Last night saw NCAA record-setting attendance for women’s hockey. The “Fill the Bowl” promotion’s $1 tickets skyrocketed attendance to over 12,000 and the Johnson family went too.

Sadly, the #1 ranked Badgers were rather tame and their high octance offense was held to just one goal (shown above) by a clearly inferior Bemidji team.

Happily, I’m a long time women’s soccer coach, so I found my mind wandering into coaching territory as I watched the Badgers. I was confounded by several things that I saw, and I’m sharing them here, just to open my observations up to feedback from my readers. Frankly, I’m curious.

As a women’s soccer coach, I am very savvy with what Anson Dorrance calls “80%.” That is women are 80%  the size of men, 80% as fast, 80% as strong, but they play on the same size field as men. The only excpetion\accomodation in women’s sports that I’m aware of is the smaller ball in basketball, otherwise everything else is the same.

So the relationship between time and space in the women’s game is different than in the men’s game and women have more space within which to play. Clearly the Badgers try to use this space by looking to play frequent give and goes. I rarely see this played in men’s hockey. The better international teams that the Badger men play occassionally over the holidays incorporate this into their games more than here domestically. What we see most often with the men is the head man pass with furious skating and then the dump and run. That is playing the puck into the attacking zone and hustling after it.

I believe checking is the reason. Women can’t check so they can play a short pass and skate by to get a return pass. Men can try to play a give and go, but often will get slowed up by a check as they try to skate past their defender.

While all this clever short passing is fun to watch, it isn’t fun to watch when the play develops so slowly. Bemidji rarely was stretched by the Badger’s short passing game. They always got their numbers back and the Badger’s passing and movement didn’t pull them out of their defensive shape. Indeed, often by the time the Badger’s were ready to shoot, Bemidji had four players bunched in a bunker around the crease. Shots had a hard time penetrating the forest of sticks and pads, much less the goalie.

This slow offense got me thinking about the skating. The women’s game seemed to flow more at a constant speed than the mens. That is individual’s speed didn’t vary all that much. The men’s game has both a faster top end and more stops and starts. Last night, I can’t recall any hockey stops spraying ice.

The Badger gals, even though they’re ranked number one and playing on an “80%” rink, seemed slow. While I’m sure they could all outskate me, what I was noticing was the length and frequency of their strides. In fact, I mentioned this to a good buddy and lifetime hockey player who I ran into at the Kohl Center and he agreed commenting, “They all take these long strides.”  The secret to acceleration and getting up to speed, is a burst of short powerful strides. Long strides naturally decrease stride frequency and it’s harder to apply full power to a long stride.

I’m wondering if this too, isn’t somewhat a function of the no checking rule. Without someone able to physically stop, slow or knock you down, is there a real reason to have such aggressive stops and starts? It seems so. Clearly, a team would benefit from a high top end speed being able to outskate their opponent is always advantageous – until you lose control, that is. But if someone can’t check me, then it seems the need to dart by them is greatly diminished.

All that is speculation on my part, I’m sure Mark Johnson has some insight, but I still don’t understand the low stride frequency all the skaters displayed.

The last thing I noticed was the lack of stick handling. Is this yet another function of the no checking rule? Many of these talented ladies reminded me of myself when I played C-league intramural hockey in college. C-league hockey is co-ed and for anyone who wants to give hockey a go. We leaned on our sticks and eventually learned to do hockey stops, but there was a no checking rule. As it was, there was a lot of clumsy skating and checking as a by product of that, which is really more dangerous because you don’t know it’s coming. But I digress.

Men move the puck around as they skate using their stick. Last night I observed both teams pushing the puck with their stick, just like we did in C-league. I know stick handling is done for feinting and for control, so why weren’t the women doing it?

Even when skating through on goal, I didn’t see stickhandling. The Badgers would keep the puck on the inside of their stick. This is the perfect time to stick handling, so as to make the goalie guess; will you shoot it forehand or backhand, nearside, five-hole or farside? The idea is to use where you are skating, where the puck is on your stick (inside the curve, outside the curve), and where the stick is (close to you or far, to your left or right) to make the goalie move from the angle they are protecting and give you a place to shoot.

Now I enjoy a good game of hockey, I really do, but when it’s a boring 0-0 game, this coach’s mind wanders. I’m truly curious as to why I observed what I observed. Any hockey players out there have a perspective to share?