Anyone here who actually laces them up for rec hockey, this one's for you. We all watch the pros and then go embarrass ourselves at 10pm on a Tuesday at the local rink. So be honest: which Red Wing, past or present, do you actively try to imitate even though you have no business doing so?
Mine is Datsyuk and it is delusional and it has cost me. I try the no look backhand sauce passes. I try to be slippery in the corners. I am a 38 year old man with a desk job and the puck handling of a newborn deer, and I will still attempt a Datsyuk move in a meaningless beer league game and turn it over every single time. I cannot stop. The man broke my brain. Who broke yours, and how badly does it go for you out there?
lidstrom. and before you laugh hear me out, i don't try to skate like him i try to THINK like him. i'm slow and old so i just try to be in the right spot and let the play come to me instead of chasing. it's the only pro move a guy with no wheels can actually steal. positioning is free. it's the one part of his game a beer leaguer can genuinely copy and it's made me weirdly useful on D.
i try the zetterberg toe drag. it works once a season. i celebrate it for a month.
@RinkRatRandy said:the puck handling of a newborn deer
i am DECEASED 💀 this is me exactly. i try to play like kane, all dangles and patience and finding seams, and instead i look like a guy who's never held a stick before having a medical event in the slot. but every blue moon one move works and i feel like i'm in the all star game for about four seconds. that's what keeps us coming back 😂
you kids stealing dangles and toe drags is exactly what's wrong with the game now. i steal from delvecchio and lindsay. i go to the net, i take a cross check, i score the ugly one and i finish my check even in beer league. nobody wants to do the hard simple things anymore. my knees are gone but i still throw a clean hip check and the 25 year olds act like i committed a war crime.
Randy, this is my favorite kind of thread because it gets at something true: we don't just watch our heroes, we carry little ghosts of them into our own clumsy games. I'm too old to play now but for thirty years I tried to forecheck like Kris Draper, relentless and annoying, and I was neither fast nor good but I was relentless and annoying and that was enough to be useful. You steal what you can carry. Most of us can't carry the hands. We can all carry the effort. Grumps is crusty but he's right about that part.
i'm a draper guy too otto. can't dangle, can't shoot, but i can backcheck like my life depends on it and annoy the other team's best player into a turnover. it's the one thing about pro hockey a normal human can actually replicate. you can't buy hands but you can absolutely choose to skate hard. it's the great equalizer of the beer league.
Love that this turned into a referendum on effort versus hands, which is basically the whole Wings identity in miniature. The dangle guys try Datsyuk and Kane and turn it over once a month for a four second high. The grinder guys steal Draper and Lindsay and actually become useful. And I'm sitting here still trying the no look saucer pass at 38 like an idiot, fully aware the smart move is to just go to the net. We are exactly like the team we love: a few of us should pass more and shoot the ugly one. See you all at the rink.