Into the Lab: How hockey's best scorers create offence without the puck

On the puck skill steals the spotlight. Flashy dekes, cross-ice passes, and long-range snipes populate the highlight reels, but they aren’t the norm. Surrounding all those highlight reels play are far more mundane touches. Seemingly mundane, anyway.

There’s a real art to getting those touches. It’s the consistency of those touches – from pre-touch to the final play – that creates an environment for highlight-reel plays.  

First, let’s talk basketball. Steph Curry, arguably the greatest shooter of all time, excels not only because of what he does with the basketball but because of what he does without it. He generates a massive chunk of his value by sprinting around the court before firing a catch-and-sheet three-pointer. It looks like chaos at first. There's a lot of sprinting, running in