Offensive Tactics

Offensive tactics include improving a team's position on the ice by advancing the puck out of one's zone towards the opponent's zone, progressively by gaining lines, first your own blue line, then the red line and finally the opponent's blue line. NHL rules instated for the 2006 season redefined the offside rule to make the two-line pass legal; a player may pass the puck from behind his own blue line, past both that blue line and the centre red line, to a player on the near side of the opponents' blue line. Offensive tactics are designed ultimately to score a goal by taking a shot. When a player purposely directs the puck towards the opponent's goal, he or she is said to "shoot" the puck.

A deflection is a shot that redirects a shot or a pass towards the goal from another player, by allowing the puck to strike the stick and carom towards the goal. A one-timer is a shot struck directly off a pass, without receiving the pass and shooting in two separate actions. Headmanning the puck, also known as breaking out, is the tactic of rapidly passing to the player farthest down the ice. Loafing, also known as cherry-picking, is when a player, usually a forward, skates behind an attacking team, instead of playing defence, in an attempt to create an easy scoring chance.

A team that is losing by one or two goals in the last few minutes of play will often elect to pull the goalie; that is, remove the goaltender and replace him or her with an extra attacker on the ice in the hope of gaining enough advantage to score a goal. This is a desperate act, as it sometimes leads to the opposing team extending their lead by scoring a goal in the empty net.

There are many other little tactics used in the game of hockey. Cycling moves the puck along the boards in the offensive zone to create a scoring chance by making defenders tired or moving them out of position. Pinching is when a defenceman pressures the opposition's winger in the offensive zone when they are breaking out, attempting to stop their attack and keep the puck in the offensive zone. A saucer pass is a pass used when an opposition's stick or body is in the passing lane. It is the act of raising the puck over the obstruction and having it land on a teammate's stick.

A deke, short for "decoy", is a feint with the body or stick to fool a defender or the goalie. Many modern players, such as Pavel Datsyuk, Sidney Crosby and Patrick Kane, have picked up the skill of "dangling", which is fancier deking and requires more stick handling skills.

A tactic used by a player to keep possession of the puck is stick handling and also known as ragging. A player can use their stick to manipulate the puck out of reach of opposing players, while attempting to skate past them. When combined with deking or dangling skills, a player can attempt an end-to-end rush and make a solo play to score. Ragging is also a common penalty-killing tactic to use up time during a penalty's duration.

RESOURCES
This article uses material from the Wikipedia articles "Ice Hockey" which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.