up in physical play.
Without doing anything extra special at all, just playing your role, you find yourself with the puck in areas of the ice you know you won't see in late February. By then, rookies that couldn't hack it have been weeded out and sent down, and the ones who could have played over half a season and some made big strides. That's all fine and dandy for them, but it means you get fewer freebies later in the season, which isn't all fine and dandy for you.
Team systems tighten up this time of the year as well. So much of the early part of the season is spent doing the kind of slow, methodical systems walk-throughs that make you want to jab coach's dry erase pen in your eye that by now, it's all well-beaten into your thick, hockey-playing head.
Mistakes simply stop being tolerated at some point (that "point" always seems arbitrary as a player), so coaches start giving more ice time to those who don't make them.
Most teams start the season simple in the systems department (and then they sell sea shells at the sea shore), and use the building blocks method to progress -- start simple, end up complex. By the playoffs, some coaches will have different lines employing different forechecks (whatever suits them best), while others choose to use different systems depending on who's on the ice for their opponent.
Things get awfully custom, and as teams dabble in their new systems, more early season errors are made, which provides players with those oh-so valuable scoring chances. But one day your team and other teams start to get everything nailed down, and suddenly it feels like every team has a sixth skater out there. Hello, slump.
What happened to all the room out here?
Combine those factors with being physically worn down, and suddenly scoring a goal feels like an accomplishment worthy of an Ovechtrick celebration (especially against a "healthy" team, if any of those still exist).
It'd be hard to argue that any other sport has a more demanding schedule, as ours provides the opportunity for both football-style injuries (due to the speed and physical nature of the game) and carpal-tunnel-esque injuries, given the repetitive nature of playing 82 games with morning skates and over a hundred practices. It all adds up to some inevitable discomfort.
Fighting through that and battling to get to the net for a scoring chance is always worth it, but you can only keep the mental intensity up on so many nights, and this ain't playoffs. You can guess how that attitude helps your stats.
It doesn't take long to start to miss the wide-open early season hockey.
I've always felt like if both teams in a hockey game know exactly how their opponent is going to play, that favors the defense. It's a lot easier to foil an opportunity with a little poke of the puck when you know where it's going than it is to exploit a defense because you know how they're playing.
So even when teams do figure each other out tactically, it still sucks offensively. When you see two teams playing for the fifth time in a season and it looks sloppy (in terms of passing), it can be tough to understand. Well, a lot of the reason is because it's so tight positionally.
The cream rises to the top in the season's final third, while the posers falter. We're about to find out if teams like the Dallas Stars just had a hot start, or if they're fit to run with early season disappointments like the San Jose Sharks and Chicago Blackhawks, who most suspect will come through.
The biggest thing about succeeding late in the season is being mentally strong enough to keep plugging -- just because points are harder to come by doesn't mean they're not attainable.
The grind can wear you down; now's when great players and great teams pick it up.
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