Why are NHL teams so secretive in the playoffs: Gamesmanship or foolishness? – The Athletic

By Sean Gentille and Michael RussoApr 26, 2024

In the long quest for a Stanley Cup, there can be a lot of overreaction.

Take a playoff series between the Dallas Stars and Edmonton Oilers in the late 1990s. The Stars went out for their pregame skate in Edmonton, only to find the nets were gone.

“No one could find them, so we thought they were hiding the nets on purpose,” said Hall of Fame Ken Hitchcock, who coached 168 playoff games and won a Stanley Cup.

“It was ridiculous because it was during (an ice-crew) shift change. They’d taken the nets off, put them in a corner and forgot to put them back on the ice.”

It’s become a rite of spring for at least one NHL playoff series to bring to the fore the idea of “gamesmanship.” This year, it’s the Boston Bruins–Toronto Maple Leafs series with all of the playoff-related secrecy.

An injury-related information vacuum? Check, with the ongoing absence of William Nylander, who went from healthy enough to play in Game 82 to out of the lineup overnight.

Starting goalie secrecy? Check, though Jeremy Swayman is doing his best to take that one out of the equation.

Coaches using the media to fight a proxy battle? Welcome to the party, Jim Montgomery and Sheldon Keefe.

After Jim Montgomery suggests Max Domi’s bump on Jeremy Swayman is a sign Swayman is in the #leafs head, Sheldon Keefe says: “With that logic you would say every time they bump into one of our guys maybe we’re in their heads. I don’t think that has anything to do with anything.”

— Chris Johnston (@reporterchris) April 25, 2024

Jim Montgomery is not a fan of the scheduling in the #bruins/#leafs series: “I would have rather been here Thursday/Saturday, if I’m being honest. I think we’re spending more time in Toronto than Toronto’s spending in Boston and we’re the home team.”

— Chris Johnston (@reporterchris) April 24, 2024

It might be entertaining. It might be annoying.

But it’s definitely not uncommon.

“If that’s what’s gonna make the difference in the game and the win, then I always thought, ‘Well, there’s something wrong,’” longtime NHL coach Bruce Boudreau said.

So, is this phenomenon really playoff gamesmanship? Or is it just unnecessary secrecy?

The answer, depending on whom you ask, falls into one of seven categories.

It’s not gamesmanship, it’s media management

In plenty of cases, teams view this behavior as an attempt to stop a story, a situation or a random bit of information from becoming public knowledge. It’s less about directly sticking it to an opponent and more about message control, Minnesota Wild GM Bill Guerin said.

“If (reporters) get a scoop on who the starting goalie is or whatever, it’s out there,” Guerin said. “That can create noise. So I think more than gamesmanship, (teams) do it to keep it out of the media.

“(The Maple Leafs) don’t want to say what’s going on with Nylander, so they don’t have to. The media is creating all that. They’re just not saying anything. If they say something, the media (focuses on) what’s wrong with him or what the situation is, or whatever. It keeps blowing up.

“I don’t think of that as gamesmanship, really. I think you’re just trying to control a little bit of what gets out.”

It’s gamesmanship, and it’s counterproductive

Trying to exert control in that way, though, can backfire. In the absence of an explanation — even when it’s a relatively simple one — fans and media are going to dial up the speculation.

That’s the nature of the beast.

The solution, Hitchcock said, is easy enough: Tell the truth.

“(Say an injured player is out) and deal with it that way. Now there’s all this mystery around, and it just becomes a distraction,” he said. “The coaches who eliminate it and deal with it and then don’t have it as a distraction are doing a better job.”

Another problem for Hitchcock — not necessarily as it relates to Nylander — is that being overly cagey about one player creates drama for the rest of the roster.

“Players don’t care,” he said. “It’s a game that gets played with the coaches, and it gets to be overkill. You don’t respect the 20 guys that are playing.”

It’s not gamesmanship, it’s protecting your players

Hitchcock’s revolutionary idea to avoid open, repetitive lying only goes so far. Say a player is out to eliminate one potential disruption but don’t get too specific. If a player is out, he’s out — you don’t need to say that his hand is too sore to grip a stick.

“You get tighter lips, but there’s always this fear that if you disclose things, the opposition is gonna take advantage of it,” Hitchcock said. “So you’re always concerned that if you’re truthful about an injury, that they’ll attack that injury on the player. There’s always that question mark.”

Even the upper- and lower-body injury designations provide some cover. That way, the other team might spend time targeting your sore-handed player’s shoulders, elbows, ears and eyeballs. Better those than the body part that’s actually causing the problem.

“You don’t want anybody to know,” Guerin said. “You don’t want anybody to know your weaknesses. Specifically, your players’ weaknesses.”

It’s gamesmanship, and it’s silly

In a more neutral corner sits Boudreau, who brought up the pointlessness of keeping player combinations a “mystery” until puck drop. We saw a bit of that in Bruins-Leafs, too, when Montgomery disguised his new No. 1 pair of Hampus Lindholm–Charlie McAvoy during the Game 1 warmups.

That tactic, Boudreau said, is more silly than anything.

“Some coaches will mix all the (pregame) lines up so they think you don’t know what’s going on,” he said. “By the one-minute mark or the three-minute mark of the first period, you know what’s going on anyway. If it was (against) Toronto, I don’t care about anybody else except where Auston Matthews is playing.”

Take Jacques Lemaire, who won 617 games and a Stanley Cup as a coach. It’s hard to imagine that any of that success came from hiding his lines during pregame rushes, but he did it anyway.

“We never went with our real lines in warmups,” said Guerin, who won the Cup as a player with Lemaire with the Devils in 1994-95. “Then we start the game, and we’re all on our same lines. They know. They just watched the game before.’”

It’s not gamesmanship, it’s the uncertainty of an injury

This certainly seems to be the case for Nylander, who is trending toward a return to the lineup for Saturday’s Game 4 after skating multiple times in recent days, league sources told The Athletic on Thursday.

His absence, according to Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman, was due to “a migraine so severe that team doctors tested to see if he suffered a concussion.”

Setting a timeline there is pointless, as anyone who’s dealt with a migraine can attest. In other words, day-to-day really can mean day-to-day.

Imagine that.

Whatever you call it, it’s hypocritical

As professional leagues and media companies become further intertwined with sports gambling, the NHL occupies a unique space.

No league gives coaches more latitude to withhold injury or lineup information.

On one hand, that affects the choices sports bettors may make. On the other, expecting coaches to think of sports bettors over their own teams is pretty hilarious.

Whatever you call it, it’ll likely never change

Everybody can agree on that one.

(Photos of Jon Montgomery and Sheldon Keefe: John E. Sokolowski, Dan Hamilton / USA Today)

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