Windsor Tomcats

The world has never been so divided as the current day.  Everything you read in the news, hear on the TV and radio, or discuss with coworkers and friends tends to take on one political slant or the other.  “Harper doesn’t care about the environment, the NDP are the closest thing to Marxism, the Liberals just don’t get it…blah, blah, blah!”  While talking politics is fun (NOT!), this is the Tomcat Hockey Blog and hockey is definitely more fun than politics (and probably less violent).

So when it comes to hockey, are you a lefty or a righty?  Looking at the 1071 NHL players and prospects, 65% shoot left.  Among forwards, 61% shoot left while 72% of the defencemen have left handed sticks.

When the vast majority of people are right-hand dominant (about 85% of the population), why is it that so many hockey players shoot left?  Doing some research, it appears one valid argument why people should use a stick opposite of their dominant hand (right hand people shoot left, left handed people shoot right) is as follows:

• When you shoot left, the hand in the middle of the stick is your left hand, and the hand at the top of the stick is your right hand. When you are skating fast, or stretching to reach a far away puck, you end up with only your top hand on the stick – as explained above, in the case of a left shot player, that would be your right hand.  That is why right handed people (which is most people) end up shooting left – so that when they have to handle their stick with just one hand, it is their dominant right hand.

So if shooting left handed is really the superior approach for the majority of right-handed people, I thought it would be interesting to look at the top 20 scorers of all-time to see if the statistics pan out.  Here they are:

Wayne Gretzky           L
Gordie Howe               R/L (ambidextrous)
Brett Hull                     R
Marcel Dionne            R
Phil Esposito               L
Mike Gartner               R
Mark Messier              L
Steve Yzerman            R
Mario Lemieux            R
Jaromir Jagr                 L
Teemu Selanne            R
Luc Robitaille               L
Brendan Shanahan      R
Dave Andreychuk       R
Joe Sakic                         L
Bobby Hull                     L
Dino Ciccarelli             R
Jari Kurri                       R
Mark Recchi                 L
Mike Bossy                   R

SIDENOTE: Is it just me or did many of the guys above where the Winged-wheel in their careers???  Anyways, I digress…so of the 20 top scorers of all-time, only 8 shoot left.  A majority (12 of 20 or 60%) shoot right.   

So how about the Tomcats?  According to the player profiles on this website, here is the shooting hand breakdown:

Turk                             L
Sunny                          R
Cribz                           R
Junior                          R
Hollywood                  L
Killer                           L
Doc                             R
Mayday                       R
Sparky                         R
Rocky                          R
Snowpants                  L
Crow                           R
Chevy                          L
Mez                             R
The Rake                      L
Spinner                        L
Jingles                         R
Stevo                           L
Bulldog                       R
LaBamba                     R
Zaba                            R
Lovie                           L
Hurricane                    R
Soupy                          R
Matador                        R
Beep                            L
Chico                           R
Ogie                            L
Flintstone                    L
Eagle                           L
Bubbles                       L
Crispy                          R
Finner                          L

45% (15 of 33) of the Tomcats shoot left, while 18 of 33 (55%) shoot right.  

Conclusion:  If the Tomcats have more right handed shooters and there are more right handed shooters in the list of top 20 all-time NHL scorers, then it must be better to lean to the right (even if current NHL stats and the main stream media say it is not).

Yours in hockey, 

Howie Feltersnatch  

Tomcats Forever!