When I watch a hockey game, I am always amazed to see that many players often drop their stick. Especially the goalkeepers. Having played hockey for a long time, my coaches kept telling us to hold our sticks well. Is it because of their lightness? And do you have any stats on whether broken sticks are up every year? Good old Sherwood is out of style, but still, the sticks feel so flimsy to me!

Ah, the good old Sherwoods. Apparently Jason Spezza was the last player – we’re excluding goaltenders here – to play with wooden sticks, and there’s a reason for that: those sticks weighed around 85lbs (ok, exaggerating, but still) , and above all, they did not allow one-timers to be made with the precision of modern sticks. These sticks are very light and yes, they can be dropped more easily, but we will also notice that the modern defender has developed a thousand and one ways to make them slip away from a rival, sometimes legally, sometimes not. And yes, modern poles tend to break more easily, especially at the bottom, a defect that all manufacturers have been promising to correct for a few years now. Maybe one day ?

Where does the famous wave seen at sporting events come from?

The origins of the wave are debated. This is a tricky question. The wave – as we know it – was first filmed during a playoff game between the New York Yankees and the Athletics in Oakland on October 15, 1981. However, its origin dates back to the 19th century, according to baseball historian Peter Morris. In his book A Game of Inches, he recounts that fellow historian Tom Shieber met a Baseball Hall of Fame volunteer who discovered an entry about a wave during a disputed game on October 15, 1866 in Brooklyn: “A quite a funny scene happened here. One individual, cramped for two or three hours on the temporary bench to the left of the field, stood up, stretched his body, arms and neck to the maximum, and seemed to feel quite refreshed; his next neighbor imitated his example, and one after another almost all the spectators got up, straightened up, and then resumed their places. The effect was ridiculous in the extreme […] and every once in a while the process repeated itself. »

The term “wave” was not used, but it fits this description. And in Montreal? It was August 9, 1984, during an Expos game at Olympic Stadium against the Chicago Cubs, according to our former La Presse colleague Michel Blanchard. According to him, the wave became popular in the fall of 1983 in the NFL before reaching Montreal. Then Expos manager Bill Virdon said with a laugh after the Expos’ 1-0 win in the 10th inning, “I don’t know if people made waves to make us score. , or because they were bored to death. Internationally, the wave was popularized during the Mexico Soccer World Cup in 1986.

When a team acquires a contract like Shea Weber’s to reach the salary floor, or if a team is involved in a three-club trade like was the case with Ryan O’Reilly, who ultimately pays the player’s salary ?

These are two very different cases. The Arizona Coyotes acquired Weber’s full contract a few weeks ago. So they – or more likely an insurance company – will have to pay his salary. What interests the Coyotes is above all Weber’s real salary (1 million per year for another 3 years), a sum much lower than the sum listed on the club’s payroll, or 7.857 million. Now Ryan O’Reilly: He was first traded by the St. Louis Blues to the Minnesota Wild, who soon traded him to the Toronto Maple Leafs. The Blues kept half his salary, the maximum proportion expected by the NHL. The Wild kept half of the remaining sum – so a quarter of the total. The Leafs therefore pay the last quarter. All of that will fade on July 1, when O’Reilly becomes an unrestricted free agent.

When shootouts were introduced in hockey, the player tended to go straight for the goaltender. Now the puck carrier forks, almost goes to the boards before returning to the goal. Is this approach really more effective than going straight to the point?

To our knowledge, there is no comprehensive study on this subject. We can therefore only provide you with our impressions. Several players, as you point out, are now taking a long detour – think in particular of Nick Suzuki, who has become a specialist. This detour allows the shooter to give himself time, and forces the goalkeeper to stretch his movement if the player decides to use his backhand. However, not everyone does it the same way. The best in this area this season in the NHL, like Suzuki, Jason Robertson or Artemi Panarin, adopt a very wide layout. Teuvo Teravainen also avoids the center of the ice, but goes far less away from it. As for Evgeny Kuznetsov, he too chooses the detour, but usually arrives at such a slow speed in front of the goalkeeper that all the distance traveled has no real value. In short, there is no universal recipe, only modes, which players can adopt and adapt to their liking.