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Archive for May, 2011

A good hockey player depends upon a great skating technique to support his game.
Let’s look at the three main phases of the skating process in hockey, and bring up a few common mistakes that can be made in each phase. The first phase is the stride, or where the power comes from to glide forward. This action begins in the hip of the back leg, flows through the knee, and finishes in a full extension of the ankle. The leg and foot should be at about 45 degrees from the direction that you intend to skate, and the weight should be on the ball of the foot, and more to the inside edge of the blade.

When the leg is fully extended, you should be able to visualize a straight line from the foot, through the leg and hip, all the way up to the shoulders. Don’t do a lot of arm flailing, and keep only one hand on your stick if you do not have the puck.

Common problems with the stride phase are that your stride skate comes off the ice before the leg is fully extended. Skate slowly around the rink to check to make sure that the leg is fully extended before you begin to bring it forward, to make sure you get the full power and speed from each stride. Also check that your ankles are essentially straight, and not leaning strongly in or out. If so, you might want to find a different pair of hockey skates that provide the amount of ankle support that you require. Make sure that your weight is more to the inside edge of the blade, and don’t feel embarrassed about falling down when trying this. Do not point your toe straight down at the completion of the stride, for this upsets balance and decreases speed.

Once the stride phase is complete, the next phase is when you glide on the forward foot. Weight should be over the ball of the foot, and the leg bent nearly 90 degrees. The rest of your body should have shoulders over hips and eyes forward, not down. This phase takes strong muscles, and it takes time to develop it well. The big problem here is balance, where your leg should be directly under the center of your body, your weight should be centered on the blade and not on the inside edge, and your head is up and over your support leg.

The final phase is to get the back, or stride, leg underneath your body again. Slightly raise the hockey skate off the ice, and return the leg so that the skate points in the direction you want to go next. This gets you ready to use the other leg to begin the next stride phase. The biggest problem here is to avoid moving your body side to side, as that will disrupt your balance and slow you down. During the recovery phase, also make sure that the gliding skate stays flat and your weight does not move to the inside or outside edge of the hockey skate.

These pointers should help improve your hockey skating technique. There are a number of good books that include drills to practice individual parts of the skating technique, and drills to strengthen your muscles.

In terms of ownership and operation of a team most of the teams in the NHL are owned by private people and investors, but only one player so far has sole ownership of a NHL franchise and that’s Mario Lemieux who played 17 years (1984-2006) with the Pittsburgh Penguins and when the team was in jeopardy with bankruptcy he purchased the team in 1999. This was 7 years before his retirement from the team. He was called by most to be the next “Wayne Gretzky” because he was equally talented as Wayne Gretzky who basically started his playing career from the Edmonton Oilers to the Los Angeles Kings, St. Louis Blues and finishing out his career with the New York Rangers. Gretzky too also has ownership (partial) of the professional team the Phoenix Coyotes since his retirement in 1999.

There’s a lot to be said since athletes who turn around and invest in the teams they devoted years to a successful career with for so many years tend to bring back a bigger crowd because the status of being an owner is an even bigger place in the sport of hockey. After 17 seasons Lemieux had defiantly earned his place in the hockey world since he owns the Penguins and what person could be better fitted since he knows the team from the inside out and can appoint the right people to recruit talented players to the team.

Owning a team is a lot of work and can be expensive and risky if you don’t know what you’re doing to bring in the crowd needed to make a team successful. Many people don’t see the actual price tag it takes to operate and run an NHL franchise. You’re looking at between $50-75 million dollars to own and operate a team and that doesn’t include the cost of renting a facility where the games are played at since the numbers would be through the roof if you had to do the math on that one. Milwaukee doesn’t have a hockey team for the very reason explained it was a financial issue and having done a survey there was a huge lack of interest. The interest level would be much higher if they had someone like Wayne Gretzky or some well known NHL legend either co-owning or is the sole owner of a team then there would be a chance for Milwaukee to actually consider the idea because then the investors won’t feel like they’ll lose money on a project that isn’t really going anywhere if there’s no standing or interest in it.

Not to mention the main focus would be the financial projections for the next 5 to 10 seasons because the idea of having a franchise in the NHL is to make money and be a winning team. It’s when you see teams going into bankruptcy because usually that indicates low ticket sales over a course of years or in a single season to not packing them in and looking at attendance and other factors as well such as merchandise sales. It’s not a pretty sight when teams end up being bought or sold by people, but they seem to have a chance of surviving when the owner is a popular player because the name alone will draw in some serious revenue when people know that a former professional player is the owner of a team that does win.

Wayne Gretzky was acknowledged as one of the all time great hockey players by nearly everyone when he broke several of Gordie Howe’s records. He became the all time leading scorer with his 802nd goal, and also the all time point-getter when he got his 1852nd point.

Wayne was born and raised in Ontario, Canada, and his father built a backyard ice rink when Wayne was six years old. He practiced daily for hours, with his dad teaching him the skills of skating, shooting, and stickhandling. Even at the age of six, Wayne was playing on a team of ten year olds, far beyond the normal skill range of a six year old. One year he got 378 goals on a peewee team, and earned the nickname “The White Tornado” because of his talents and his white gloves.

Wayne moved to Toronto at the age of fourteen to have more opportunities in hockey, and at 16 played in the World Junior Championship. He was thought too small and slight to even make the Canadian team, but once there, he was named top center and was the leader in scoring for the entire competition. Wayne knew that he wanted to play professional hockey, but at 17 was too young for the minimum NHL draft age of 20, so he signed a contract with the Indianapolis Racers. That hockey team had financial troubles, and so Gretzky was moved to the Edmonton Oilers, where he became universally noticed. In his first year at Edmonton he attracted a lot of notice, but only won one hockey trophy that year, the Hart Trophy.

The next year, 1980, began Wayne’s march to claim many of the hockey statistics as his own. He won his first scoring title, and made a new assists record of 109, to surpass Bobby Orr. The following year, he went past Phil Esposito’s record of 76 goals in one season, which many people had thought would stand forever. Gretzky scored 92 goals in one season, which many people now view as simply impossible to break. He also registered 212 points in a season, and he is the only player to ever have done that. He is the only hockey player to break 200 points in a season, and he repeated that feat for four seasons.

Gretzky had a few signature moves. He was known for not using a man skating ahead of him, but instead using the trailing man on rushes. When the team had a penalty, Gretzky did not ice the puck in a defensive role, but rather tried to surprise the other team by scoring shorthanded. He would also skate past the blue line and then curl, where he would wait for a defensemen to join him and create a real scoring chance. “Gretzky’s office” was the area behind the other team’s goal, because he made so many perfect passes for scoring opportunities from there.

After playing with several teams, Wayne Gretzky ended his professional hockey career with the New York Rangers in the 1998-1999 season. The National Hockey League retired his number 99, a fitting tribute to a remarkable player.

Everyone knows that hockey can be a rough and sometimes brutal sport to be involved with. There are a lot of injuries that are common to hockey players that are either a part of the game or some can be threatening to one’s career. This is why so many hockey players are prone to a lot of injuries to the back, knees and arms and a plethora of other things as well. There are ten injuries that hockey players are prone to and they are:

Lower back problems
Head trauma
Neck strain
Tendonitis
Black eye
Broken teeth
Frostbite
Spinal cord injury
Broken bones

It’s these injuries that can resort to ending a player’s career which has happened a lot in the NHL a lot of players end up cutting their careers short because of injuries due to repeated injuries to the same place over and over again for a course of years. This can also keep a player in pain for years on end and can escalate to chronic which requires them to be in some kind of physical therapy and pain management. It’s not a pleasant thing for many athletes who have career ending injuries because they’re constantly in pain that can sometimes be unbearable which can make their lives hard to deal with. Many athletes are also becoming too reliant on medications to fix problems and that too has caused issues.

A lot of the common knee injuries are fixed with shots of cortisone which can cause erosion of the cartilage in the knees which can be serious and result in full or partial knee replacement when it gets to be to the point that tearing begins to set in. This is why a lot of physical and massage therapists can know right away what part of an athlete’s body will eventually wear out because of the frequent repetitive moving they do during a game or even the training they do in the off season.

The surgeries these athletes get are really the most painful things around they may fix the problem, but they can also cause pain to get worse over time to where it’s chronic and persistent and can be bothersome making it difficult to sleep and do normal daily activities in and outside of the home. Many athletes are usually not good at accepting retirement especially due to injuries that can end a career, but many of them will not listen to a doctor when he or she tells them to rest and follow the self care instructions laid out for them so they can get the recuperation in so they can be back on the ice in a shorter amount of time. There’s a reason doctors say this and that’s so the body can take the time to heal itself from an injury and can allow the body to recuperate naturally without so much pain medication.