This week in hockey crimes and misdemeanors

I almost don't know where to start, other than saying my team had a 2 to 1 lead midway through the second period in a playoff game against the best team in our league and we couldn't hold on. The end result: a 4 to 2 loss.

Wow -- the guys on my team played their hearts out. And wow -- I wish I could have joined them. I didn't just play bad. I played stupid.

Bad to the point that I really should have done the team a favor and sat down on the bench and stayed there once it became apparent that I had nothing to contribute. If there's five guys on the ice and one of them is skating around with his head wedged at an unlikely angle up his ass, you don't have to be a NASA scientist to figure out the team is at 80% strength.

So let's get right to it and piece together what I can still remember about yesterday's game.

THE CRIME: I'm at right wing. From behind the goal, someone on my team bangs the puck up the right boards. It gets past me -- I'm out of position and not up against the boards -- and it also gets past the other team's defenseman. So we're chasing it up the boards and he's in front of me and I give him a shove in his back to get him out of the way. He falls, I get whistled for roughing.

THE RESULT: Did I mention we were on a power play at the time? Our one-man advantage turns to a minute of four-on-four followed by the other team going on the power play -- which my teammates manage to kill.

THE LESSON: It's good to play aggressively. But it's dumb to be aggressive when you don't have to be -- and in this case, there was no reason to be. I know what I was thinking at the time -- if I can pick up the puck, I've got a clear line of attack into the other team's zone and we're on a power play and we gotta get the puck out of our own end.

THE CRIME: I'm at right wing. The other team has possession in their own zone, the puck somehow goes sailing all the way to the right side boards, 20 feet from the nearest players -- me and one of the other team's defenseman. We race to get it. He slows to grab the puck, I barrel on through, hoping to pick it up and continue on the boards. He goes down hard against the boards and threatens to "hit me next time," leaving me puzzled why he didn't hit me this time. I'm whistled for roughing. Again. The ref tells me I have to at least try to stop.


THE RESULT: My teammates kill the power play, but we're now down 3 to 2 in the game and we lose two minutes of catch-up time.

Working on the simple breakout

One of the skills my team is still learning is the breakout. To put it simply, the ability to take the puck from deep into our zone to deep into the other team's zone without just winging the puck out there, which usually gets us an icing call.

The problem is that my team has eight guys playing in our first league. We don't get to practice a lot together, although a bunch of us participate in a Wednesday night clinic and play some pickup.

So we're trying to keep it real simple. I thought this post at the Hockey Player Tips blog captured our problem and offered up a pretty good solution in the form of a basic breakout. The above video also has some great tips -- particularly using your skates to catch a pass along the boards from your defenseman.

I've played right wing the past couple of games and I'm struggling with the catching the pass issue. A few times during last night's pickup game, for example, I had already turned up the ice and had to catch a pass coming from behind. I often missed. Or I'm facing my zone and have to catch a pass and turn around and get going.

I'm not the only guy on the team having issues with this. But we've got to get it down because we're stronger on defense than offense and we can't rely on our defenseman to take the puck from goal line to goal line and then get back and play D.

As always, any tips on the comment board would be appreciated.

--Steve Hymon