On Frozen Blog

At this time of year NHL GMs and Draft guide gurus make ubiquitous use of the term “hockey sense,” but what exactly is it? Prospects have it and are valued richly for it, or they lack it and are thereby cast as middle-round afterthoughts. It’s a trait so commonly tossed around and yet seemingly so seldom understood, by fans and press, with any specificity. It’s alluded to, assigned, rarely challenged. I’m rather sure few bar disputes have broken out over a hockey player’s “hockey sense” inventory. And so I used Wednesday afternoon’s confab at Kettler with the Caps’ GM to see if he could shed some light on the term for me.
But first, are there comparable, remarkable “senses” for the athletes in other pro sports? The competitors in other arenas are regularly distinguished for their “smarts” and their “instincts” and their “coolness” in crunch time. But elite “basketball sense”? Rarefied “baseball sense”? As I listened to McPhee yesterday thoughtfully illustrate and elaborate on the idea of the ideal hockey head set upon broad, bruising shoulders, I made a few cross-sport comparisons, and I came away believing hockey has something remarkably unique, perhaps even unrivaled, with this high-value trait.
A hoopster can possess keen “court awareness” — see a play develop a bit earlier than his peers. Magic Johnson and Larry Bird certainly possessed this trait. I’m pretty sure Michael Jordan did not — rather, he simply dominated his opponents with his sheer unmatched physical gifts and iron will. An elite NFL quarterback sometimes can sense a ferocious pass rush from his blind side and release his pass just in the nick of time, or check off to a secondary receiver while 70,000 in the stands are fixated on the primary target on third down. But hockey’s elite instincts, I learned yesterday, are fuller in their range and hardly position-specific. And hockey sense is further distinguished from its rival sports in its relative abundance and trans-Atlantic transmission. Bird and Magic and their distinction are once-every-two-or-three decade phenomena; every NHL draft offers up, to the sage talent evaluators, the great thinkers of the game.
McPhee told me that in hockey “the best players are always the smartest,” and that with respect to hockey sense, “It’s not something you can teach . . . you either have it or you don’t.”
And he made plain his value of it in the prospects the Caps scout: “You can never become an elite player if you don’t have hockey sense. I tell [my scouts] it’s the most important ingredient [to look for].”
I was particularly intrigued by McPhee’s allusion to the role that “an uncle, father” who played elite hockey seem to serve as regular wellsprings of hockey savvy able to nourish sixth, seventh, and eighth senses within the young hockey players regularly under their influence. His implication seemed clear: great hockey accomplishments within a family can bear some imprint of elite instinct borne by the progeny who follow. Fathers and sons follow one another into professional sports pursuits in all games, but again, in hockey, this relationship, McPhee seemed to indicate, often bore a more remarkable legacy. Given the distinctive role that familes have ever played in the formation of elite hockey players, this perhaps should arrive as no surprise. From his years playing on a line with his father Mark Howe has famously observed of making adjustments and decisions that bested his opposition merely from glances from his old man. Sounds like hockey sense to me.
But to get back to the heart of the matter — on the ice, what is hockey sense? Those who possess it, I learned, exhibit rapid-fire, before-you-can-blink, flawless execution, most particularly under duress. “They see things on the ice quicker,” McPhee told me, “When they get the puck they [always] have two or three options.” The highly skilled but otherwise standard hockey player can be counted upon to make the simple, predictable play in all zones. The highly skilled but also highly cognizant ever positions himself for a multiplicity of attack and survival options. If Donald Brashear is a team’s hard drive, the possessors of elite hockey sense — say an Alexander Semin — are its high-speed processors.
Its source is the head, but its toolbox is every available means of making plays: the perfectly angled skate blade holder deflecting the puck to the undefended teammate in the slot; the penalty killing forward up top who with his stealth stillness seduces power play point personnel into unforced, cross-ice passing errors. It’s beauty is that its practitioners are Wayne Gretzky but also Boyd Gordon.
And even before next weekend’s draft there’s a new standard bearer of uncommon hockey sense slated to skate in D.C. this fall. I concluded my inquiry of McPhee yesterday by asking who among the current stable of prospects he thought possessed this coveted quality. “Backstrom,” he replied, almost before I could finish asking.