EP Rinkside’s Sean Shapiro digs deeply into the “off-hand winger’s” position in his “Shap Shots” Substack today, speaking with Patrick Kane about being a left-shooting winger on the right-hand side of the ice:
While Russians playing on their off-wing is more common, Kane is one of the more pre-dominant North Americans to play that way, carving a Hall of Fame career by slaloming up the right side and cutting to the middle for better scoring chances.
Kane grew up playing as a center, but started his journey as an off-hand winger while playing with the National Team Development Program. Kane was on a line with Rhett Rakhshani at the NTDP and Rakhshani was a right-handed shot that liked to play on his left.
“It just kind of grew, just being on your offside, having the puck to the middle, guys being able to cut to the middle, especially if you are playing with a guy that can one-time the puck,” Kane said. “It seems to work pretty well and you can make those cross-ice passes.”
Thinking about all of this, I decided to pull some video from Tarasenko last season to try and illustrate what Kane is talking about.
Continued (paywall)
