Line dancing

Sporting News, The, Oct 14, 1996 by Terry Frei

Marc Crawford is watching the action on the ice intently. Hey, you don't win the NHL's Coach of the Year Award in your first season in the league, then the Stanley Cup in your second without paying attention. As play continues, the Avalanche coach leans forward and announces in his slightly high-pitched voice, "Peter's line's up! "Peter's line's up!"

So Peter Forsberg, the Avalanche's phlegmatic, yet tough Swedish center, is on notice. Same with his wingers Claude Lemieux and (when he isn't holding out, as he was during the exhibition season) Valeri Kamensky. The Swede, the French Canadian and the Russian have been told (in English) to get ready and they begin to lean forward a little, waiting anxiously. Often, they're getting ready to replace the Avalanche's other potent line, the one made up of playoff MVP Joe Sakic and wingers Scott Young and Adam Deadmarsh, who both pulled off the feat of playing for a Stanley Cup champion and the USA's World Cup winner in a span of three months.

There are two choices here, of course. And while the discussion of them might not be for those who can recite the career statistics of everyone in the Hockey Hall of Fame, proclaim Foster Hewitt the greatest broadcaster of all time and consider the makeup of the Whalers fourth line important, there are plenty of '90s NHL fans who haven't yet devoured the rulebook--and the often clannish league, its fans and "hockey media" finally have realized that it's folly to look down their noses at those who are trying to pick up the nuances of the game in Phoenix, Denver, Miami and Anaheim.

One option is switching lines or defensive pairings with hockey's unique stratagem, the changing On The Fly (which, contrary to his claims, was not conceived by a certain TSN columnist). This can be like touching second base on a double play, but the of official standard is that skaters can't leave the bench until the men they are replacing are within 5 feet of the bench. Clearly, there is a common-sense art to this to picking the right moment to head to the bench (when the puck has been cleared or otherwise is out of a position of danger for your team) and not stay out too long (generally 45-seconds to a minute shifts).

Crawford works in the same arena in which Don Cherry, the bombastic Hockey Night in Canada commentator who then was coaching the Colorado Rockies, once put a virtual stranglehold on one of his own defensemen, Mike McEwen. Why? Because McEwen, an independent sort who had a hard time hearing the beat of anyone else's drum, much less his coach's, stayed on the ice about as long as Roger Bannister took to run his famous sub-4-minute mile. The whistle didn't blow, so McEwen stayed out, ignoring his bench's admonishments to get his, um, skates off the ice while play continued.

Crawford hasn't had that problem--on that reaction. Not yet

One of the most dreaded phrases during any replay on a hockey broadcast is the infamous: "... and as you see, they were caught in a line change." And just as bad, or maybe worse, is the too-many-menon-the-ice penalty that, while often not the coach's fault, gives the impression that chaos--not the man with the suit--reigns on the bench. To this day, a bench minor in a playoff series with Montreal haunts Cherry--and was one of the reasons Bruins G.M. Harry Sinden could get away with firing such a popular and successful coach in the first place after that season.

So it's got to be done right, with shifts that can be as short as a few seconds. "If you're trying to trick an opponent, you trick them on the fly, depending on if you're home or away," Crawford says. "You've got to adapt to what they do. Short-shifting somebody or mixing up the rotation is how you can get away from certain things and get the kind of matchups we want"

In other words, if Crawford is trying to get Forsberg away from a checking line, perhaps one with Vancouver's Esa Tikkanen chattering away and shadowing Forsberg, Crawford will scramble with quick changes. That can get more complicated, because the need for the quick change needs to be communicated to the next line and, more important, to the players on the ice.

"We have a signal if we want a quick change," Crawford says.

You can tell us, coach.

"If I told you that," he says, "I'd have to shoot you."

On second thought, maybe we don't need to know.

Under more normal circumstances, the shifts are longer. But not too long.

"We try to keep it at a minute," Crawford says. "After a minute, if you're going full bore, you're not going to be able to do much."

By the way, we might as well deal with one of the myths right here. Crawford and the Avalanche's opponents have to deal with the milehigh altitude of Denver. In a sport of short shifts and energy bursts that's relatively meaningless--unless opposing players and coaches talk themselves into thinking otherwise.

The other option is waiting for a stoppage in play, at which time the coaches can make their substitutions at a more leisurely pace--and in proper sequence--and the fans who went out to get a beer can scramble back to their seats without getting tackled by the increasing vigilant ushers at the portals.