Fancy footwork Edge work has become the king of skills in the NHL, making the game ‘faster than ever’ By: Mike McIntyre Posted: 6:59 PM CDT Tuesday, Mar. 18, 2025

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This article was published 18/03/2025 (491 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

VANCOUVER — Josh Morrissey is on edge. So is Quinn Hughes, whose Vancouver Canucks face off against the Winnipeg Jets on Tuesday night. In fact, go up and down any NHL roster and you’ll find some very edgy players.

To be clear, we’re not talking about their personalities but about how they play the game — specifically when it comes to skating techniques that allow them to stand out from many of their peers and illustrate how much the game has changed over the years.

Tune into a broadcast these days and you’re likely to hear mention of edge work as you watch the likes of Morrissey and Hughes turn on a dime, spin out of trouble and pivot their way into defensive zone exits and offensive zone entries. There will also be reference to the game being “faster than ever,” which is a testament to how players are using their feet.

“I would have loved to have somebody show me that,” said Jets head coach Scott Arniel, who broke into the league as a player in the early 1980s.

“These guys now are coming in polished out of junior and college. They’re doing that stuff at a very young age. There’s specialists where that’s all they work on, guys will hire them in the summer. Which I think is such a great idea. Why wouldn’t you? Those elite players, their edge work is just amazing some nights.”

Morrissey recently sat down with the Free Press to detail what he called his skating evolution, one he credits his late father, Tom, for getting in motion.

“When I was a kid, I think he was a little ahead of the curve in terms of the importance of skating,” said Morrissey, who recalls a community centre near their Calgary home that they’d attend multiple evenings a week for about three years starting when he was five.

“They had this leisure skating rink, almost like a frozen lazy river, like a course. But also an open area where you could do figure skating. No sticks were allowed. My dad would get my brother and I doing all these turns. At first, I couldn’t skate backwards. It was all edge work. Crossovers, pivots, that kind of stuff.”

“I would have loved to have somebody show me that. These guys now are coming in polished out of junior and college. They’re doing that stuff at a very young age.”– Jets head coach Scott Arniel

Morrissey eventually started working with Deanna Curran, a popular Calgary skating coach.

“I probably skated with her over 200 times as a kid. And then my Dad would run these camps throughout my teenage years, and edge work was a big part of it as well,” he said.

Barb Underhill is one of those skating coaches who is on off-season speed dial. The former Canadian Olympic figure skater has spent nearly two decades working with NHL players. That would include Hughes, who she’s known since he was a little kid living in Toronto and playing on the same minor team as her son, Scotty.

Quinn and his brothers, Jack and Luke, who now play for the New Jersey Devils, would often come and skate at the huge backyard rink Underhill and her family had in Ontario. The boy’s dad, Jim, who was working at the time for the Toronto Marlies of the AHL, tapped into Underhill’s unique background.

“He was really ahead of the curve,” she said. “The game was desperate for people who understood how to teach skating, but in a hockey way.”

Underhill’s husband, a former college hockey player, had purchased an ownership stake in the Guelph Storm of the Ontario Hockey League in the fall of 2006 and she began going to games, eventually working with the young players at the request of the head coach.

“Because I was a skater, I would study the game in a different way than everyone else. I studied how they moved. I became obsessed with figuring it out, like the science of it all,” she said.

“I knew from my years of training that they could be better. They could be more efficient.”

Why is being good on your edges so important?

“There’s times in a game where you have to go in a straight line, but the game isn’t played in a straight line,” Underhill explained.

“You have to be constantly shifting your weight and changing your angles. It’s not a straight-line game anymore. Strong edges are the foundation of every single transition. If you want to take a tight turn or a quick stop or a spin or a pivot, you have to be on the right part of your edge to be able to do that quickly.”

That’s where the NHL’s player data really comes in handy, thanks to trackers now worn by all players in their equipment (and also inside pucks).

Colorado Avalanche forward Nathan MacKinnon leads all skaters with 74 bursts this year of 22 m.p.h. (35 km/h) or faster. Edmonton Oilers superstar Connor McDavid is second with 70. To put that in perspective, that’s an average of only about one per game — and they are the runaway leaders. Martin Necas of the Avalanche is third with just 43.

Necas has the highest recorded speed burst this year at 24.49 m.p.h. (39.41 km/h). Right behind him is Winnipeg’s Rasmus Kupari at 24.47 m.p.h (39.38 km/h). The fact Kupari is now having trouble getting into a healthy and deep Winnipeg lineup — he’s been a healthy scratch for seven straight games — illustrates just being able to get from Point A to Point B really fast isn’t enough.

“When you sit in the stands right it might look like there’s all this room on the ice. But there’s not a lot of space. There’s not a lot of opportunity to actually be going full speed,” said Morrissey.

“That’s where I think the edge work — getting away from players, as a D-man breaking it out, getting in the offensive zone, being elusive up top, in the corner for forwards escaping and creating off the cycle — it shows up everywhere.”

“Getting a player on the right part of their blade in a balanced position is the No. 1 thing you can do to improve a player’s skating.”– Barb Underhill, former Canadian Olympic figure skater and skating coach

Morrissey said it’s also made him a better defender, with active feet and the ability to turn quickly being critical. Of course, not every hockey player can excel on their edges.

“In figure skating, it’s everything,” said Underhill. “Getting a player on the right part of their blade in a balanced position is the No. 1 thing you can do to improve a player’s skating. Every time I start with a new player, that’s what it’s all about — getting them in a balanced position over their skates.”

If they can find the “sweet spot” and are committed to putting in the work, you might get something that resembles a Hughes or Morrissey.

“Kids have now started it now from the time they were small. The newest generation, this is normal. They’ve been doing edge work since they were on their skates,” said Underhill.

“It used to be like OK, this is the way they move. Nowadays, we’re constantly searching for new ways of being better, of being more efficient and quicker. I feel like there’s more freedom in the game to find new things and to explore.”

“There’s more emphasis on skill and edge work and speed in today’s NHL than even 10 years ago when I broke into the league.”– Winnipeg Jets defenceman Josh Morrissey

As slick as he is now, Morrissey said it will always be a work-in-progress. He began utilizing the services of former NHLer Adam Oates as a skills coach a few years ago and learned some valuable lessons.

One involved going to a shorter stick, which freed him up to be better on his edges and not get “jammed up” the way he used to with a longer twig.

“The last four or five years, we also work on where the puck is in relation to your body so you can move more freely and don’t get tied up,” said Morrissey.

“For me, I think the edge work was there without the puck. Where it’s grown is the edge work with the puck.”

There’s also an element of trying to keep up with the new kids on the block. Now 29, Morrissey marvels at what he sees entering the league including rookies like Lane Hutson of the Montreal Canadiens and Macklin Celebrini of the San Jose Sharks.

“There’s more emphasis on skill and edge work and speed in today’s NHL than even 10 years ago when I broke into the league,” he said.

“It’s definitely a premium more than ever. And I think guys like Hughes and (Cale) Makar, the way they use their edges to create offence from the back-end has really changed the game. Even though I’m older than those guys, I think I’ve learned a lot from watching them.”

mike.mcintyre@freepress.mb.ca

X and Bluesky: @mikemcintyrewpg