Nathan MacKinnon: Overhandle with Purpose
I’ve talked before in various articles about the difference between overhandle and underhandle, and one more time, I’ll show it here:
Overhandle: Excessive Stickhandling
Underhandle: Minimal Stickhandling / Unnecessary Puck Touches
It’s a pretty simple distinction that is easy to judge in the term, where there’s situations where both can be leveraged very effectively. On Nathan MacKinnon’s goal last night against Nashville, MacKinnon had an interesting situation where he could’ve chosen to underhandle because of his skill, but instead chose to stickhandle and overhandle with the puck.
Watching it made me question my own thinking. Was extra stickhandling necessary? Did MacKinnon really need to use excessive puck touches in tight to beat Juuse Saros, where he could’ve used 2-3 larger puck touches to get the puck into space? I found it fascinating and it made me go down a slightly deeper rabbit hole of thinking, and looking at the goal on replay multiple times, it made sense why MacKinnon chose to overhandle instead of underhandle.
Underhandle also takes a slight mental discipline when it comes to players, where stickhandling tends to be an automatic mental twitch for players because they’ve been doing it for so long every day. It becomes a habit ingrained into them, where underhandle actually becomes harder thing to do without that slight mental discipline.
My reasoning as to why MacKinnon chose to overhandle in this situation is because of the strong side D Marc Del Gaizo and how he is looking to kill the play via his stick. That forces MacKinnon to adapt on the fly and stickhandle right away upon the puck retrieval and pass from Rantanen near the corner. MacKinnon quickly takes those first two puck touches upon retrieval within 0.5-1 seconds of retrieving the puck, and then MacKinnon freezes Saros with excessive puck touches in tight to beat Saros up high.
That’s the part where the overhandling benefited MacKinnon in beating Saros, where he could leverage those touches to not only freeze Saros, but get him excessively focused on the puck, leaving room up high. MacKinnon is really elite at using his snapshots and shooting up high in tight, and Saros doesn’t get set up in time.
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This is a situation where you can leverage overhandle. It’s similar to a shootout situation where a shooter slows down, maneuvers middle, and tries to freeze the goalie positionally to then make a move elsewhere. If you get the goalie excessively puck focused and shrinking from a posture perspective, you have leverage as a shooter. Notice how when MacKinnon overhandles, Saros shrinks posture-wise and gets slightly smaller in the net, opening up space elsewhere for MacKinnon to shoot.
Just an excellent shot choice and use of overhandle in this situation 1v1 against Saros. Very few players have the ability to do what MacKinnon does in this situation, combining the quick stickhandling, heads up awareness, purposeful overhandle, and the quick snapshot in tight.