Quickness, dominoes and good team support

Todd McLellan, via The Globe and Mail, has an excellent analogy to describe how his San Jose Sharks approach the philosophy of team speed, which helps to move the puck up the ice quickly and keep the other team on its heels.

“Don’t you wish you could take fans and put them at ice level?” asked McLellan. “At some point, there’s going to be seats sold above the ice – you move up and down the ice the way they move the cameras in a football game so you can feel the speed of the game.

“Because we go, four or five times a year, to pre-scout games on the road and if you go up to the press box, you think, ‘this is so slow.’ It’s nothing what it’s like at ice level. We try to play a fast game. We try to play a north-south game. But the other thing is, what is the definition of speed? People say ‘fast’ and people think it’s just foot speed. We talk a lot about dominoes – because dominoes move fast, and they’re close to each other and they have good support. It’s an analogy the players buy into. They can picture it – that they have the ability to use each other for support, if that makes any sense.”

Source: Eric Duhatschek, Globe and Mail