One of the things that has surprised me listening to coaches and players over the past few years is a sort of collective lack of tactical obsession. It’s not that I’d say they don’t think it matters, just that there seems to be a sort of broad agreement that you need to have a plan that everyone is executing but the specifics of the plan aren’t all that important. Don’t do anything too stupid and, whatever, as long as you have a plan and everyone’s on the same page, talent wins out. Meanwhile, you look across the ocean at soccer and the tactical obsession is endless.



On a certain level, I don’t think that this is surprising. Fundamentally, it’s hard to evaluate the efficacy of a tactic in hockey. To start with, hockey’s kind of constantly moving at high speed through circumstances in which you’d have different tactical plans. Consider transitioning from a defensive zone faceoff loss to an extended sequence in the...