Is hockey IQ really lower in today's NHL?
Some follow up thoughts from an article I wrote last month about the NHL as a development league.
About three weeks ago I wrote about whether the NHL was a development league or not.
The piece led to some strong conversations in the comments, Twitter DMs, and in emails.
I’ve been meaning to followup on this, but between some hectic things both work and life wise, I haven’t gotten around to it yet.
One of those emails came from Ben Wylie. One of the things I like about Ben’s view of the hockey world is that he comes at from an outsider perspective. He’s a data journalist based in London, and a very smart one at that — I highly recommend his site Plot The Ball, where I’ve learned about both cricket and rugby in the past couple weeks.
Ben emailed me after I wrote my piece on the NHL as a development league, here is an excerpt of his correspondence.
I have some questions on the ‘Hockey IQ’ point though: do the people in the game who believe this is the case have any actual evidence for ‘game understanding’ being lower — or is it purely anecdotal? If it’s purely anecdotal, what is their line of reasoning?
What I struggle a bit with is that ‘game understanding’ — which I think you could fairly define as perceiving how other players (and the puck) are moving around the ice, and being aware of which possible actions increase your team’s chance of scoring (and decrease the other team’s) the most given that context — is surely another skill which would increase for young players with more focused development time.
What is the thinking behind this skill having deteriorated while all others have improved? Is it training/development being focused on different things compared to decades ago?
Ben’s response is almost a direct question to this quote from Detroit Red Wings forward Patrick Kane:
“The hockey sense was higher when I came into the league,” Red Wings forward Patrick Kane said. “I think guys now are definitely more skilled and they can probably skate themselves out of problems or bad positioning or anything like that. But they use their physical skills to make up for mistakes, the Hockey IQ was higher, guys on average understood game better overall.”
Ben’s email, which I responded to, also got me thinking and has had me asking questions myself the past couple weeks.
For starters, we can’t ignore that the game truly has never been faster. Athletes are better trained and quicker than they ever were before. Hockey was already fast and it got faster.
The time to made decisions has become even more limited, and with less time to make decisions, you have less time to make the right ones. When the game was more plodding, even 15 years ago when Kane entered the league, more players could get by on understanding because there was more time to read-and-react.
Another thing, and this probably relates more directly to “Hockey IQ” is an idea a youth hockey coach brought up to me after reading my piece.
There has been more and more of an emphasis on small station and individual skill development in practices. It’s something that started with individualized goalie coaches, and eventually skaters started seeing that success and stole a lot of the small station setup.
I wrote a piece about that last year, which you can read here:
As the pendulum swings, goaltending is trying to become an art again
When the Florida Panthers established their “Goaltending Excellence Department” in 2020 they hired François Allaire as a goalie consultant to the department that Roberto Luongo runs. Allaire should be in the Hockey Hall of Fame as a builder (so should Mitch Korn). He was hired as the Montreal Canadiens first goalie coach in the 1980s and his work with P…
The youth hockey coach I spoke to, pointed out that players are better. They do understand the game in spurts much better, but coaches spend less time working on overall structure and positioning.
To put in their words, it’s become more about building puzzle pieces that you hope link together than actually putting together the puzzle.
Another key thing, which I’ve touched on before, is players either make it or don’t much earlier in their careers now. There are stories of AHL veterans eventually getting their cup of NHL coffee, but in general, most of today’s NHL players have been NHL players since they were 22.
To Kane’s point, and I followed up with him on this after my last piece, teams only had a few spots 15 years ago for players that didn’t drill down on the details. Ironically, he was one of them, he was allowed to freelance as a No. 1 pick, while he says most of his Chicago teammates had to prove they could play NHL hockey and within that structure before they were even given a chance.
Hockey is also going through an evolution right now, and traditional “hockey IQ” and game understanding are probably going to evolve. Defensemen for example, play a different game than ever before — teams used to be built with one power play guy and five heavy bodies on the blue line, now every team has at least three or four quality puck movers (well the good teams, at least).
I think that’s also one of the issues with defining eras while we are in them.
It’s why hind site is always 20/20, right?
There’s no conclusion to this piece, in fact it’s intentionally open-ended here. I’d like to keep having these conversations, like Ben’s email, so feel to jump in either in the comments or via email.
Thanks for reading, enjoy your Monday.
I still believe that sport ‘anticipation’ is a huge determinant of success. Some don’t like Hockey IQ as a term to define that, but some have it -Taz(Stanky) has it big time. And some don’t -Guri never had it, indecision ruled his game.
The players on the ice are like a flock of birds, or a school of fish. Mostly reacting and changing directions at about the same pace, the average. Some lag behind the flock. But the superior ‘anticipators’ get to the puck, or open areas for passes, 2 steps ahead of the flock.
Good point about small area drills teaching/improving skills, but not teaching big-ice anticipation, ‘where is the puck going to be?’
Thus speed is good… but anticipation is better!!! Finish is BEST!