Future Stars, Current Lefties
I was bored, and there's hardly any Avalanche-related news to report these days (except maybe that Sakic shot a +5 on a Denver golf course the other day) , so I was browsing through the final NHL rankings of prospects for the upcoming entry draft.
Kyle Turris moved up to first place among North American skaters, in case anyone cares, beating out Patrick Kane who had led the rankings most of the year. But really, only the Blackhawks care about that.
Anyway, I was skimming the list of European prospects and noticed something really weird (at least to me). They all, with three exceptions, shoot left-handed. Out of 30 kids, only THREE shoot right. How is this possible? Is this typical in Europe?
So I did some checking of current NHL players from Europe, mostly high-profile ones to see if they all shoot left-handed too. This is what I found:
Marian Hossa, Slovakia, shoots left
Jaromir Jagr, Czech Republic, shoots left
Olli Jokinen, Finland, shoots left
Pavel Datsyuk, Ukraine, shoots left
Evgeni Malkin, Russia, shoots left
Daniel Sedin, Sweden, shoots left
Henrik Sedin, Sweden, shoots left
Slava Kozlov, Russia, shoots left
Saku Koivu, Finland, shoots left
Alexander Semin, Russia, shoots left
And the only notable standouts:
Alex Ovechkin, Russia, shoots right
Ilya Kovalchuk, Russia, shoots right
So the question is, why do most European players shoot left-handed? I'm sure a lot of them are naturally right-handed, but they are obviously trained (or for some reason just feel more comfortable) to shoot left. Anybody know the real reason?
4 comments:
Your natural handedness in hockey is opposite to your dominant handedness for everything else.
I'm right-handed, and I shoot left. The thought is that the fulcrum hand (the hand at the top) is your dominant hand in order to play with more control over your stick.
It's not science, but that's how it was explained to me by a hockey coach.
Sure, I understand because I'm also right-handed naturally but shoot left. But it's not the same for everyone, because my brother is left-handed and also shoots left.
And I'm still curious as to why so many of the Europeans shoot left when North American skaters are pretty evenly distributed.
Heatly is from Canada.
First of all, its Dany Heatley, spell his name right, and second, he is Canadian, one of the best, you loose all credibility when you miss spell his name, and get his native country wrong.
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