Page:Hockey, Canada's Royal Winter Game.djvu/59

 the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, and applied to the science of hockey, it means that a player should take the shortest and quickest way of obtaining the desired effect, which, by analysis, is often times the most scientific.

When it is said that every player of a team should strain nerve and muscle to score a goal, the meaning is not that each individual member should strive to do the act himself, but that he should use every effort to assist him to score who is in the most advantageous position to do so. The selfish desire on the part of even one man, to make the point, often times entails the loss of a match.

Although by nearing his opponents' defence with the puck a player naturally approaches the position from which to shoot, he will invariably confuse his adversaries more successfully, and often secure for himself or his partner, a much more desirable vantage ground, by passing the puck to the latter, before reaching the cover-point. Indeed, if the question of praise be mentioned, there is often more due to the player who assists by a clever bit of combination work, than to the man who scores the game.

The secret of a team's success is combination play, in other words, unselfishness. It means the giving of the puck to a player of