In The Blink Of An Eye: The Stanley Cup For The Hockey Novice
Capturing the high-speed drama on ice with hockey maven Stan Fischler
With the 2022 Stanley Cup playoffs in full swing, I’m bringing one of my favorite sports conversations out of the archives:
First, a quick backstory.
In June of 2013, my nine-year-old daughter and I were channel surfing and wound up getting hooked on a thrilling Stanley Cup final — game three of the Boston Bruins versus the Chicago Blackhawks.
The action was so fast, we couldn’t follow the puck. But we were riveted.
My daughter was firing one question after another at me — which I couldn’t answer because I hardly ever watch hockey.
At one point, in an overtime with warp-speed action, she observed:
This game is moving so fast, if we blink our eyes we could miss a score. You know what? I’m going to keep my eyes open and not blink.
Just as my daughter said that, the Bruins scored the winning goal.
And that’s when I decided I had to find a guest for the program I was hosting at the time (CNN Profiles) who could slow down the game for me — and my daughter — and others like us who struggle to follow the intense action on the ice.
I was steered to Stan Fischler, a legendary hockey maven and entertaining storyteller who has written more than 90 books on the sport.
In this conversation of ours, from 2013, Fischler makes it possible for all of us to better appreciate hockey’s high-speed drama.
For example, some players can shoot a puck at more than 100-miles-per-hour — as fast as the fastest fastballs in Major League Baseball, over a shorter distance than the mound to home plate. How do you stop a shot like that?
One of the things that’s happened, probably as courageous as anything in sports, is that there are defensemen who will hurl their body in front of these shots. And, of course, there’s been some severe damage in that respect. A couple of guys have suffered serious eye injuries.
As for the goalies, they became bolder and more adept at protecting the net as they began protecting their face.
The primary factor in goal tending in the past, when there was no mask, was fear. That’s what determined the way the goalie positioned himself and the way he stopped the puck.
It surprised me that there was a time in hockey when goalies did not wear masks.
Stan Fischler was at the game 62 years ago when a goalie, for the first time ever — after getting hit in the face with a puck and stitched up — insisted on wearing a mask when he returned to the ice, over the objections of his coach, who thought a mask wasn’t manly.
Fischler also highlights the overlooked artistry required for athletes to skate at each other at up to 30 miles per hour — with much bigger bodies than hockey players of the past, which means much less white space on the ice to maneuver.
One of the things that amazes me . . . is how some players can take a pass on their skates and then by just manipulating the skate, move [the puck] right onto their stick. And this, of course, is done at high speeds. . . . Maybe not as hard as a 100 mile shot, but they pass the puck almost as hard as they shoot it.
I never would have learned any of this (and much more) if my nine-year-old daughter had not asked me those questions back in 2013 — about hockey and its almost blinding speed.
This week, that daughter of mine graduated from high school.
In the blink of an eye.
See What You Missed:
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Coming Soon on The Wavemaker Conversations Newsletter
Coming in June, among other things, is my conversation with a particularly imaginative force in the field of climate change, Spencer Glendon, who spent much of his career in finance as a partner in the Boston firm, Wellington Management.
Glendon is working to transform our ability to anticipate, visualize and, hopefully, slow down the escalating impacts of climate change — with his team at Probable Futures.