Hockey's New Look

Toronto's rough, tough Maple Leafs, known as hockey's bad men, had no corner on rowdiness. The Detroit Red Wings, no sissies themselves, met them whack for whack two weeks ago. Last week, with the two teams neck & neck (or throat to throat) for the National Hockey League lead, 13,284 Torontonians turned out to see another battle of bashed heads.

In the first period, Detroit's aggressive Gordon Howe knocked Toronto's Joe Klukay into the boards. He lay there unconscious for a few seconds. The crowd booed, and sat back hopefully for more of the same. But for the next two periods, despite eleven penalties for high-sticking, holding, interference, slashing and charging, both teams were overcome by a sudden fit of manners. Seven seconds before the game's end, the Leafs, with a dramatic sally, salvaged a 4-4 tie, and kept their slim, one-point league lead. The game's flashes of roughness were as old as hockey itself, but the pell-mell style of play was something fairly new. It was certainly a long way from prewar hockey.

Shinny Style. A change has come over professional hockey in the past five years. At first, the change was blamed by some fans on inferior wartime players. Connoisseurs of team-play began missing one of the game's biggest thrills: the sight of two wings and a center flashing abreast down the ice', two enemy defensemen getting set for impact, the deft passes, the shot, the clear-cut scoring play. Instead, they saw a game that was more like high-pressure "shinny."

The current fad is for all players to chase after the puck, rather than for two defensemen to hang back behind their own blue line when the action is at the other end of the ice. This form of mass attack was formerly used only when a team was behind, or the enemy was shorthanded; now it is the accepted style of play. The trick is now to carry the puck up to midice, then bat it down in the general vicinity of the enemy goal, with everyone but the goalie scrambling after it. More goals are made: scores now read 5 to 4 instead of 2 to 1. This season, with a postwar crop of hockey pros developing, the shinny style is more popular than ever.

One man who regrets the turn hockey has taken is taciturn Frank Boucher, an Irishman with a French name (rhymes with touche), who coaches the New York Rangers. Boucher, one of the greatest playmaking centers ever to wear skates, was one of the first coaches to install the new fire-horse technique. "Any club that doesn't use it," he insists, "will have its brains beaten out." It also gives coaches some jittery moments. A coach's most difficult task under the new style, says Boucher, is getting his men to switch quickly from five-man offense to five-man defense the split second that a scoring drive begins to peter out. He is frank to admit: "I'd prefer playing the old game, but I like watching the new."

Bull Strength v. Speed. So far, with the hockey season one-third over, no team has shown a clear-cut edge in the new-style -game. Only Chicago's Black Hawks, for lack of an adequate goaltender, seem doomed. The other five teams, all practitioners of hit-&-run hockey, are bunched up front for differing reasons.

Toronto has brawn, getting by on what one rival manager calls "bull strength and ignorance." Montreal has Maurice Richard (TIME, March 3), still probably the game's No. 1 player; Boucher's up-&-coming Rangers have speed and depth; Detroit the league's best defense. The Boston Bruins, though weak on defense, have had few goals scored against them, largely because of incomparable Frank ("Mr. Zero") Brimsek, a goalie who has the knack of always being in the way.

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