The world's greatest boxing trainer talks goon technique.
Everyone knows that hockey players like to make with the punching. But are they actually good at it? We asked Freddie Roach — Manny Pacquiao's trainer, a five-time boxing trainer of the year, and a Bruins fan — to break down the season's most explosive fight thus far, between Toronto's Colton Orr and Pittsburgh's Deryk Engelland on Jan. 23.
A Massachusetts native, Roach's favorite player was Bobby Orr (no relation to Colton Orr) — "He was everybody in Boston's favorite player," says Roach — but he remembers appreciating the work of tough guy Wayne Cashman. Roach was never much of a hockey fighter himself, though: "I wasn't that good on skates, so I'd have to take my skates off to fight." (And if he had to respond while still on the ice? "I'd just fucking use the stick.")
The bout we looked at has the highest rating of any brawl this season from readers of the indispensable HockeyFights.com, a comprehensive database of on-ice scraps, and lasted for over a minute before the combatants ran out of steam and were separated by linesmen. Herewith, Roach's expert analysis.
1. A fiery start.
Both Engelland and Orr begin the fight with a wild flurry of punches. This might be a bad, energy-wasting idea in boxing, but Roach says it isn't the worst strategy in hockey, where fights last only until the linesmen intervene (which rarely takes too long) and direct the players to the penalty box. "They don't know how much time they have to get their damage done." It's during this exchange that Orr knocks off Engelland's helmet, which Roach says gives him an advantage because it provides him with a larger "striking target." The head is now in play. And, says Roach: "You don't want to be striking a helmet because then you're going to break your hand for sure."