While I don’t subscribe to the idea that “there’s a grain of truth to every joke,” this particular one held enough to fill several prairie bins. This “joke” had also become a running one, as I had once again clipped a video for our Toronto Marlies coaching staff of an unintentional “lateral dump” while proclaiming it hockey’s next great coaching revolution. That was hyperbole, but I really loved the play then and still do now. It was mostly a joke because that’s how my then-lack of confidence led me to present it.



When a player skates the puck up across the center red and enters the area before the blue line, where they start to feel real pressure from both the D and backchecking forwards, the autopilot play of the day is … well, you know exactly what it is. The default play there is to simply dump the puck into the offensive zone.



That scenario checks all the pucks-in-deep boxes. Players have been...