“This is the future of the NHL—all the teams with small forwards and slick forwards are gone, the big bullies are now playing, the guys that are 6’3, 6’4 . . . those are the guys scoring the goals, those are the guys that are checking.”
—Barry Melrose (on the 2019 Stanley Cup Finals)
This quote, pulled from a recent episode of ESPN’s Pardon The Interruption, started a bit of a twitter spat the last couple of days, reigniting the philosophical war over building an NHL roster based on size versus finesse/speed.
It’s a valid argument—and one that really needs to be broken down and discussed objectively—especially during the Stanley Cup Finals and with the draft and free agency right around the corner.
First of all, it’s kind of dumb to say it’s simply about size. There are good and bad big players and the same applies to small players.
Another quote to consider here (author unknown): “It’s not the size of the dog in the fight. It’s the size of the fight in the dog.” Hold that thought. We’ll come back to it.
The responses to the Melrose quote, in the twitter thread I read, were quick to point out how Alex DeBrincat and Cam Atkinson, both small players, scored 40 goals a piece last year. But then someone else chimed in that they amassed those totals in the regular season—a different brand of hockey versus the playoffs.
This is an important distinction, especially for Hawks fans who, in 2016 and 2017, had all kinds of confidence about their team’s playoff chances based on regular season performance, and then watched them get beaten in the first round by the Blues in 2016, and absolutely flattened by the Predators in 2017.
There’s the rub: is it about how many points you amass, or how many goals you score in the regular season, or about how far you go in the playoffs and winning a Cup?
Let’s work with the assumption that the “goal” is to win in the playoffs. If you disagree, you should probably stop reading.
In the NHL, regular season hockey and playoff hockey are different styles of hockey, without question. Setting aside the more subjective things like how the game is officiated before and after April 10, there are some hard facts that can’t be denied:
First, regular season games don’t start to become really meaningful until after, say, Christmas. The St. Louis Blues, for example, were one of the league’s worst teams before Christmas this past season—and its best after that point. And it’s turned out well for them. Point is, in the playoffs, there’s simply a lot more at stake game to game. And game after game. You can’t stink for the first half of the playoffs, then win the Cup. Doesn’t work that way.
Add to that the fairly widely accepted “fact” that the refs tend to swallow the whistles in the playoffs.
So then you have a lot at stake in each game, along with much more permissive officiating—and what you end up with are much more physical games. Again, game after game.
But that’s not all. There’s no 3-on-3 overtime in the playoffs, or a shootout. Games are decided by 5-on-5 hockey. Sometimes, in a given game, or over the course of a series, a lot of 5-on-5 hockey.
That last bit doesn’t necessarily favor big players over small players, or vice versa. It becomes more about endurance and will.
And all that said, because the style of play is so much more physical, the frequency of injury in the playoffs is higher game to game. Yet players tend to play through injuries in the playoffs (or try to). Because, unlike the regular season, where you can take a few weeks off and come back and help your team—in the playoffs, they might be eliminated by then.
Pretty passing and stickhandling plays and players moving the puck uninterrupted through the neutral zone—while not totally uncommon in the playoffs—seem to happen less. And a relatively higher percentage of the goals are of the “greasy” variety.
And this is where things like size—without dismissing compete level (regardless of size)—become very important.
The net conclusion here is fairly obvious, and proven by the teams that actually win the Cup year after year: teams that have players with the will to play physical hockey, and the talent to produce while playing that brand of hockey, win the Cup year after year.
Last year, it was the Washington Capitals. This year, either of the teams in the finals fits that description.
Going back over the years, you can point at the Penguins’ Cup teams and those of the Blackhawks’ since 2009 as examples of highly talented teams that won Cups. But those were teams that could and did match up physically, and dealt out as much or more punishment than they took. Go back to just 2015, when the Hawks could roll a “fourth line” of Andrew Shaw, Marcus Kruger and Andrew Desjardins. They didn’t score (much), but they dominated offensive zone possession and drove opponents nuts. And it’s important to point out, none of those players are what you’d call “big.” But all of them “played big.”
Conversely, remember when the Vancouver Canucks won the Cup in 2011? Wait, no, that’s right, a “high finesse” team that was the presumptive favorite to win the Cup that year, the Canucks ran into the brick wall known as the Boston Bruins, got epicly “bi— slapped” and took a physical and humiliating Cup Final loss.
Just this year, the “electric” Tampa Bay Lightning were on the high-flying express train to the Finals when they got destroyed in the first round by a Columbus team that outhit them and outworked them. Then, Columbus ran into a team that upped the stakes on physicality and intimidation, and now Boston finds themselves in yet another Cup Final.
Fact is, although interwebz experts keep proclaiming that “the game has changed,” typically as part of a rationale for drafting 165 pound defensemen, or in support of teams that get a disproportionate amount of regular season production in 3-on-3 OT and on the perimeter at 5-on-5 (like the Hawks of the last few years), the Stanley Cup playoffs keep proving, year in and year out, that the games played in May and June really haven’t changed that much.
Again, it’s not just about the size of the player, as proven by the likes of Brad Marchand, but it really is about how willing and able your players are to go in between the circles and to the front of the net, win along the wall, and take and deliver punishment every other night for a couple of months.
Size, skill and speed—especially when a player has all three—check important boxes. But definitely, what seems just as (if not more) important is the size of the heart and willingness to pay a physical price to win.
All I have for now. Comment below.