Ain't no way this video was done by someone with less than 2k subscribers. This was not only a great quality video, but it also was an in-depth analysis on a topic I've never really thought about before, no matter how many thousands of videos I've watched on this platform about hockey. Amazing, you won a sub
My dad always said "Goal scorers shoot left" when I was a kid. When I became an adult, I noticed some of the most prolific goal scorers were actually right handed and the best playmakers\stick handlers were mostly lefties. I finally looked up the top 10 goal scorers and had a lot of joy telling him that 6 of the 10 were righties. With a league average of 37% righties I think that is statistically significant that righties tend to be better scorers.
I was a lefty because of my dad always saying Bobby Orr was the best and his favorite. It’s the only thing I can do left handed. Golf and baseball both right handed.
For me it is way easier to shoot accurately with power righty and skate and move with the puck lefty, (I still suck at it) but the movement is more in rhythm with my feet
This is actually informative & excellent hockey content. Unlike 95% of these newer, completely lazy "hockey" channels that churn out completely uninspired daily videos using the most egregious clickbait titles. Because, well, they're lazy & uninspired. You've earned my loyalty & subscription. I hope other hockey channels start putting in a fraction of the work, research, and passion you did for this video. Thank you sir.
Only thing I’d say is he says the dominant hand was on top when it’s actually on bottom. Your dominant hand being on bottom gives the power to your shot.
i grew up playing in the uk, where the main hockey sport is played on grass and every.single.stick shoots right (it's even illegal to use the back of the stick) so yeh pretty much all us british kids who are right handed shot right
9:32 - My wife grew up in Russia in the early 90s before she moved to Finland aged 8, she's left handed and at school she was still forced to write with her right hand so definitely possible that Ovi had the same treatment as a kid!
Switching a child's hands is common in cultures who practice Orthodox religion - being left handed is considered demonic. Two of my cousins, born here in Canada, to parents from Eastern Europe, were forced to change - neither one was ever considered to be destined for military induction, so I'm not buying that reason. That B.S. stopped with me as my wife writes with her left hand and our son is a pure lefty (writes, holds tools and kicks) - but who holds a bat and shoots a hockey stick right.
I'm Canadian and born in he early 90s, My mum forced me to be right handed as a kid also.... Just cause it looked "weird" to her when I would use a spoon in my left haha So who knows?! Maybe Ovi is a product of the state, or of a neurotic mother like me haha😂
One thing to mention is that in America, kids are taught "right hand right shot", so I feel Right shooters are more common coming from the states, where as in Canada its the opposite
This right here. On my team in California there are 3 lefties, everyone else shoots right. When I went to visit family in Alberta a few years ago, we played a quick street hockey game. They had a wall of maybe 100 sticks of all shapes and sizes available, but not a single one was right-handed. They looked at me like I was an alien when I asked for one
Makes sense . And I've heard that in Canada for average recreational players about 60 % or more of Players sticks sold are for left shooters.. Sort of opposite in the USA where it's 60 --percent ot more Right shot 😅. May also have something to do with other Sports that were played first 😊 at an early age like Baseball.. if s kid played ball first may tend to use a hockey stick with the same side they swung s bat
Canadian here. We’re not taught anything, we just grab the stick that’s most comfortable and run with it. I coached tyke and kids would sometimes flip what side they shoot but after that it’s pretty set. I shoot hockey and golf left. Suck at golf tho lol.
Is this a new thing? I'm in the US and my dad and all 8 of his brothers shot opposite of what hand they write with. Also, my hockey playing cousins did the same. I seem to be the unicorn of the family that writes with my right hand and shoots right as well, but I'm pretty ambidextrous (In baseball I bat right, but throw left). This also seemed true for gym class floor hockey. Most kids shot left-handed.
It’s also crazy how inconsistent people are with shooting/batting in different sports. It doesn’t matter if I hit golf, hockey, baseball or whatever I’m a righty and swing from right to left. However I feel like most people play golf for example as righties even if they shoot left in hockey
I remember when this was discussed on our local sports radio station in context of why most Canadian baseball players are throw right bat left. More than other US, or other born baseball players. The rationale give was that in hockey having your dominant hand on the end of the stick allowed the player more control, poke checks with their dominant hand as well as having their non dominant hand off the stick more often when engaging the opposition physically. In contrast athletes that grew up learning baseball (and even golf) were taught to hold their bat (or club) with their dominant hand low because this gave them better power/control of the bat/club during their swing while the non dominant top hand was just there for positioning or alignment purposes. The result, in baseball a throw right bat left player tends to pull the bat through the strike zone while a throw right bat right player 'pushed' their bat through the zone. Interesting the see a granular examination of the differences between hockey players (especially the D/F split where D-man tend most towards the right hand dominance but shoot left handed)
This was a well-researched and fairly thorough video, good job! My personal opinion is that the reason right-handed defensemen are more coveted is simple - they're less common. Because even stay-at-home defensemen, and 2-way defensemen who shoot right are in higher demand than their left-shooting counterparts. As for why left-shooters outnumber right-shooters, I think this is because, when you are first learning the game, the fine motor skills that you have in your dominant hand enable you to more easily and accurately control the puck while stick-handling (as the top hand is responsible for the finesse, while the bottom hand is responsible for the power). At a young age, you're going to get about equivalent power from both hands, but your dominant hand far out-paces your non-dominant hand in _control._ Furthermore, I think this is also a situation where we may be seeing a two-tiered survivorship bias situation. The first tier is that the players who take up the game with their dominant hand at the top of the stick are more likely to have *success* in the game, and will therefore increasingly out-compete the others as they age. The second tier is that for those players who use their dominant hand on the shaft of the stick, only the ones with the most extreme levels of talent and dedication will ever make it to the NHL - only the very best will overcome the odds. Applying this winnowing process to a population that is 90% right-handed, the proportion of left-shots who make the NHL will be larger (as they don't have as much to overcome to become NHL-quality players), while the group of right shots who do make it will be of higher quality overall, having been able to defy even steeper odds against them.
Great vid! Myself being right-handed, I still shoot right. I feel that I "steer" with my weak hand on the top and use the force for shots on my lower hand. I also used to play goalie where I learned to shoot left but I also flipped the stick to shoot right backhands or simply stop the puck depending on which side it came. I have seen Curtis Joseph do the same quite often.
Im a right handed righty ad well and ive tried to teach myself to catch with my right for a more comfortable shot/pass. Its probed difficult having played baseball for almost 16 years.
Your dominant foot plays a gigantic role in your ability to do everything on the ice for your puck handling and shot, left or right handed. It's important to train a dominant foot out of your skating.
I think a huge piece of this conversation that is missing is the factor of dominant sides for more than stick handling. The brain bridge develops more pathways (or something that I don’t understand and maybe is fake) for each trait. So left foot but right hand. Or right handed writing but left handed hockey - these all impact the bridge between the two lobes allowing more avenues of input and output of information. Or faster processing of information inputs. Again - not sure if completely true but I was told something along those lines.
Thanks for this. I'm right handed and right footed and I used to play soccer and hockey. I always shot right in both soccer and hockey even though people said if you're right handed, you need to shoot left in hockey in order to maximize your power. I tried this and never felt comfortable shooting left and my shot was weak compared to my right handed shot.
Struggling with dominant foot skating issues was one of the reasons I was never able to elevate my game from tier 3-2 player into tier 1. Kinda sucks but I got super into snowboarding around midget and quit playing competitively
Great content, given that I live in Africa and can count the number of times I've ice skated on one hand; yet here I am watching all of your videos. The game is so fast my untrained eyes hardly see anything at all. The skill level of these players is mind-boggling. One minor thing: the discordant music sets my teeth on edge, and it's loud enough in the mix that I can't tune it out. That means I can't watch a full video in one go. Please consider dialing down the background music volume or switching to something less discordant and you'll have my sub. Keep on making videos! Many thanks, from a rugby-watching Saffa.
I honestly have no idea which hand is my dominant hand. I eat, use my phone, write, etc with my left but I throw, hit, and overall have more strength with my right hand
I've always noticed this because it seemed to me like all the best shooters were right handed shots. Ovechkin, Semin, Kovalchuk, Stamkos, Laine, Bedard, Weber, Jeff Carter (he had a crazy wrist shot in his prime). Of course there are still great left handed shots like Matthews, Tarasenko, Sakic, Gaborik etc but it seemed to me that right handed shots represented a disproportionate amount of the top goal scorers for a while.
@@peteroberts3377 I'm talking recently as in the last ten to fifteen years. And I'm talking about players known for having heavy wristers and slap shots, not just goal scoring so if your talking about Gretzky outside of having a really accurate slap shot he doesn't fit the bill. Also debatable if he's the greatest goal scorer. By numbers sure, but Lemieux and Ovechkin had better longevity as elite goal scorers into their 30's while Gretzky wasn't really elite outside of his early to mid 20's.
@@michaelshields6326I agree Gretzky wasn’t the greatest pure shooter, or even pure goal scorer throughout his career - both Bossy and Lemieux were better at the time IMO. Considering the fact that handedness, as the video covers well, doesn’t really correlate well to shooting preference - I’d say shooting, positioning and timing/vision are all important skills for goal scoring, and Gretzky excelled at all these with longevity(that bossy/Lemieux lacked), which is why he’s the greatest goal scorer if not the greatest shooter.
The reason why right handed shots are usually the best goal scorers is explained in this video. The likelihood that you’d play hockey and be any good at it and be one of the best in the game is such a small percentage that adding “and shoot left handed” just drops that number even lower. Such a small group of people.
This is something that interested me, as my father was left-handed and shot right, while I am right-handed and shot left. He just always said you use whichever wat feels comfortable. After playing a lot of hockey, I switched from batting right to left in baseball. I have read the stat that the USA produces more right handed shots, while Canada and Europe produce more left-handed shooters. That might be interesting to explore. The best goal scored Ive ever seen was Brett Hull in his prime (with the Blues, most new fans havent seen just how good he was at that time) and he was a right shot but left-handed.
I can answer the part about more Americans being right shots. This is probably due to how most players there will either play baseball or golf before playing hockey, and that influencing hand placement. On the flipside, I remember hearing a stat that the most amount of left-handed golf clubs/equipment are sold in Canada.
I can readily explain the US vs the world aspect. In the US, most hockey players are taught to pick up a stick the same way they teach to pick up a baseball bat (baseball being America's pasttime, after all). The idea with a baseball bat is that the lower hand (at the end of the bat) is solely for power, while the top hand controls your swing and where it goes. When you're trying to make contact with a moving, spinning ball, and hit it accurately with a round bat (so the contact area is extremely small), you need to be able to put the bat head where the ball is. So you want the dominant hand to be on top, not at the end of the bat. But hockey isn't taught like that elsewhere. In hockey, all of your stick handling control, shot release, etc. comes from your top hand. So it makes more sense to have your dominant hand on top for control.
@@Milehighsnake98 yeah, i think you are right. I remember my gym teacher in the US in grade school telling us all to put our "writing" hand lower on the street hockey stick. I had played hockey before, so I prefered to do it the opposite way. I hope they dont still teach that dogmatic approach.
ive been spending months trying to find docu/commentary videos on hockey. i’m so glad the algorithm brought me to this page. can’t wait to see this channel grow!
I was a right handed defenseman and preferred playing left defense. It made it easier to shoot and do one timers as well as wrap the puck around the boards. I felt very comfortable doing poke checks and sweep checks with my non-dominant hand on top.
10 หลายเดือนก่อน +1
@@bullshark3771 to this day, i'm right hand shooter (and right hand writer) and i love being on left side - one-time shots + throwing puch outside the zone with very high backhand (i'm using P88 curve)..... but i was weird kid, because 30% of my team was right handed, but i was only kid who also wrote with right hand.... our PP was deadly with 4 RH players, nobody knows what to do :D
Thanks for including that Owen Nolan "pick the corner" shot at 17:19, from what I remember I watched that All Star game live and the reaction to that was 😮. Especially given the context, completing the hat trick in front of his home crowd. I had long forgotten about it, but seeing it again reminded me what a cool moment that was.
I was mind blown as a kid that i learned the different places teach the game different. Even in golf and baseball other countries put more emphasis on teaching methods of using your strong hand as the guide/control hand rather that the "power" hand. The ideology differences are truly fascinating. Using the stong hand on top increases release speed and stick handling, using the strong hand in yhe bottom increases powere and accuracy at the loss of touch
When we first started seeing a lot of international players back in the 70s, almost all players trained in Europe were lefty shooters. I think there were teams like Czechoslovakia where the entire team was left handed. Every single player. It's obvious they were just trained that way. I'd be curious to look at the USSR team that played Canada in the Summit Series in 1972 to see if there were any righty shooters on the team, but I don't know where that information would be available.
I won't lie. I was skeptical about watching this as I was worried it would be boring after a few minutes, just based on the topic. I take it back. I was completely invested in every second of this video. You did an amazing job, and I would hire someone like you to work for me in a second, based on the effort you put into something you love. I can tell you have great qualities, and I wish you much success on this channel! I am a very analytical person, yet I've never really considered the differences in L vs R shooters before. I just knew there were more lefties in the league. I also shoot left. I have a question that I hope you can see and respond to. You might not have the answer, but I want to pique some interest and maybe a discussion or even a new video idea. Since most hockey players shoot left, do you know why most golfers swing right? I even know golfers who shoot left AND golf right. I am NOT one of those people. I can barely find a left-handed golf club when I shop for a driver. That's how rare it is. I have always found it interesting that there is such a huge difference in those ratios, especially since many hockey players also golf. Sorry for the long message. You just got my brain going full speed while watching your video lol
If your weak hand is at the top of the stick you can use your leg to help make a 1 handed shot. As you start to shoot, raise your knee up so that you can pull back with your left hand/top of the stick and lever the middle of the stick over your quadricep. Your stick/the shot basically becomes like a see-saw tipped on its side where your weak/top hand is on one side and the puck is on the other.
Excellent video! I love a well done break down on the finer points of hockey with out all the new "techno-jargon", just good ole fashion analysis. Keep up the good work and with that, I'll hit subscribe.
Phenomenal video, jeez Louise. When you brought up that Nylander clip and saying stick handling seems stiffer. I totally agree. Nylander is unique but one of the things that separates him from the pack is his puck control, especially in tight spaces. So I originally thought he has top tier hands, but after listening to you it’s more like his puck control is actually more connected to his skating ability. Thinking about it more he almost under handles the puck, and doesn’t really overload his system with a million puck dribbles
Very interesting. I'm right-handed, shoot right, and always wondered why I'm in the minority. It just feels natural to have my dominant hand, my power hand, lower on the stick. I compare it to driving a stick-shift, it'd just feel wrong to shift with my left hand and steer with my right. I also swing a baseball bat right handed, and I think the vast majority of mlb players swing right as well, so not sure why they'd be so different from hockey. I think the majority of golfers swing right as well. Btw, when I think of great shooters in NHL history, they're 99% right shots: Brett Hull, Bossy, Kurri, Lemieux, Ovechkin, Shanahan, Stamkos, etc. Only exceptions I can think of are Bobby Hull, and some new generation players like Matthews and Draisatl.
Same here!! I'm a strange one tho!! I do some things left and some things right although I am a righty!!I shoot Pool Left, I shoot Rifles Left, I shoot Basketball both, I batted both Sides but threw right!!
In golf the dominant hand being low is what controls the club face. The top hand in hockey exerts most of the control of the stick. So drives the technique. The power in a shot comes from technique (plus loads of help from stick technology) more then it does from brute force.
as a lefty driving a manual my left hand is always on the wheel and in control of the vehicle while my right hand is just moving ever so slightly to shift ... if i was in england it would be difficult .....
Interesting video. I’m glad at the end you did mention that the difference is subtle, because here’s the thing-repetition (i.e. practice!) matters way, way, way more than whether your dominant hand is on top or bottom. It will make the biggest difference when trying a new skill for the first time, but as you practice, over the years, the significance of where your dominant hand is disappears. I have a hard time believing, for example, that it really makes a difference whether or not NHL defensemen are poke checking with the same hand they write with. I’ve played a lot of hockey, baseball, and golf in my life (hockey the most, by far). I have found that many people make assumptions about which way you should swing a bat, a club, or a stick based on what your dominant hand is that, in my experience, just aren’t true. I have played with and against incredible athletes of all combinations (L or R hand dominant, shooting Lor R) to understand that in the long run it matters very, very little if at all. But so many people are surprised, for example, that I swing a bat left, being right hand dominant. I’m like “do you know how many MLB hitters are the same??”
Dude the intro to this made me realize it's not just me out there 😂 I can tell you which way everyone shoots too, thought about calling into the local sports radio and having them speedball player names at me lol. Weird thing I've always picked up on when I have buddies who can say which junior A team a guy played for, but can't tell you which way Steve Yzerman shot lol
Love the analysis. Just to add - some LH shooters with legendary wrist shots - Joe Sakic, Markus Naslund and Pavel Bure, and while I wouldn't call it legendary, Elias Pettersson is another LH shooter with a pretty good wrister.
This is a great video dude, super interesting. As a full right goalie, my teammates would always say it was harder to shoot on me in practice because blocker vs glove moment is flipped. I think Matthews ends up as a high level shooter because he’s so good and shooting high glove on a left catching goalie with his release. I think similar to baseball pitching, left shooters shoot better on a right catching glove and vice versa. The glove side is easier to score on (80/20) for a right shooter because it’s quicker. It doesn’t come across your body. Just my two cents!
This is interesting. I was always told the toughest shot for most goalies to stop is low blocker. Most goalies holding blocker in right hand hand mean that the shot was easier to hit for right handed players because it’s easiest to shoot across your body (moving hands from right to left across your body). So I assumed right handed players had a natural advantage because the easiest shot for them to take was the hardest shot for most goalies to stop.
Cannot understate how amazing of a video this is. I want to add a note about “backwards face-off” that you showed Bonino doing. As a right-hand shot if I need to win the face-off left I use that strategy probably 75% of those situations It’s really worked well for me because I can basically just punch out my right (dominant) hand like like a left-shot would, and I also get the benefit of having the curve to cup the puck more.
This dude is starting to cover stuff I’ve always wondered about, but didn’t know how to approach. Good stuff 👍🏻 I agree about the right-handed d-man, it seems more lefties are Defensive D or just guys with big clappers. With exceptions of course
This is Masterclass…wow phenomenal video. I see you took the time and displayed a specifically chosen quality example for each and every little thing you spoke about. From the mighty ducks to Semin’s wrist shot. As a kid I always wondered why there was so few right handed sticks in stores compared to left finally figured it out that there were more left handed shooters. Thanks for this video clearly. Very very top quality.
I really enjoyed the video; thank you. I started playing hockey as a left-handed player, and at a young age, my dad bought me a right-handed stick. He thought I shot right, like he did. EVERYTHING you said about right-handedness being slightly better at shooting, quicker hands on left shooters was what I've always felt playing hockey. I always thought my shot on the left was weaker, but I had better stickhandling on the left. Anyway, I'm not crazy; thank you for confirming.
This is actually a very scientific/methodical analysis. Well done. I distinctly remember my first few days of playing hockey, and switching between right and left, back and forth, trying to decide how to hold the stick. I recalled feeling more comfortable shooting right but stick handling left (dominant right hand controlling stick handling) and finally having to decide on picking one side (back then we had flat sticks). As a kid, I had no clue why, but many years later I suspected it had to do with whether you prioritized feeling comfortable shooting versus feeling comfortable stick handling. For most of us, an instantaneous decision made when you were 5 or 6 years old.
Etched in my Brain, Yvan Cournoyer, LH Shot, Screaming up the right side, the puck is right there, slightly out of position, top of the faceoff circle... Switches hands for a Slapshot: Il Lance et Compte!! man....That was over 50 yrs ago. Nice video, very well Done.
Very interesting video, I’m 68 and I’ve been playing and coaching Hockey all my life. I’m a natural lefty who shoots lefty. It would be interesting to know how many players in the NHL who shoot lefty are right handed and how many are left handed. Same thing for right handed shooters.
Awesome video. The defensive advantage of your dominant hand being placed at the end of high end of the stick for right-handed players is so obvious, yet I'd never considered it.
Dang dude. I watched like two of your vids and turned on alerts and got excited to binge watch them for the next few hrs. Only to find you dont have many! Please make more vids, this type of content is sorely needed
i think that either daniel or henrik sedin writes with their left hand, but i'm not sure which one. as for andrei vasilevskiy, he said in an interview that he does everything left handed and would've caught with his right hand if given the opportunity, but when he was first starting to play goalie in russia, it was very difficult to find full right equipment and he adapted to the left catching equipment. tuukka rask is also another goaltender who writes with his left hand.
Ive never noticed the righty one handed puck protection thing but after seeing this video I just saw Joel Armia do it against the penguins with around 3 mins left in the first. If I hadn’t seen this video I would’ve never noticed that
Brilliant video. Ive talked about this with friends for years. Kudos to you for putting the time and research into it to present this video. Very well done! The best Playmakers are lefties, the best Goal Scorers are righties, minus those few anomalies.
Was liking the vid more than I anticipated but then you ended with a semin call back. Now I love it. Respect the opinion I think the craziest shot I’ve seen in person was Sheldon Souray. RHD. And as a flyers fans, keep an eye on Owen Tippett and Tyson Foerster. Right handed, crazy releases
So glad you made this video, I am naturally righty but can do things like backhands better lefty, there's so much correlation how your feet move in relation to your handedness and your dominant foot, i.e do you lead with your left or right foot. But I think about this a lot while watching hockey. Pasternak strikes me as a left handed righty, he looks and moves his feet more like a lefty.
In Canada they raise young players to shoot with their dominant hand at the top. So most people being right handed has them shooting left (right/dominant hand at the top). This started to change as more Americans joined the league and most attribute it to the way you learn to hold a baseball bat (weak hand at the end of the grip which would be the equivalent to the top of a hockey stick). So since Canada invented the game and dominated it for so long, most players were right handed and shooting left, making right shooting players (left handed players if using the Canadian way of strong hand at the top), way more rare.
I am Canadian, they just made me try sticks and find what is more comfortable... I have zero power in my left arm so I couldn't shoot with it even if I tried, so what's why i shoot right, bat right and hit right on golf and i am right handed... so it's really personnal.
Right handed Right shooting player here. Good video and raises some interesting points. I find when I follow through itnis most like aiming a rifle in the sense that I'm left shoulder first...I dunno if that make any sense
Another factor lowering the number of full right goalies (at least for the older generations of goalies) is/was that most start their junior hockey career with gear that the team has, which would almost certainly always be regular. That, alongside the enormous cost of goalie equipment and kids tending to grow quite fast, parents are usually more willing to buy used gear, and thus regular is usually what is available. For example, Boston Bruins legend Tuukka Rask is left-handed and was a right-side shooter, but their goalie gear was left, so that's the way he learned to play (Vasilevski could have something similiar).
Friggin cool vid, got me thinking, I play defence, and I've always put up a strong poke check game - like in our beer league I like to think I'm one of the tougher defencemen to get by, and it makes a lot of sense as I'm left handed, right shot, so my poke check has better dexterity and control than a right handed right shot player trying to poke-check. It seems to me there aren't a lot of left-shot defencemen, but I doubt all these other right-shots are left-handed. I think I may have the statistical advantage as there may not be any other or maybe 1 other left-handed, right shot defencemen in a league of 50-60 guys. Kinda like when orthodox majority boxers face off with south-paws (ironically I throw right-hand dominant though - not a south-paw stance myself) in a 1-on-1 in hockey, my dominant hand is closer to a right-handed (majority) player's dominant hand, which they are less practiced at facing and at therefore at a disadvantage when trying to defend the puck, whereas it may be easier for them to out-muscle a right-handed defenceman going on that side whether or not that defenceman is a right or left shot as the defenceman has to use their weaker left hand or reach from the far side when trying to poke-check. I'm fairly comfortable switching hands to poke on the right side using my right hand as well, so left-shot forwards don't have too too much of an advantage, though I haven't payed enough attention to notice if I struggle more with forwards trying to cut to my right side. I may have to update this comment later after some observations. Also my buddy's having a kid in the next few days and this has given me the idea to get them a little straight blade stick as a gift, thanks for the idea, District 5 👍
One of the most thought provoking videos I’ve seen. Curving the blade is a necessity for performance, but does pigeonhole you towards different strengths. On a related note, lacrosse is perhaps the one sport where having to switch hand orientation is so essential to being a legitimate player that non-dominant training starts almost at the very beginning. But I think you see a similar trade-off, as for a right handed person, shooting righty will feel more natural & control is easier to acquire but speed has to be trained, shooting lefty has a more natural power with the trade off of accuracy needing major work.
When i first played hockey I didn’t think about where my dominant hand was on the stick. I had just figured that since I swung a bat right handed then i would do the same for hockey 🤷♂️
This topic came up on my local locked in nhl podcast today. They brought up how a lot of UK hockey players are right handed due to field hockey being popular there and the sport only having right handed sticks. Which then got me thinking about how there is a higher percentage of right handed golfers, but whether that is different among the hockey players who also play golf? I grew up as a left handed player in hockey, right handed in writing, but also left handed in golf. For the life of me I couldn’t swing a right. Is there a higher likelihood of a golfer being a left handed shot if they played hockey prior and were left handed shots in that? It’d be a great video to follow up this one. Can’t imagine the work this analysis took, but it’d be fun to see the difference between golfers who are hockey players, there’s gotta be a good amount off footage of hockey players golfing?
this is a fantastically composed theory/analysis video. great work! topic suggestion: dominant skating habits based on which way the player holds the stick
My favorite player is Pat Laine, I’m very biased towards him, but the puck just zings off his stick different than most guys, shoots righty and has a deadly one timer. I’ve never really put together the thoughts, but you voiced exactly what I’ve begun to notice. Fantastic video
This is extremely fascinating to me as I've played hockey my entire life, I'm 38 and I've never heard this, not even once. So it must be a Canadian thing to "teach" a player to play with their dominant hand on the top. Every person I know was just given a straight blade stick when they start, for the first year or two and whatever way they naturally grabbed the stick was the way that they chose to shoot. I'm right handed and shoot right side hockey, maybe because of how I swing a bat and a golf club. As a Goalie, I played pretty much my entire career I would say the dominant hand holding the stick really has nothing to do with it, at least not as an American. It is 100% what hand you learn to catch with and throw with AKA what hand you wear your glove in Tee Ball/Baseball. I have actually been watching a lot of videos and reading on this since I discovered this concept a few days ago and it appears that in Canada its about 70-30 left shot to right shot but in the US its about 50/50. I wonder if that is because in most cases hockey isn't introduced until older ages? Really no clue. One theory I read is that kids in Canada are given hockey sticks much earlier on average than other places in the world and its natural to grab the top of the stick with your dominant hand a very young age, before any other influences, and in the US its more common for a kid to grab a bat before a hockey stick and in baseball you almost always have your dominant hand on top. This is really fascinating stuff. My 6 year old son writes and eats left handed but plays all sports except for disc golf right handed. So his dominant hand (writing hand) is on the top of a hockey stick and bottom of the bat handle but he wasn't taught to do that it just happened.
Great video, and great channel in general! One thing you left out is how many youth players are right or left shots to begin with. The stats I found say stick sales are 60-40 in favour of left shots in Canada, and 60-40 in favor of right shots in the US (interesting fact right there). At least for now there are still more Canadian hockey players than US-born, so overall more youth hockey players shoot left. This makes some stats you mention like 77-25 top 3 picks look a little less dramatic, it's still obviously significant but not as much. On top of that, my personal experience playing youth hockey (in Canada) was that even more than 60% of players shot left (maybe 70-75%, but that's just based on vibes). An explanation for this follows the explanation people give for why there are more right shots from the US. Which is that right handed people tend to shoot left if they start playing hockey early, but they are more likely to shoot right if they have experience playing other sports first. So, those stick stats I mentioned include a lot of people who started playing shinny or road hockey as preteens or adults and most likely won't have time to develop the skating skills needed to get to the pros. But among players who start young, and therefore have a higher likelihood of getting to the pros, left handed shots might be very common, beyond what the stick sales stats suggest. Anyway, thanks for reading my novel haha, great content!
I'm nowhere near the pros, but I started playing hockey with a righty stick, I figured since I was right handed that was the best option, until about 6 months later when I tried a lefty stick, I instantly felt more confident and my stick control improved since I was more confident in making movements with my right hand, personally didn't feel much of a difference in shot power or ability but I was so bad at the time I probably had the technique all wrong. Great vid btw!
I'm going to pet this video everywhere and get your name out there!!! This video was amazing and all your videos are amazing. I hope you can grow this channel
ALEX SEMIN MENTIONED Nice to see Sasha get some love :D He had an OT winner in 2011 that was more of a snap-shot that must've been 110 MPH. Fastest non-Richard-winner shot I've ever seen, and almost no windup.
I went through a phase early in my “career” where I used a straight blade, but it was always about comfort. I couldn’t use my dad’s right handed sticks at all for whatever reason, but I golf with right handed clubs (no left handed junior sets afaik). My theory is that you learn how you learn and that becomes your muscle memory.
As someone who’s a righty in hockey, but a lefty swinging a baseball bat, tennis racket or golf club I appreciate this take, tremendous inquisition & assessment.
Excellent exploration! Got yourself another Sub. When I was a kid, I naturally picked up a stick and held it right. (I am right handed). But I didn't come from a 'hockey' family, or area, so it wasn't a gimmee that I'd have a new stick under the Xmas tree every year. So when we started playing at school (deep winter), I often didn't have my own stick, and would get what was "left" over; that was almost always a lefty. 'Everyone' seemed to shoot right back then; it was obviously very predominate. So, just wanting to play, I learned to play left, though my natural tendency was to play righty; by my early teens, I could play both. Fast-forward to 10 years later, after not playing for some time, I started getting back into it, with community centre floor hockey. When I picked up a stick as a 22 year old, LEFT was my natural feel, and I couldn't imagine shooting right. I've been a lefty ever since.
Hi, I just want to say that the level of research you did for this video is insane. As a fellow small-to-midsize youtuber, I can really appreciate how much effort you put into finding your footage and writing your script. Good work!
I absolutely refuse to believe that all right-shot players aren't left-handed. I take pride in my hockey knowledge. I grew up, since a little kid watching every single Habs game, and any hockey that was on. I consider myself knowledgeable on hockey (My dad and I are Habs fans, but hockey fans first, we'll enjoy any game thats on) and no joke, one thing I always just thought as a fact was that shooting left means your right dominant, and shooting right means your left dominant. This video has truly shaken me. No way can I believe that a right-handed person would willingly and comfortably (or actually have the skill to be an NHL player!!!) Shoot right. Excellent video by the way. The detail and amount of information is impressive, and thank you for completely blowing my mind
Wow. Like you, I have always made a point of noting whether a person is right or left handed, be it in writing, throwing a ball, swinging a bat or shooting a puck. This is the first time I've ever heard another person say that they can't fail to notice this when looking at a hockey player, so I'm a bit heartened that I'm not the only one who does this. Here are some random and personal thoughts on this topic. When I was growing up in the 1970s and managed to collect all 396 cards of the 1977-78 O-Pee-Chee hockey card set, I used to like to take the cards and organize them in different categories, one of which was right versus left handed shooters. To my surprise, and the video here corroborates this, roughly 60% of the players in the league shot left at that time and the rest right. I couldn't understand this since I assumed that if most people were right handed, then most hockey players should also shoot right and that shooting left should be as rare as writing left handed, but this video explains why shooting left, even if you're right handed, can be an advantage in terms of where your dominant and weak hands are on the stick. One thing that I noticed in many of the goals shown in the video is the prevalence of players entering the offensive zone on their off wing, that is righties entering on the left side and lefties entering on the right side of the blue line. Years ago, there was a stronger tendency for wingers to skate up and down the ice on their "correct" wings, that is righties on the right side and lefties on the left side. I'm not sure when this started to change, but I can remember that back in the day Wayne Gretzky (who shot left) had a signature move in which he would enter the opposing team's offensive zone on the right side (his off wing), do a little circle move inside the blue line to allow his wingers to enter the offensive zone and then dish the puck off to one of his forwards for a goal, or, if Gretzky was given room, cut into the middle of the ice away from the righthand boards and fire a shot at the net. Now Gretzky was more of a playmaker than a goal scorer in the latter half of his career, so I'm not entirely sure whether entering the zone on your off wing brings with it any kind of an advantage when trying to set up a goal, but Gretzky used this with great success. But I think it's obvious that if a player is more of a goal scorer, then coming in on his off wing allows him to have a better angle at the net because the net would appear wider in the middle of the ice rather than coming in on his "correct" wing, which would put his stick and the puck further away from the net and so make for a more difficult angle to shoot the puck and score. As an example, (another left hand shooter) Auston Matthews' signature goal scoring move is to take a pass from another forward while Matthews is at the top of the right face off circle on his off wing. I've even noticed that opposing teams have successfully neutralized Matthews' scoring ability by crowding the right side of the ice and so forcing Matthews over to the left wing where he is forced to shoot from further away from the net at a more difficult angle. On a personal note, I played hockey when I was a teenager and being right handed and a goalie, I had the glove on my left hand and the blocker on my right hand. One problem I had in this case is that I shot right and when I had to stand in goal, I would of course hold my stick in front of me with the blade in front of my skates, while it was pointing to the left. So, I had two options when having to the handle the puck: either flip the stick over so the blade was on my right side while holding the shaft with my glove hand up top and my blocker hand on the bottom, or, slide the shaft down my blocker hand so that it was on top and use my glove hand to hold the lower part of the stick. Doing the former forced me to hold the stick in an awkward manner on my natural side, but doing the latter forced me to shoot on my wrong side, so it's not surprising that I was a terrible puck handler as a goalie. At one point, I even considered buying a second right glove and left blocker to wear on the opposite hands so that I could hold the stick more firmly on my natural right side when stickhandling the puck, but unfortunately hockey is an expensive sport and my hockey playing days soon came to an end, so I was unable to experiment with different gloves and blockers. But the above story has lead me to wonder if there are any goalies who own two sets of blockers and gloves and who wear one set for certain teams and another set for other teams depending on which way the opposing teams' best goal scorers shoot. I'm not sure whether this is against any rule, but a goalie could switch back and forth between different sets of gloves and blockers during a shootout depending on which way a shooter shoots or which side a given shooter prefers to shoot in a shootout or a penalty shot situation. Just my thoughts on this interesting, but rarely discussed topic.
really well put togther video, great pacing, kept it all moving along nicely! I think it would be interesting to look across various populations where players don't tend to learn "dominant hand on top". Left-hand shot is more advantageous against a standard goalie just based on what the puck can 'see' and where the goalie's holes are. Left handed shot has an easier path to the low stick blocker side. Whereas RH players are straight at the glove side, and need to go cross-body to get to the higher scoring percentage hole. So in places with a predominanlt LH shooting player base, goalies will adjust to that with positioning by default that covers better for a leftie, and then making minor adjustments for RH - consider in an RH player base, the goalie will be making minor adjustments only very uncommonly match up against an LH player who has an even more exaggereated benefit because of the physical/geometry advantage of the LH puck path.
Switching hands was done, but mainly to move a puck to switch back. Since Lacrosse was played by most hockey players it was a natural thing to do. When I first started playing hockey I played left handed as a right handed player. I figured I did it because my brother who is left handed taught me to play. I tried to play right handed, but it never felt natural. Then I noticed that a lot of people did this. Now I know why. Great video. Subscribed.
It is not rare to play hockey in Canada, but thanks for thinking of us. LOL Seriously though, this was a great video. Very well done. The way you shoot means a lot to your coach. He/she will want to choose those who shoot certain ways when styling their special teams, to position one time shooters, give play makers the widest array of options, or make it easy to exploit seems in situations where a player of a certain hand would need to receive a pass in a advantageous position, without getting sweep or poke checked. You may also notice that not all right shooters play F on the right side, and vice versa. I was a right shooting L side F, myself. There are advantages to playing on your off wing in the offensive zone, and there are advantages to playing your correct wing in the defensive zone. There are a lot of details for a winger needs to master for a break out, for example. He/she can take the pass from the D behind the net on the forehand, for example, and-turning up ice while still on the forehand-find the centre swing while having more control over the puck, as well as protect the puck better by eating it along the wall in the case of a good pinch. He/she can chip the puck off the boards to the centre swing when this happens, still on the forehand. It’s all harder to do on the other side, where the backhand would need to be used. Which is not to say that players can’t master off wing break outs. In the O zone, playing off wing-off the rush-is a huge advantage for someone who is offensively minded. It is in attacking the O zone that an off winger (or a C) can occupy the “triple threat’ position, when rushing in on D. This means, 1-because their stick is to the middle, they have a better shooting angle, and are therefore a viable threat to shoot; 2- because they can pull the puck backward to be on their forehand, they are a viable threat to pass across the royal road where the D will have a harder time stopping the pass; and 3- they are a viable threat to move the puck to the outside on the back hand, where the player has the longest reach to the outside, keeping away from the D, and overtaking him/her to the outside. That’s three viable threats that D and G need to take seriously when defending a rush, which is the most threatening position to be in in hockey. It’s the last place a D wants to be in front of. A skilled F or C in this position will want to master feigning one or two of these to execute the third. It offers the possibility to dictate the play if the player in question is good enough at it.
The amountof footage and research you had to put together for this video!!! Great details. Maybe the left hand shot players are able to fend off other players with their left hand is because most other players shoots left too.
Ain't no way this video was done by someone with less than 2k subscribers. This was not only a great quality video, but it also was an in-depth analysis on a topic I've never really thought about before, no matter how many thousands of videos I've watched on this platform about hockey. Amazing, you won a sub
Me too, well said!
Couldn’t say it better. Content is great and this video is legit well thought out. Keep it going you have something here. Got my sub!
Agreed
Got my sub.
Agreed!
My dad always said "Goal scorers shoot left" when I was a kid. When I became an adult, I noticed some of the most prolific goal scorers were actually right handed and the best playmakers\stick handlers were mostly lefties. I finally looked up the top 10 goal scorers and had a lot of joy telling him that 6 of the 10 were righties. With a league average of 37% righties I think that is statistically significant that righties tend to be better scorers.
I was a lefty because of my dad always saying Bobby Orr was the best and his favorite. It’s the only thing I can do left handed. Golf and baseball both right handed.
@@jamesharvard703So is yours.
@dan3307 Maybe even Dads nowadays are too young to have seen Mike Bossy & Guy Lafleur. But they could have seen Brett Hull.
For me it is way easier to shoot accurately with power righty and skate and move with the puck lefty, (I still suck at it) but the movement is more in rhythm with my feet
@@RRaquello Hull was always the guy that came to mind for me
This is actually informative & excellent hockey content.
Unlike 95% of these newer, completely lazy "hockey" channels that churn out completely uninspired daily videos using the most egregious clickbait titles. Because, well, they're lazy & uninspired.
You've earned my loyalty & subscription. I hope other hockey channels start putting in a fraction of the work, research, and passion you did for this video. Thank you sir.
Only thing I’d say is he says the dominant hand was on top when it’s actually on bottom. Your dominant hand being on bottom gives the power to your shot.
couldn’t agree more!
Your strong hand is at the top of your stick.
You can play right or left position. That's up to you and your coach.
i grew up playing in the uk, where the main hockey sport is played on grass and every.single.stick shoots right (it's even illegal to use the back of the stick) so yeh pretty much all us british kids who are right handed shot right
Ok
9:32 - My wife grew up in Russia in the early 90s before she moved to Finland aged 8, she's left handed and at school she was still forced to write with her right hand so definitely possible that Ovi had the same treatment as a kid!
Switching a child's hands is common in cultures who practice Orthodox religion - being left handed is considered demonic. Two of my cousins, born here in Canada, to parents from Eastern Europe, were forced to change - neither one was ever considered to be destined for military induction, so I'm not buying that reason. That B.S. stopped with me as my wife writes with her left hand and our son is a pure lefty (writes, holds tools and kicks) - but who holds a bat and shoots a hockey stick right.
I'm Canadian and born in he early 90s,
My mum forced me to be right handed as a kid also.... Just cause it looked "weird" to her when I would use a spoon in my left haha
So who knows?! Maybe Ovi is a product of the state, or of a neurotic mother like me haha😂
Hardest wrist shot in the All-Star game, great idea! Hell yea let’s get the NHL onboard.
Should be hardest wrist/snapshot
Burnaby” Joe solos at 54 with the ol Easton twig! 😂
This video made me respect Nathan Mackinnon so much more. He’s a freak of nature.
Him and Kuch are on another level this year. No one else is close.
@@boltinabottle6307 its becouse mcdrai dont focus on scoring for ones and focus on team play and cup 👍
@@thomasjohansson6759Lmao they’re not going to win the cup 😂
@@JesusFriedChrist we see.. but i didnt say we will win this year only thats the reasons those 2 were not top in scoring regular season
@@JesusFriedChrist Well they are currently 1 win away from that now.
One thing to mention is that in America, kids are taught "right hand right shot", so I feel Right shooters are more common coming from the states, where as in Canada its the opposite
I agree with this statement but I also swap my hands while I play
This right here. On my team in California there are 3 lefties, everyone else shoots right. When I went to visit family in Alberta a few years ago, we played a quick street hockey game. They had a wall of maybe 100 sticks of all shapes and sizes available, but not a single one was right-handed. They looked at me like I was an alien when I asked for one
Makes sense . And I've heard that in Canada for average recreational players about 60 % or more of Players sticks sold are for left shooters.. Sort of opposite in the USA where it's 60 --percent ot more Right shot 😅.
May also have something to do with other Sports that were played first 😊 at an early age like Baseball.. if s kid played ball first may tend to use a hockey stick with the same side they swung s bat
Canadian here. We’re not taught anything, we just grab the stick that’s most comfortable and run with it. I coached tyke and kids would sometimes flip what side they shoot but after that it’s pretty set. I shoot hockey and golf left. Suck at golf tho lol.
Is this a new thing? I'm in the US and my dad and all 8 of his brothers shot opposite of what hand they write with. Also, my hockey playing cousins did the same. I seem to be the unicorn of the family that writes with my right hand and shoots right as well, but I'm pretty ambidextrous (In baseball I bat right, but throw left). This also seemed true for gym class floor hockey. Most kids shot left-handed.
I never considered it was weird i shot right as a right handed person until I was older.
Probably the influence of baseball
I swung left in baseball played right in hockey right handed it was hit or miss for me how I played sports
It’s also crazy how inconsistent people are with shooting/batting in different sports. It doesn’t matter if I hit golf, hockey, baseball or whatever I’m a righty and swing from right to left. However I feel like most people play golf for example as righties even if they shoot left in hockey
@@Smart-Towel-RG-400Yeah, I think you’re just bad at sports. Loser.
Mine was an influence from golf but same
I remember when this was discussed on our local sports radio station in context of why most Canadian baseball players are throw right bat left. More than other US, or other born baseball players.
The rationale give was that in hockey having your dominant hand on the end of the stick allowed the player more control, poke checks with their dominant hand as well as having their non dominant hand off the stick more often when engaging the opposition physically. In contrast athletes that grew up learning baseball (and even golf) were taught to hold their bat (or club) with their dominant hand low because this gave them better power/control of the bat/club during their swing while the non dominant top hand was just there for positioning or alignment purposes.
The result, in baseball a throw right bat left player tends to pull the bat through the strike zone while a throw right bat right player 'pushed' their bat through the zone.
Interesting the see a granular examination of the differences between hockey players (especially the D/F split where D-man tend most towards the right hand dominance but shoot left handed)
excellent quality video. really hope this channel grows. awesome clip selection and explanations, excellent editing
Thank you! I have quite a few more sort of niche ones like this in the works, just need the time to edit aha
This was a well-researched and fairly thorough video, good job! My personal opinion is that the reason right-handed defensemen are more coveted is simple - they're less common. Because even stay-at-home defensemen, and 2-way defensemen who shoot right are in higher demand than their left-shooting counterparts.
As for why left-shooters outnumber right-shooters, I think this is because, when you are first learning the game, the fine motor skills that you have in your dominant hand enable you to more easily and accurately control the puck while stick-handling (as the top hand is responsible for the finesse, while the bottom hand is responsible for the power). At a young age, you're going to get about equivalent power from both hands, but your dominant hand far out-paces your non-dominant hand in _control._ Furthermore, I think this is also a situation where we may be seeing a two-tiered survivorship bias situation. The first tier is that the players who take up the game with their dominant hand at the top of the stick are more likely to have *success* in the game, and will therefore increasingly out-compete the others as they age. The second tier is that for those players who use their dominant hand on the shaft of the stick, only the ones with the most extreme levels of talent and dedication will ever make it to the NHL - only the very best will overcome the odds. Applying this winnowing process to a population that is 90% right-handed, the proportion of left-shots who make the NHL will be larger (as they don't have as much to overcome to become NHL-quality players), while the group of right shots who do make it will be of higher quality overall, having been able to defy even steeper odds against them.
Great vid! Myself being right-handed, I still shoot right. I feel that I "steer" with my weak hand on the top and use the force for shots on my lower hand. I also used to play goalie where I learned to shoot left but I also flipped the stick to shoot right backhands or simply stop the puck depending on which side it came. I have seen Curtis Joseph do the same quite often.
Im a right handed righty ad well and ive tried to teach myself to catch with my right for a more comfortable shot/pass. Its probed difficult having played baseball for almost 16 years.
Your dominant foot plays a gigantic role in your ability to do everything on the ice for your puck handling and shot, left or right handed.
It's important to train a dominant foot out of your skating.
THIS … here’s a person that really gets it!! 👌🏼
I'm right-handed but left-footed and to me it feels more natural to be a right-shot just as when shooting baskets I use my left-hand and not my right.
I think a huge piece of this conversation that is missing is the factor of dominant sides for more than stick handling. The brain bridge develops more pathways (or something that I don’t understand and maybe is fake) for each trait. So left foot but right hand. Or right handed writing but left handed hockey - these all impact the bridge between the two lobes allowing more avenues of input and output of information. Or faster processing of information inputs. Again - not sure if completely true but I was told something along those lines.
Thanks for this. I'm right handed and right footed and I used to play soccer and hockey. I always shot right in both soccer and hockey even though people said if you're right handed, you need to shoot left in hockey in order to maximize your power. I tried this and never felt comfortable shooting left and my shot was weak compared to my right handed shot.
Struggling with dominant foot skating issues was one of the reasons I was never able to elevate my game from tier 3-2 player into tier 1. Kinda sucks but I got super into snowboarding around midget and quit playing competitively
Great content, given that I live in Africa and can count the number of times I've ice skated on one hand; yet here I am watching all of your videos. The game is so fast my untrained eyes hardly see anything at all. The skill level of these players is mind-boggling. One minor thing: the discordant music sets my teeth on edge, and it's loud enough in the mix that I can't tune it out. That means I can't watch a full video in one go. Please consider dialing down the background music volume or switching to something less discordant and you'll have my sub. Keep on making videos! Many thanks, from a rugby-watching Saffa.
Awesome comment 💜
I honestly have no idea which hand is my dominant hand. I eat, use my phone, write, etc with my left but I throw, hit, and overall have more strength with my right hand
You’re left handed
Same!
I’m the same except the other way around. Sports-wise, you’re a righty.
But the term for what you are is: mixed-handed
Holy shit. I thought I was the only one
What hand do you write with?
I've always noticed this because it seemed to me like all the best shooters were right handed shots. Ovechkin, Semin, Kovalchuk, Stamkos, Laine, Bedard, Weber, Jeff Carter (he had a crazy wrist shot in his prime). Of course there are still great left handed shots like Matthews, Tarasenko, Sakic, Gaborik etc but it seemed to me that right handed shots represented a disproportionate amount of the top goal scorers for a while.
The greatest goal scorer of all time shot left..
@@peteroberts3377 I'm talking recently as in the last ten to fifteen years. And I'm talking about players known for having heavy wristers and slap shots, not just goal scoring so if your talking about Gretzky outside of having a really accurate slap shot he doesn't fit the bill. Also debatable if he's the greatest goal scorer. By numbers sure, but Lemieux and Ovechkin had better longevity as elite goal scorers into their 30's while Gretzky wasn't really elite outside of his early to mid 20's.
Yeah no that’s just confirmation bias. Crosby, McDavid, Austin Matthews, Wayne Gretzky, etc. etc.
@@michaelshields6326I agree Gretzky wasn’t the greatest pure shooter, or even pure goal scorer throughout his career - both Bossy and Lemieux were better at the time IMO. Considering the fact that handedness, as the video covers well, doesn’t really correlate well to shooting preference - I’d say shooting, positioning and timing/vision are all important skills for goal scoring, and Gretzky excelled at all these with longevity(that bossy/Lemieux lacked), which is why he’s the greatest goal scorer if not the greatest shooter.
The reason why right handed shots are usually the best goal scorers is explained in this video. The likelihood that you’d play hockey and be any good at it and be one of the best in the game is such a small percentage that adding “and shoot left handed” just drops that number even lower. Such a small group of people.
This is something that interested me, as my father was left-handed and shot right, while I am right-handed and shot left. He just always said you use whichever wat feels comfortable. After playing a lot of hockey, I switched from batting right to left in baseball.
I have read the stat that the USA produces more right handed shots, while Canada and Europe produce more left-handed shooters. That might be interesting to explore.
The best goal scored Ive ever seen was Brett Hull in his prime (with the Blues, most new fans havent seen just how good he was at that time) and he was a right shot but left-handed.
I can answer the part about more Americans being right shots. This is probably due to how most players there will either play baseball or golf before playing hockey, and that influencing hand placement. On the flipside, I remember hearing a stat that the most amount of left-handed golf clubs/equipment are sold in Canada.
I can readily explain the US vs the world aspect. In the US, most hockey players are taught to pick up a stick the same way they teach to pick up a baseball bat (baseball being America's pasttime, after all). The idea with a baseball bat is that the lower hand (at the end of the bat) is solely for power, while the top hand controls your swing and where it goes. When you're trying to make contact with a moving, spinning ball, and hit it accurately with a round bat (so the contact area is extremely small), you need to be able to put the bat head where the ball is. So you want the dominant hand to be on top, not at the end of the bat.
But hockey isn't taught like that elsewhere. In hockey, all of your stick handling control, shot release, etc. comes from your top hand. So it makes more sense to have your dominant hand on top for control.
@@Milehighsnake98 yeah, i think you are right. I remember my gym teacher in the US in grade school telling us all to put our "writing" hand lower on the street hockey stick. I had played hockey before, so I prefered to do it the opposite way.
I hope they dont still teach that dogmatic approach.
ive been spending months trying to find docu/commentary videos on hockey. i’m so glad the algorithm brought me to this page. can’t wait to see this channel grow!
This was fascinating ! Loved what you did there with the two Alexanders, very nice move.
"Rare to see a defenseman play on their offside" as you show Miro Heiskanen who does exactly that. Nice touch!
I was a right handed defenseman and preferred playing left defense. It made it easier to shoot and do one timers as well as wrap the puck around the boards. I felt very comfortable doing poke checks and sweep checks with my non-dominant hand on top.
@@bullshark3771 to this day, i'm right hand shooter (and right hand writer) and i love being on left side - one-time shots + throwing puch outside the zone with very high backhand (i'm using P88 curve)..... but i was weird kid, because 30% of my team was right handed, but i was only kid who also wrote with right hand.... our PP was deadly with 4 RH players, nobody knows what to do :D
This is an amazing analysis! ❤ Never considered it, but always wondered. Need more of these!
Amazing hey ....far from it boring as hell
Thanks for including that Owen Nolan "pick the corner" shot at 17:19, from what I remember I watched that All Star game live and the reaction to that was 😮. Especially given the context, completing the hat trick in front of his home crowd. I had long forgotten about it, but seeing it again reminded me what a cool moment that was.
You make the most interesting hockey content on youtube. Respect.
I was mind blown as a kid that i learned the different places teach the game different. Even in golf and baseball other countries put more emphasis on teaching methods of using your strong hand as the guide/control hand rather that the "power" hand. The ideology differences are truly fascinating. Using the stong hand on top increases release speed and stick handling, using the strong hand in yhe bottom increases powere and accuracy at the loss of touch
When we first started seeing a lot of international players back in the 70s, almost all players trained in Europe were lefty shooters. I think there were teams like Czechoslovakia where the entire team was left handed. Every single player. It's obvious they were just trained that way. I'd be curious to look at the USSR team that played Canada in the Summit Series in 1972 to see if there were any righty shooters on the team, but I don't know where that information would be available.
17:50 I did not see that plot twist coming. XD
As someone who has never played, but loves watching hockey, this video has been extremely informative and helpful
I won't lie. I was skeptical about watching this as I was worried it would be boring after a few minutes, just based on the topic. I take it back. I was completely invested in every second of this video. You did an amazing job, and I would hire someone like you to work for me in a second, based on the effort you put into something you love. I can tell you have great qualities, and I wish you much success on this channel!
I am a very analytical person, yet I've never really considered the differences in L vs R shooters before. I just knew there were more lefties in the league. I also shoot left.
I have a question that I hope you can see and respond to. You might not have the answer, but I want to pique some interest and maybe a discussion or even a new video idea. Since most hockey players shoot left, do you know why most golfers swing right? I even know golfers who shoot left AND golf right. I am NOT one of those people. I can barely find a left-handed golf club when I shop for a driver. That's how rare it is. I have always found it interesting that there is such a huge difference in those ratios, especially since many hockey players also golf.
Sorry for the long message. You just got my brain going full speed while watching your video lol
You set the bar very high with each video. Very engaging observations of minutia!
If your weak hand is at the top of the stick you can use your leg to help make a 1 handed shot. As you start to shoot, raise your knee up so that you can pull back with your left hand/top of the stick and lever the middle of the stick over your quadricep. Your stick/the shot basically becomes like a see-saw tipped on its side where your weak/top hand is on one side and the puck is on the other.
First time youtube suggested a video on a topic i really enjoy, but only ever discussed in university... great video btw
Excellent video! I love a well done break down on the finer points of hockey with out all the new "techno-jargon", just good ole fashion analysis. Keep up the good work and with that, I'll hit subscribe.
Phenomenal video, jeez Louise. When you brought up that Nylander clip and saying stick handling seems stiffer. I totally agree. Nylander is unique but one of the things that separates him from the pack is his puck control, especially in tight spaces. So I originally thought he has top tier hands, but after listening to you it’s more like his puck control is actually more connected to his skating ability. Thinking about it more he almost under handles the puck, and doesn’t really overload his system with a million puck dribbles
Very interesting. I'm right-handed, shoot right, and always wondered why I'm in the minority. It just feels natural to have my dominant hand, my power hand, lower on the stick. I compare it to driving a stick-shift, it'd just feel wrong to shift with my left hand and steer with my right. I also swing a baseball bat right handed, and I think the vast majority of mlb players swing right as well, so not sure why they'd be so different from hockey. I think the majority of golfers swing right as well. Btw, when I think of great shooters in NHL history, they're 99% right shots: Brett Hull, Bossy, Kurri, Lemieux, Ovechkin, Shanahan, Stamkos, etc. Only exceptions I can think of are Bobby Hull, and some new generation players like Matthews and Draisatl.
I'm the same. Started playing baseball before moving to hockey, and it just felt natural to swing from that position.
Same here!! I'm a strange one tho!! I do some things left and some things right although I am a righty!!I shoot Pool Left, I shoot Rifles Left, I shoot Basketball both, I batted both Sides but threw right!!
In golf the dominant hand being low is what controls the club face.
The top hand in hockey exerts most of the control of the stick. So drives the technique. The power in a shot comes from technique (plus loads of help from stick technology) more then it does from brute force.
as a lefty driving a manual my left hand is always on the wheel and in control of the vehicle while my right hand is just moving ever so slightly to shift ... if i was in england it would be difficult .....
I’m right handed and I play hockey right but I shoot guns(rifle) left handed. My dad always said I was weirdo lol
Interesting video. I’m glad at the end you did mention that the difference is subtle, because here’s the thing-repetition (i.e. practice!) matters way, way, way more than whether your dominant hand is on top or bottom. It will make the biggest difference when trying a new skill for the first time, but as you practice, over the years, the significance of where your dominant hand is disappears. I have a hard time believing, for example, that it really makes a difference whether or not NHL defensemen are poke checking with the same hand they write with.
I’ve played a lot of hockey, baseball, and golf in my life (hockey the most, by far). I have found that many people make assumptions about which way you should swing a bat, a club, or a stick based on what your dominant hand is that, in my experience, just aren’t true. I have played with and against incredible athletes of all combinations (L or R hand dominant, shooting Lor R) to understand that in the long run it matters very, very little if at all. But so many people are surprised, for example, that I swing a bat left, being right hand dominant. I’m like “do you know how many MLB hitters are the same??”
Dude the intro to this made me realize it's not just me out there 😂 I can tell you which way everyone shoots too, thought about calling into the local sports radio and having them speedball player names at me lol. Weird thing I've always picked up on when I have buddies who can say which junior A team a guy played for, but can't tell you which way Steve Yzerman shot lol
Love the analysis. Just to add - some LH shooters with legendary wrist shots - Joe Sakic, Markus Naslund and Pavel Bure, and while I wouldn't call it legendary, Elias Pettersson is another LH shooter with a pretty good wrister.
This is a great video dude, super interesting. As a full right goalie, my teammates would always say it was harder to shoot on me in practice because blocker vs glove moment is flipped. I think Matthews ends up as a high level shooter because he’s so good and shooting high glove on a left catching goalie with his release. I think similar to baseball pitching, left shooters shoot better on a right catching glove and vice versa. The glove side is easier to score on (80/20) for a right shooter because it’s quicker. It doesn’t come across your body. Just my two cents!
This is interesting. I was always told the toughest shot for most goalies to stop is low blocker. Most goalies holding blocker in right hand hand mean that the shot was easier to hit for right handed players because it’s easiest to shoot across your body (moving hands from right to left across your body). So I assumed right handed players had a natural advantage because the easiest shot for them to take was the hardest shot for most goalies to stop.
Cannot understate how amazing of a video this is. I want to add a note about “backwards face-off” that you showed Bonino doing. As a right-hand shot if I need to win the face-off left I use that strategy probably 75% of those situations
It’s really worked well for me because I can basically just punch out my right (dominant) hand like like a left-shot would, and I also get the benefit of having the curve to cup the puck more.
This dude is starting to cover stuff I’ve always wondered about, but didn’t know how to approach. Good stuff 👍🏻
I agree about the right-handed d-man, it seems more lefties are Defensive D or just guys with big clappers. With exceptions of course
This is Masterclass…wow phenomenal video. I see you took the time and displayed a specifically chosen quality example for each and every little thing you spoke about. From the mighty ducks to Semin’s wrist shot.
As a kid I always wondered why there was so few right handed sticks in stores compared to left finally figured it out that there were more left handed shooters.
Thanks for this video clearly. Very very top quality.
I remember thinking something about the risto one looked odd too. great vid!!
I really enjoyed the video; thank you.
I started playing hockey as a left-handed player, and at a young age, my dad bought me a right-handed stick. He thought I shot right, like he did. EVERYTHING you said about right-handedness being slightly better at shooting, quicker hands on left shooters was what I've always felt playing hockey.
I always thought my shot on the left was weaker, but I had better stickhandling on the left. Anyway, I'm not crazy;
thank you for confirming.
I really appreciate the exhaustive research you did for this video. Nice job!!
This is actually a very scientific/methodical analysis. Well done. I distinctly remember my first few days of playing hockey, and switching between right and left, back and forth, trying to decide how to hold the stick. I recalled feeling more comfortable shooting right but stick handling left (dominant right hand controlling stick handling) and finally having to decide on picking one side (back then we had flat sticks). As a kid, I had no clue why, but many years later I suspected it had to do with whether you prioritized feeling comfortable shooting versus feeling comfortable stick handling. For most of us, an instantaneous decision made when you were 5 or 6 years old.
Great video. Best of luck on growing your channel. There is definitely a market for these types of videos, keep it up!
Etched in my Brain, Yvan Cournoyer, LH Shot, Screaming up the right side, the puck is right there, slightly out of position, top of the faceoff circle... Switches hands for a Slapshot: Il Lance et Compte!! man....That was over 50 yrs ago. Nice video, very well Done.
the dahlin to theodore cut was slick
Very interesting video, I’m 68 and I’ve been playing and coaching Hockey all my life. I’m a natural lefty who shoots lefty. It would be interesting to know how many players in the NHL who shoot lefty are right handed and how many are left handed. Same thing for right handed shooters.
Awesome video. The defensive advantage of your dominant hand being placed at the end of high end of the stick for right-handed players is so obvious, yet I'd never considered it.
Glad I found your channel!
Dang dude. I watched like two of your vids and turned on alerts and got excited to binge watch them for the next few hrs. Only to find you dont have many! Please make more vids, this type of content is sorely needed
God I love these kinds of videos. Thanks for filling this niche! :D
Excellent analysis! Better than some professional coverage!
i think that either daniel or henrik sedin writes with their left hand, but i'm not sure which one. as for andrei vasilevskiy, he said in an interview that he does everything left handed and would've caught with his right hand if given the opportunity, but when he was first starting to play goalie in russia, it was very difficult to find full right equipment and he adapted to the left catching equipment. tuukka rask is also another goaltender who writes with his left hand.
Spectacular video!
I think one of the best wrist shoots that comes to mind is Joe Sakic, a left handed shooter!
Ive never noticed the righty one handed puck protection thing but after seeing this video I just saw Joel Armia do it against the penguins with around 3 mins left in the first. If I hadn’t seen this video I would’ve never noticed that
Brilliant video. Ive talked about this with friends for years. Kudos to you for putting the time and research into it to present this video. Very well done! The best Playmakers are lefties, the best Goal Scorers are righties, minus those few anomalies.
U deserve so many subs
It's also interesting that Ovechkin is the only right-shot to win the Art Ross trophy in 20 years.
Was liking the vid more than I anticipated but then you ended with a semin call back. Now I love it. Respect the opinion
I think the craziest shot I’ve seen in person was Sheldon Souray. RHD. And as a flyers fans, keep an eye on Owen Tippett and Tyson Foerster. Right handed, crazy releases
Honestly I thought all lefty shooters were left handed. I didn’t even know you could put your dominant hand on top
So glad you made this video, I am naturally righty but can do things like backhands better lefty, there's so much correlation how your feet move in relation to your handedness and your dominant foot, i.e do you lead with your left or right foot. But I think about this a lot while watching hockey. Pasternak strikes me as a left handed righty, he looks and moves his feet more like a lefty.
In Canada they raise young players to shoot with their dominant hand at the top. So most people being right handed has them shooting left (right/dominant hand at the top). This started to change as more Americans joined the league and most attribute it to the way you learn to hold a baseball bat (weak hand at the end of the grip which would be the equivalent to the top of a hockey stick). So since Canada invented the game and dominated it for so long, most players were right handed and shooting left, making right shooting players (left handed players if using the Canadian way of strong hand at the top), way more rare.
I’ve heard this same thing before and I think this is the best explanation for this phenomena.
Top hand control bottom hand power is what I was always told
wow that's really interesting
I am Canadian, they just made me try sticks and find what is more comfortable... I have zero power in my left arm so I couldn't shoot with it even if I tried, so what's why i shoot right, bat right and hit right on golf and i am right handed... so it's really personnal.
Right handed Right shooting player here. Good video and raises some interesting points.
I find when I follow through itnis most like aiming a rifle in the sense that I'm left shoulder first...I dunno if that make any sense
This is an amazing analysis! Never considered it, but always wondered. Need more of these!
I am proud to be a left hockey player 💪😎
Yessir
Another factor lowering the number of full right goalies (at least for the older generations of goalies) is/was that most start their junior hockey career with gear that the team has, which would almost certainly always be regular. That, alongside the enormous cost of goalie equipment and kids tending to grow quite fast, parents are usually more willing to buy used gear, and thus regular is usually what is available. For example, Boston Bruins legend Tuukka Rask is left-handed and was a right-side shooter, but their goalie gear was left, so that's the way he learned to play (Vasilevski could have something similiar).
Friggin cool vid, got me thinking, I play defence, and I've always put up a strong poke check game - like in our beer league I like to think I'm one of the tougher defencemen to get by, and it makes a lot of sense as I'm left handed, right shot, so my poke check has better dexterity and control than a right handed right shot player trying to poke-check. It seems to me there aren't a lot of left-shot defencemen, but I doubt all these other right-shots are left-handed. I think I may have the statistical advantage as there may not be any other or maybe 1 other left-handed, right shot defencemen in a league of 50-60 guys.
Kinda like when orthodox majority boxers face off with south-paws (ironically I throw right-hand dominant though - not a south-paw stance myself) in a 1-on-1 in hockey, my dominant hand is closer to a right-handed (majority) player's dominant hand, which they are less practiced at facing and at therefore at a disadvantage when trying to defend the puck, whereas it may be easier for them to out-muscle a right-handed defenceman going on that side whether or not that defenceman is a right or left shot as the defenceman has to use their weaker left hand or reach from the far side when trying to poke-check.
I'm fairly comfortable switching hands to poke on the right side using my right hand as well, so left-shot forwards don't have too too much of an advantage, though I haven't payed enough attention to notice if I struggle more with forwards trying to cut to my right side. I may have to update this comment later after some observations.
Also my buddy's having a kid in the next few days and this has given me the idea to get them a little straight blade stick as a gift, thanks for the idea, District 5 👍
One of the most thought provoking videos I’ve seen. Curving the blade is a necessity for performance, but does pigeonhole you towards different strengths.
On a related note, lacrosse is perhaps the one sport where having to switch hand orientation is so essential to being a legitimate player that non-dominant training starts almost at the very beginning. But I think you see a similar trade-off, as for a right handed person, shooting righty will feel more natural & control is easier to acquire but speed has to be trained, shooting lefty has a more natural power with the trade off of accuracy needing major work.
Fantastic video, this has always been a question for me as well as a right-hander that shoots right.
When i first played hockey I didn’t think about where my dominant hand was on the stick. I had just figured that since I swung a bat right handed then i would do the same for hockey 🤷♂️
This topic came up on my local locked in nhl podcast today. They brought up how a lot of UK hockey players are right handed due to field hockey being popular there and the sport only having right handed sticks. Which then got me thinking about how there is a higher percentage of right handed golfers, but whether that is different among the hockey players who also play golf?
I grew up as a left handed player in hockey, right handed in writing, but also left handed in golf. For the life of me I couldn’t swing a right. Is there a higher likelihood of a golfer being a left handed shot if they played hockey prior and were left handed shots in that? It’d be a great video to follow up this one. Can’t imagine the work this analysis took, but it’d be fun to see the difference between golfers who are hockey players, there’s gotta be a good amount off footage of hockey players golfing?
this is a fantastically composed theory/analysis video. great work!
topic suggestion: dominant skating habits based on which way the player holds the stick
top tier analysis. great history and player highlights.
My favorite player is Pat Laine, I’m very biased towards him, but the puck just zings off his stick different than most guys, shoots righty and has a deadly one timer. I’ve never really put together the thoughts, but you voiced exactly what I’ve begun to notice. Fantastic video
This is extremely fascinating to me as I've played hockey my entire life, I'm 38 and I've never heard this, not even once. So it must be a Canadian thing to "teach" a player to play with their dominant hand on the top. Every person I know was just given a straight blade stick when they start, for the first year or two and whatever way they naturally grabbed the stick was the way that they chose to shoot. I'm right handed and shoot right side hockey, maybe because of how I swing a bat and a golf club. As a Goalie, I played pretty much my entire career I would say the dominant hand holding the stick really has nothing to do with it, at least not as an American. It is 100% what hand you learn to catch with and throw with AKA what hand you wear your glove in Tee Ball/Baseball. I have actually been watching a lot of videos and reading on this since I discovered this concept a few days ago and it appears that in Canada its about 70-30 left shot to right shot but in the US its about 50/50. I wonder if that is because in most cases hockey isn't introduced until older ages? Really no clue. One theory I read is that kids in Canada are given hockey sticks much earlier on average than other places in the world and its natural to grab the top of the stick with your dominant hand a very young age, before any other influences, and in the US its more common for a kid to grab a bat before a hockey stick and in baseball you almost always have your dominant hand on top. This is really fascinating stuff. My 6 year old son writes and eats left handed but plays all sports except for disc golf right handed. So his dominant hand (writing hand) is on the top of a hockey stick and bottom of the bat handle but he wasn't taught to do that it just happened.
Excellent video, I subscribed as soon as I finished it, real good stuff.
You’ve quickly became my favourite account on TH-cam, through just these two videos. Would love to see more and support you if possible.
Unreal research and info. I really enjoyed this. Keep up the good work!
Great video, and great channel in general!
One thing you left out is how many youth players are right or left shots to begin with. The stats I found say stick sales are 60-40 in favour of left shots in Canada, and 60-40 in favor of right shots in the US (interesting fact right there). At least for now there are still more Canadian hockey players than US-born, so overall more youth hockey players shoot left. This makes some stats you mention like 77-25 top 3 picks look a little less dramatic, it's still obviously significant but not as much.
On top of that, my personal experience playing youth hockey (in Canada) was that even more than 60% of players shot left (maybe 70-75%, but that's just based on vibes). An explanation for this follows the explanation people give for why there are more right shots from the US. Which is that right handed people tend to shoot left if they start playing hockey early, but they are more likely to shoot right if they have experience playing other sports first. So, those stick stats I mentioned include a lot of people who started playing shinny or road hockey as preteens or adults and most likely won't have time to develop the skating skills needed to get to the pros. But among players who start young, and therefore have a higher likelihood of getting to the pros, left handed shots might be very common, beyond what the stick sales stats suggest.
Anyway, thanks for reading my novel haha, great content!
I'm nowhere near the pros, but I started playing hockey with a righty stick, I figured since I was right handed that was the best option, until about 6 months later when I tried a lefty stick, I instantly felt more confident and my stick control improved since I was more confident in making movements with my right hand, personally didn't feel much of a difference in shot power or ability but I was so bad at the time I probably had the technique all wrong. Great vid btw!
I'm going to pet this video everywhere and get your name out there!!! This video was amazing and all your videos are amazing. I hope you can grow this channel
ALEX SEMIN MENTIONED
Nice to see Sasha get some love :D He had an OT winner in 2011 that was more of a snap-shot that must've been 110 MPH. Fastest non-Richard-winner shot I've ever seen, and almost no windup.
I went through a phase early in my “career” where I used a straight blade, but it was always about comfort. I couldn’t use my dad’s right handed sticks at all for whatever reason, but I golf with right handed clubs (no left handed junior sets afaik). My theory is that you learn how you learn and that becomes your muscle memory.
I did not expect this video to be as fascinating and in depth as it is when I clicked it. Bravo
As someone who’s a righty in hockey, but a lefty swinging a baseball bat, tennis racket or golf club I appreciate this take, tremendous inquisition & assessment.
such a underatted account for real. Please keep making videos, they are amazing
Excellent exploration! Got yourself another Sub. When I was a kid, I naturally picked up a stick and held it right. (I am right handed). But I didn't come from a 'hockey' family, or area, so it wasn't a gimmee that I'd have a new stick under the Xmas tree every year. So when we started playing at school (deep winter), I often didn't have my own stick, and would get what was "left" over; that was almost always a lefty. 'Everyone' seemed to shoot right back then; it was obviously very predominate. So, just wanting to play, I learned to play left, though my natural tendency was to play righty; by my early teens, I could play both. Fast-forward to 10 years later, after not playing for some time, I started getting back into it, with community centre floor hockey. When I picked up a stick as a 22 year old, LEFT was my natural feel, and I couldn't imagine shooting right. I've been a lefty ever since.
Hi, I just want to say that the level of research you did for this video is insane. As a fellow small-to-midsize youtuber, I can really appreciate how much effort you put into finding your footage and writing your script. Good work!
Would not suprise me if there were even more advantages. Thank u for this video! Do wear watch on right as a lefty tho. Lets go preds !
Awesome video. I noticed as a kid, the best scorers were often right, but that they had shit for defence lol.
I absolutely refuse to believe that all right-shot players aren't left-handed.
I take pride in my hockey knowledge. I grew up, since a little kid watching every single Habs game, and any hockey that was on. I consider myself knowledgeable on hockey (My dad and I are Habs fans, but hockey fans first, we'll enjoy any game thats on) and no joke, one thing I always just thought as a fact was that shooting left means your right dominant, and shooting right means your left dominant. This video has truly shaken me. No way can I believe that a right-handed person would willingly and comfortably (or actually have the skill to be an NHL player!!!) Shoot right.
Excellent video by the way. The detail and amount of information is impressive, and thank you for completely blowing my mind
Bro, your content is outstanding.
Wow. Like you, I have always made a point of noting whether a person is right or left handed, be it in writing, throwing a ball, swinging a bat or shooting a puck. This is the first time I've ever heard another person say that they can't fail to notice this when looking at a hockey player, so I'm a bit heartened that I'm not the only one who does this. Here are some random and personal thoughts on this topic.
When I was growing up in the 1970s and managed to collect all 396 cards of the 1977-78 O-Pee-Chee hockey card set, I used to like to take the cards and organize them in different categories, one of which was right versus left handed shooters. To my surprise, and the video here corroborates this, roughly 60% of the players in the league shot left at that time and the rest right. I couldn't understand this since I assumed that if most people were right handed, then most hockey players should also shoot right and that shooting left should be as rare as writing left handed, but this video explains why shooting left, even if you're right handed, can be an advantage in terms of where your dominant and weak hands are on the stick.
One thing that I noticed in many of the goals shown in the video is the prevalence of players entering the offensive zone on their off wing, that is righties entering on the left side and lefties entering on the right side of the blue line. Years ago, there was a stronger tendency for wingers to skate up and down the ice on their "correct" wings, that is righties on the right side and lefties on the left side. I'm not sure when this started to change, but I can remember that back in the day Wayne Gretzky (who shot left) had a signature move in which he would enter the opposing team's offensive zone on the right side (his off wing), do a little circle move inside the blue line to allow his wingers to enter the offensive zone and then dish the puck off to one of his forwards for a goal, or, if Gretzky was given room, cut into the middle of the ice away from the righthand boards and fire a shot at the net. Now Gretzky was more of a playmaker than a goal scorer in the latter half of his career, so I'm not entirely sure whether entering the zone on your off wing brings with it any kind of an advantage when trying to set up a goal, but Gretzky used this with great success. But I think it's obvious that if a player is more of a goal scorer, then coming in on his off wing allows him to have a better angle at the net because the net would appear wider in the middle of the ice rather than coming in on his "correct" wing, which would put his stick and the puck further away from the net and so make for a more difficult angle to shoot the puck and score. As an example, (another left hand shooter) Auston Matthews' signature goal scoring move is to take a pass from another forward while Matthews is at the top of the right face off circle on his off wing. I've even noticed that opposing teams have successfully neutralized Matthews' scoring ability by crowding the right side of the ice and so forcing Matthews over to the left wing where he is forced to shoot from further away from the net at a more difficult angle.
On a personal note, I played hockey when I was a teenager and being right handed and a goalie, I had the glove on my left hand and the blocker on my right hand. One problem I had in this case is that I shot right and when I had to stand in goal, I would of course hold my stick in front of me with the blade in front of my skates, while it was pointing to the left. So, I had two options when having to the handle the puck: either flip the stick over so the blade was on my right side while holding the shaft with my glove hand up top and my blocker hand on the bottom, or, slide the shaft down my blocker hand so that it was on top and use my glove hand to hold the lower part of the stick. Doing the former forced me to hold the stick in an awkward manner on my natural side, but doing the latter forced me to shoot on my wrong side, so it's not surprising that I was a terrible puck handler as a goalie. At one point, I even considered buying a second right glove and left blocker to wear on the opposite hands so that I could hold the stick more firmly on my natural right side when stickhandling the puck, but unfortunately hockey is an expensive sport and my hockey playing days soon came to an end, so I was unable to experiment with different gloves and blockers.
But the above story has lead me to wonder if there are any goalies who own two sets of blockers and gloves and who wear one set for certain teams and another set for other teams depending on which way the opposing teams' best goal scorers shoot. I'm not sure whether this is against any rule, but a goalie could switch back and forth between different sets of gloves and blockers during a shootout depending on which way a shooter shoots or which side a given shooter prefers to shoot in a shootout or a penalty shot situation.
Just my thoughts on this interesting, but rarely discussed topic.
really well put togther video, great pacing, kept it all moving along nicely!
I think it would be interesting to look across various populations where players don't tend to learn "dominant hand on top". Left-hand shot is more advantageous against a standard goalie just based on what the puck can 'see' and where the goalie's holes are. Left handed shot has an easier path to the low stick blocker side. Whereas RH players are straight at the glove side, and need to go cross-body to get to the higher scoring percentage hole. So in places with a predominanlt LH shooting player base, goalies will adjust to that with positioning by default that covers better for a leftie, and then making minor adjustments for RH - consider in an RH player base, the goalie will be making minor adjustments only very uncommonly match up against an LH player who has an even more exaggereated benefit because of the physical/geometry advantage of the LH puck path.
Switching hands was done, but mainly to move a puck to switch back. Since Lacrosse was played by most hockey players it was a natural thing to do.
When I first started playing hockey I played left handed as a right handed player. I figured I did it because my brother who is left handed taught me to play. I tried to play right handed, but it never felt natural. Then I noticed that a lot of people did this. Now I know why. Great video. Subscribed.
Such a good f-ing video. Awesome work man
Be interesting to hear about players’ dominant eye relative to dom hand & L/R shooting
It is not rare to play hockey in Canada, but thanks for thinking of us. LOL
Seriously though, this was a great video. Very well done.
The way you shoot means a lot to your coach. He/she will want to choose those who shoot certain ways when styling their special teams, to position one time shooters, give play makers the widest array of options, or make it easy to exploit seems in situations where a player of a certain hand would need to receive a pass in a advantageous position, without getting sweep or poke checked.
You may also notice that not all right shooters play F on the right side, and vice versa. I was a right shooting L side F, myself. There are advantages to playing on your off wing in the offensive zone, and there are advantages to playing your correct wing in the defensive zone. There are a lot of details for a winger needs to master for a break out, for example. He/she can take the pass from the D behind the net on the forehand, for example, and-turning up ice while still on the forehand-find the centre swing while having more control over the puck, as well as protect the puck better by eating it along the wall in the case of a good pinch. He/she can chip the puck off the boards to the centre swing when this happens, still on the forehand. It’s all harder to do on the other side, where the backhand would need to be used. Which is not to say that players can’t master off wing break outs.
In the O zone, playing off wing-off the rush-is a huge advantage for someone who is offensively minded. It is in attacking the O zone that an off winger (or a C) can occupy the “triple threat’ position, when rushing in on D. This means, 1-because their stick is to the middle, they have a better shooting angle, and are therefore a viable threat to shoot; 2- because they can pull the puck backward to be on their forehand, they are a viable threat to pass across the royal road where the D will have a harder time stopping the pass; and 3- they are a viable threat to move the puck to the outside on the back hand, where the player has the longest reach to the outside, keeping away from the D, and overtaking him/her to the outside. That’s three viable threats that D and G need to take seriously when defending a rush, which is the most threatening position to be in in hockey. It’s the last place a D wants to be in front of. A skilled F or C in this position will want to master feigning one or two of these to execute the third. It offers the possibility to dictate the play if the player in question is good enough at it.
We need more hockey analytics like this. Top tier content, and I'm excited to see more from you!
The amountof footage and research you had to put together for this video!!! Great details.
Maybe the left hand shot players are able to fend off other players with their left hand is because most other players shoots left too.