More Top Picks Filters Camps
player ready...In Hollywood, they say the best actors are the ones who can make you forget they’re acting.
A similar truth emanates from the premier thespians of hockey. The best acting performances always go unnoticed. And, for the most part, unmentioned.
The best acting jobs in the NHL often are the exaggerated or even fabricated falls, trips and tugs created by players attempting to draw penalties against their opponents.
And this is one clandestine academy.
Accuse your average hockey player of embellishing a fall–“taking a dive,” as it’s called in the sport–and you could soon find your sweatshirt pulled over your head from the rear and knuckles flying your way.
Hockey players know it’s a part of the game. Any strategy that puts his team on the power play–whether honest or deceitful–is one that good players will always use.
They don’t even feel guilty.
“You’d have to feel pretty good about it if you got your team a power play,” said Mike Modano, the Stars center who swears he “can’t remember” ever taking a dive, while acknowledging it surely has happened somewhere in his All-Star-spangled career.
“I’m sure I have,” he said. “Just nothing comes to mind. It’s certainly not something you feel guilty about.”
Wing Chris Murray guesses probably “1 or 2 percent” of the tumbles taken by hockey players are, shall we say, enhanced.
“It’s not often,” said Murray, in his seventh NHL season with his sixth team. “But it’s usually at a point in the game when it matters.”
No one has said it to Mike Keane’s face, but several Stars believe that he embellished a penalty against Washington on Feb. 13 that led to a power-play goal. Chasing Keane from behind, the Capitals’ Brendan Witt thrust his stick toward Keane’s right arm. Keane wrapped his arm around the stick, lodging the blade in the fold of his elbow.
From that position, a talented dive artist can make his opponent look like a fisherman setting the hook. Moments later, Keane’s torso seemed to jerk back, his skates flying out in front of him. Witt was whistled for interference, sending Dallas on the power play.
As Keane returned to the Stars bench, he sat by Modano. The two shared a knowing grin.
There is, of course, no chronicle of hockey dives–no record of when or where they have occurred. In fact, if executed properly, no one would know a dive when it happens.
The NHL rule book acknowledges the existence of such play, however. And a referee convinced that he has witnessed a dive can whistle the offender for a 2-minute minor.
But faking a penalty is not only something a player would not admit to the public, the Stars insist it is never openly discussed in the sanctity of the locker room.
“Not one bit,” said wing Grant Marshall. “Never.”
So Keane was not awarded an assist, or even a quiet low-five near the Dallas bench, when Brenden Morrow scored the game’s first goal while Witt served his penalty, in what became a 2-1 Stars victory.
But Modano offered Keane two coded words that clearly meant much more: “Nice timing.”
“Body position is a lot of it,” Modano said later, describing the right scenario for a dive to draw a penalty. “If you have him chasing you from behind, that gives you the green light to go down if you get a little tug.”
Keane might rank as the most adept among the Stars at enhancing a penalty. But his title comes only since Pat Verbeek, one of the all-time great enhancers, left for Detroit this season.
More Top Picks Mandolines
Retired Dino Ciccarelli is considered an all-time great diver. Modano admires the histrionic stunts of Pittsburgh’s Martin Straka.
Still, the risks to the artful diver often outweigh the potential benefits. This is generally a good thing; otherwise, hockey games might start to resemble Three Stooges routines. Or pro wrestling.
“Any coach will tell you to keep your feet if you can,” said veteran wing Kirk Muller. “They’ll say trying to fall is looking for the easy way out. . . . If you do it, you’d better get the call.”
“If it’s tied in the last eight minutes of the third period, you’re not going to get a cheap call,” Marshall said. “You’d better fight to keep your feet.”
But watch closely, when the time and circumstances are right, and you might just see someone take a nudge and suddenly sprawl across the ice.
You’ll wonder if you saw a dive. Several players will think they saw a dive. It might even cross the referee’s mind.
But you’ll never know. Not for sure.