Kukla's Korner Hockey

Kukla's Korner Hockey

Playoff Hits

04/20/2015 at 2:17pm EDT

from Allan Muir of Sports Illustrated,

While the Senators were mauling the Canadiens early in a game that eventually went Montreal’s way on Sunday night, there was a fascinating debate online about the value of hitting.

The #fancystat crowd was resolute in its conviction that physicality is a failed battle plan. The theory in a nutshell: Hits are not a stat that should be glorified because they indicate possession by the opposing team. In other words, you can’t rack ’em up unless you’re chasing the puck. And as every stat geek will tell you, possession is everything.

In a vacuum, or a game played on paper, that makes perfect sense.

The alternate view suggests that, taken in context, the value of doling out punishment is clear. No team can possess the puck all the time, so how you play when you don’t have it can be critical to the outcome of a series. Hits, after all, aren’t always an indication of a game that is being chased any more than they are about a neanderthal desire to negate skill with brute force.

The goal of hitting is to make life miserable for the other team. To make them rush decisions out of fear of being plastered into the end boards over and over again.

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Paul Kukla founded Kukla’s Korner in 2005 and the site has since become the must-read site on the ‘net for all the latest happenings around the NHL.

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