you said “i feel like it's really clear watching them that they're kind of built in similar molds, in terms of who they grew up watching and what the expectations were.” in the connor and natemac post and i was wondering if that meant you could pull clear lines between how they skate and how sid skates?? or if im totally reading how you meant that wrong
that's such a good question! i feel pretty confident that they both trace back to similar places, but i don't know that it's really crosby?
it's a weird thing to me because of the way crosby seems to have changed his skating? like, crosby early career:
brendan shanahan was still playing for the rangers in this clip, so it would've been 2009 or before?
there's a little bit of feinting left & right in there, but for the most part he's kind of just skating straight forward and relying on his.. lol... deeply mediocre forward stride. he's characteristically inside edgy – weight between his feet, not a lot of weight shift, which hampers his ability to do much with his feet. (he's always been sort of a weird case where i think he can develop speed – but it tends to be super muscular strength based vs real technique.)
vs this one's from late 2010:
this is a dramatic example lol, but he's kind of maintained this same general style for a long time – some acceleration, but a lot of wheeling around
i think you see elements of the c-step and turning thing in mcdavid and mackinnon, but more in their practice drills than in how they actually skate in games? which i feel like makes sense, since like, they were already 13 and 15 in 2010. i think natemac and mcdavid both almost got "left behind" by this more turning based era, in a weird way. like, sid managed to learn new technique really late – but i think it was because he didn't have a sustainable technique in the first place and had to hunt for a physical strategy that matched the way his brain works. i suspect that by the time sid picked this up, a lot of the kids that were mid teens at that point had already kind of established the mental/technique tornado loop of like... straightline speed is the technique that got them to where they are so therefore straightline speed gets prioritized & feels less risky in high stakes situations.
clips of mackinnon and mcdavid, both in the last few years:
they vary their strategies a little bit, but they both tend to rely a lot on more old school rushes. it's definitely reminiscent of sid really early on, but it works better for both of them bc they have better skating technique? (in a fairly similar way too – natemac's crossovers are worse than mcdavid's imo, but they both have a solid side-to-side swing and foot placement on straightaways).
which like – since sid cannot forward stride to save his absolute life lmao, i don't think either of them got it from him.
i'm not totally sure who this traces to, but i have a couple general ideas:
someone who was probably in the NHL a little bit before crosby – i'm thinking like 2000-2005 but ideally with longevity
someone with enough mythologizing and success that people would have studied their style
just stylistically, almost definitely european
i honestly don't know as much about the players from that pre social media era, off the top of my head, so i could be skipping a swede or someone who would have been in the right spot at the right time – but just looking at that list, the obvious answer is the CSKA Moscow kids that defected to the NHL in the late 80s / early 90s? @csykora has written a lot more thoroughly about that history than I possibly can, but that group was just so tightly drilled, and imo they had a very specific skating style – very chill on one foot, solid bend, a lot of weight transfer. even amongst other russian players i think you can spot the CSKA skaters for just like how controlled they are. they were also definitely kind of mythologized – in good and bad ways – and most of the guys that ended up on the Wings had a ton of success. there's also a ton of articles talking about the CSKA skaters of that era as like basically magical lol
i know it's a little bit of a curveball since i think when guys talk about "favorite players" that they grew up watching, there tends to be a lot of loyalty to the older players from their own countries – but i think if you had to specifically say like who had The Cool Skating Style in the early 2000s, that seems like the best answer? i think it's hard to pinpoint a specific skater since they were kind of grouped together anyways. a few – larionov etc – are probably slightly too early in the time frame. i do think though that that generation would have affected any coaches that were trying to help the mackinnon/mcdavid gen with skating – so maybe it's a once removed thing. pavel bure and alexander mogilny are another two that stick out as constantly mentioned for skating ability – but mogilny struggled a bit with injuries that hurt his skating after the early 90s, and bure also struggled with injuries and was done by 2002 or so.
i think the guy that stands out as like. The Guy is probably fedorov? he was on a line in moscow with Bure and Mogilny, and the three of them were all absurdly fast. fedorov was the one that ended up on the wings, won three cups there, got all star fastest skater multiple times, had stevie y. basically lavishing praise on his skating and general ability – on and on, and then he was still kicking around the NHL at 40 in 2009.
this is him with the caps in the last couple years of his career:
just a ridiculous ability to build and carry speed for a 40 year old. definitely a guy that even now sticks out for having incredible technique, almost 15 years after his retirement, and he has that ability to just like methodically travel on his outside edges that i think you see a lot of the mcdavid era skaters trying to copy with varying levels of success.
