Dump and Chase? Where's the Skill!

Last night I watched most of the Edmonton Oilers game. I finally went to bed after the 2nd overtime because I was falling asleep on the couch anyways and I would have missed any goal that happened. Thankfully the Oilers put away the winner and won.

Now I don't want to get into a big fight over hockey teams, but while watching that game I couldn't help but think back to Game 7 in the Calgary series. Those Flames played terrible and they just didn't seem to want to win, or even play for that matter. The Oilers game last night was VERY different. Those Oilers came out flying! They were checking people hard into the boards all night and were skating hard and fast. It was awesome to see them work so hard.

But while watching the game I once again couldn't help but notice the teams using the old dump and chase routine. Now I'm not a hockey player so maybe I just don't understand, but it still makes no sense to me. When I play sports our teams usually like to have possession of the ball (I'm thinking soccer now). When we make an attack, we don't usually kick the ball up the field and hope that our players can run onto it first and win it back. Of course not, that's crazy! Instead, we pass the ball around until we can pass it to our forwards as they make a run past the defenders. But it's a PASS to them, not a long shot into the corner where it becoemes a 50/50 ball and we just hope we win it back.

I see that all the time in hockey. "Dump and chase. Oh, we lost it, better get back on defense. Ok, we're breaking in on the attack. Dump and chase. What! We didn't get the puck! Ok, back on defense." I mean really, keep possession of the puck. Skate it across the blue line or make a short pass to a teammate that is skating across the line. If I was a coach and we were playing defense, I would just tell one of my players to hang out near the red line by the net and wait for the other team to dump it in...then we will just skate it back out again. Simple!

In my opinion whoever came up with the "dump and chase" theory must have watched too much 6 year old's playing soccer where they just kick the ball as soon as they get it!

Am I off my rocker? Feel free to enlighten me in the comments section. I would love to hear what the hockey fans have to say.