Page:Hockey, Canada's Royal Winter Game.djvu/58

 CHAPTER IV. ☘ THE SCIENCE OF HOCKEY. ☘

HAT is the objective point, the central idea, in the game of hockey? To score,&mdash;to lift, slide, push or knock the puck through your opponent's goals.

A team and each individual member of a team, should concentrate every idea, every thought, on this one desire, and each play, each move, should point to it, as the rays of the sun are converged through a glass, to the focus.

That play is vain which does not tend to bring a team, or a member of a team, to a position from which the desired point can be gained,&mdash;a useless move effects the position of a team, throws the players out of poise.

The fancy play, the grand stand play, is a waste of energy, childish, worthless. The play that counts, the play that shows the science of the man who makes it, is the immediate execution, in the simplest manner, of the plan that a player conceives, when he considers the object of his playing. In other, geometrical words,