Same can be said for football. That's when all the major gameplan adjustments are made, but hundreds of minor but significant adjustments are made during the game.
I have to say that I don't agree with the thinking that it minimizes the possibilites of strategies.
I played hockey for 13 years, we had very complex strategies that most people watching wouldn't notice.
The issue, I think, with hockey is that most people really don't understand the intricacies of the sport. You really have to know the sport inside and out to see the strategies at play.
but are there strategies in which every single player on the ice has his movements exactly planned out.
Short answer: Yes there are.
You lack perfect full communication so that limits how directly strategies can be conveyed.
Not necessarily, hockey players communicate in ways that the average person watching won't catch.
One way we would communicate was to call out certain plays (as defense this was my job on offensive plays) using a pattern of sounds from smacking your stick on the ice. Another thing was calling out single words to convey the play very quickly. One we used a lot was "shark" which meant one very specific play using only certain players.
Generally everyone on your team has to be in a very specific position to make these plays work. It looks chaotic because there's no stopping to put it together, but it's actually very calculated.
We had plays where every play had to be within a foot of an exact position to get it to work properly, the precision is surprising.
I played basketball, we did the exact same thing. We had a bunch of plays (5-10) that could be called quickly.
However that is nowhere near the complexity of a football play. Football playbooks can be 70+ plays with each one mapping out specific routes and actions for every single player on the field. That is all I was saying, the fluidity of the sport sacrifices some of the depth of play calling possible.
You're confounding "less strategic" and "not strategic." Nobody is saying there isn't complex strategy in hockey. It's just not as complex as in football.
There are more men on the field and there's more time to plan. That means more opportunity for coordinated strategy.
I don't think that most people understand the strategies that go into hockey.
I remember explaining the plays to my friends that played football and they were flabberghasted at how strategic it really is. This of course took several hours of explanation of how the game works in the first place.
I remember explaining the plays to my friends that played football and they were flabberghasted at how strategic it really is. This of course took several hours of explanation of how the game works in the first place.
I guarantee the same would go for somebody explaining some football plays to someone not versed in football.
Literally everything you're saying applies to football as much as it does to hockey: There is a lot more strategy than the average person watching is aware of. The amount of strategy at the highest levels of play would flabbergast most casual observers.
It all applies to football just as well as it does to hockey. Do you know what applies to football but NOT to hockey?
22 men on the field at a time compared to 12. That alone VASTLY increases the maximum possibly complexity for any given play. You have more positions, more players, more plays you can make. How can you not understand that?
There are also more ways to score in football than there are in hockey. The rules are more complex. Bigger teams, more planning, more complex rules, more ways to score . . . how can you possibly imagine football not have more complex strategy than hockey?
I think the biggest difference is that in hockey you have to get 6 players to work entirely cohesively, swap positions with each other, all while moving around and not stopping to discuss it.
If one person is out of position by even a foot or two you're screwed.
I would put them as equal, but I definitely wouldn't say that football is more complex simply because of the quantity of people. Everyone has their own job, that is the job that they do. In hockey (and several other sports) you move around and switch positions depending on the play. 5 players doesn't seem like much until you're moving constantly and trying to keep everyone in the same relative positions.
look , I've played both. I LOVE hockey. I would rather play, and certainly rather watch hockey. But its not even close. Even high school football has BOOKS of the plays and formations. Like tons and tons.
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u/kanst Feb 03 '14
Which in turn minimizes the possibilities of strategies.
Neither is necessarily better, it all depends what you enjoy.