With 10 minutes remaining in Canada's 5-0 victory over Belarus
last Friday, center Joe Sakic swooped behind the Canadian net to
pick up the puck while defensemen Chris Pronger and Adam Foote
headed up ice and impeded the Belarussian forecheckers, who,
typically of the trap, were positioned in the neutral zone.
Pronger and Foote looked like pulling guards from the 1965 Green
Bay Packers. Skating behind his blocking defensemen, Sakic
reached the offensive zone virtually untouched and fired a
40-footer just over the net.
Canada was using the double block, the latest in trap-busting
techniques. The strategy was developed in 1996 by Canadian
assistant coach Andy Murray. "We're trying to make the other
team forecheck," Murray says. "If they don't sit back because
they're afraid of the double block, then we're making them play
our game."
Team USA coach Ron Wilson says the double block constitutes
interference, and he complained about it in a meeting with
officials before the Americans' first game of the tournament.
But interference is called less frequently in international
hockey than in the NHL. Early in these Olympics, Canada employed
the double block with impunity, although Pronger and Foote were
the only defense pair comfortable enough to use it regularly.
Of course, the double block was nearly as new to Canada as to
anyone else. In the NHL, only Montreal uses it. On the flight to
Japan, between screenings of Titanic and the 1972 Canada-Soviet
Union Summit Series, the coaches ran a 35-minute tape of
breakouts that highlighted the double block. "The first time I
saw it [before the 1997 world championships], I was giggling,"
Canadian winger Keith Primeau says. "This time I looked around
on the plane and saw that everyone was serious. To leave the
puck behind the net is a bizarre concept. For those three or
four seconds, until the center gets it, your heart is in your
throat. I guess it's closest to the Flying V from The Mighty
Ducks movie. The first game I played with the double block
[before the worlds], I mentioned the Flying V to the guys, but I
must have been the only one with kids because no one else knew
what I was talking about."
Issue date: February 23, 1998
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