Kucherov’s feedback on NHL’s ‘low IQ’ immediate debate

Nikita Kucherov is likely one of the NHL’s most elusive interview topics. The two-time league MVP is not the sort to welcome reporters to his dressing room stall for chats, and on the uncommon event he speaks right into a microphone, the trade tends to be uneventful.

Kucherov’s season-opening media availability final week adopted the identical theme for the primary three minutes. In the fourth and last minute, nevertheless, the Lightning celebrity supplied a powerful and spicy tackle the modifications he is seen in NHL hockey over his 12-year profession.

“The game now is a lot faster, but dumb,” Kucherov informed reporters in Tampa Bay. “I think that’s all I can say. Yes, it is faster, but it’s very dumb. Low IQ.”

“In a hockey way,” the 33-year-old winger replied.

“That’s all I can say,” Kucherov continued. “There’s obviously a lot of guys that have very high IQ, and it’s fun to watch them play. But, boy, there’s a lot of guys that (are) dumb.”

And that was it: Kucherov did not elaborate, and the media session ended. A 38-second clip of the trade shortly went viral, and the dialogue and debate weren’t confined to social media.

“I hope Kucherov never expands on his thoughts there,” former NHL head coach Dallas Eakins stated in a telephone interview from Germany, the place he manages and coaches DEL powerhouse Adler Mannheim. “He has all of hockey talking. ‘Hey, where can we all be better?’ That’s so important to the game. It’s so important to stop and think. There’s going to be 50 different opinions about what he said, and they’re probably all going to be right.”

Do Kucherov’s ‘dumb’ and ‘low IQ’ remarks have advantage?

Kucherov first broke out in 2014-15 as a member of the Lightning’s so-called Triplets line. He manned the appropriate wing, Ondrej Palat assumed the left, and Tyler Johnson lined up down the center. The nickname was a nod to the trio’s shared intelligence on the ice.

Johnson, who retired in 2025 after 747 NHL video games for 3 groups, agrees with Kucherov’s evaluation. The sport, he stated, is at present emphasizing velocity and talent to an excessive diploma, leaving hockey IQ and sense — the power to suppose the sport — on the again burner.

Take the Power Edge Pro coaching strategies popularized by Connor McDavid and different Generation Z stars. In a vacuum, Johnson stated, there’s nothing flawed with a participant dedicating ice time to drills aimed toward bettering dynamic stickhandling, explosive skating, and maneuverability in tight areas. But Johnson added, it could possibly promote individuality.

“I do think focusing on it too much makes you a bit of an independent player,” he stated.

“A lot of these kids that are coming into the league are so used to beating everybody with their skill. In a way, that’s a lower-hockey-IQ way of playing because you’re not using your teammates. You’re not making players around you better. If you watch Kuch, that’s one thing he does exceptionally well. He makes everyone around him better because he’s always in the right spots. He always makes those right plays. He doesn’t try to beat you one-on-one.”

Thomas Hickey, the ex-NHL defenceman turned Amazon Prime and MSG broadcaster, would not know Kucherov personally like Johnson, however considers the three-time scoring champ an excellent and environment friendly participant who’s mastered the sport’s subtleties and finer particulars.

“In a lot of ways, Kucherov’s right about hockey IQ,” Hickey stated in reference to the industry-wide obsession with velocity and talent. “But it’s like the analogy of chess versus checkers. Kucherov’s playing chess and everybody else is playing checkers.”

Kucherov’s phrases on the topic carry immense weight and authority as a result of he is within the dialog for the neatest participant on the planet. His viewpoint can be warped. By default, most NHLers are going to be “low IQ” in comparison with Kucherov, McDavid, and different high-IQ skaters like Quinn Hughes, Mark Stone, Sam Reinhart, and Jaccob Slavin, to call a couple of.

“You need a hockey brain to be able to play in this league. For sure,” Sabres defenceman Rasmus Dahlin stated Tuesday in Buffalo. “But there’s different levels. It’s so hard to comment on, honestly. There’s incredibly smart players, like (Kucherov), and there’s some not-as-smart players too in this league. They get by. They have different roles.”

Longtime NHL bench boss Lindy Ruff chuckled when requested for his two cents on Kucherov’s feedback and the state of hockey IQ and sense normally.

“Well, I don’t know if they started IQ testing yet,” Ruff quipped.

“The league is so tight,” the Sabres coach added. “The speed throughout the lineups is really good. I don’t know if that’s a fair comment (from Kucherov), to tell you the truth. I think that every team is trying to take the other team’s best players away … Some guys on the fourth line are sometimes the fastest guys on the ice. I think that’s frustrating to play against. I think that’s where our game is at today; that’s all. I don’t know about the hockey IQ part.”

“The role a lot of times of your third and fourth lines is speed and energy. I don’t think that’s dumb in any sense. ‘Let your top players win you the game’ (is) a lot of the time (how) teams think. Those guys that are playing in that (down-the-lineup) role can be really frustrating to play against. I think that can frustrate a lot of top players.”

What could be contributing to decrease IQ? Is anyone/something responsible?

Private coach Kane Lafranchise would not consider Kucherov was calling his friends silly final week. He views the soundbite as a commentary on trendy participant growth.

“We’ve become really good at developing execution. But execution and understanding the game aren’t always the same,” stated Lafranchise, an Edmonton-based growth coach whose shopper checklist options Dylan Guether, Kaiden Guhle, Matthew Savoie, and different execs.

An instance of solely executing, Lafranchise stated, can be acing a fast-paced, skill-based drill that appears beautiful in an Instagram clip however, in actuality, fails to duplicate a game-like state of affairs. To assist gamers higher perceive the sport, Lafranchise and his colleagues at Shyft Hockey add problem-solving parts to on-ice drills. A defenceman would not merely retrieve a puck within the defensive zone; he does so whereas battling a number of layers of stress and selecting the right move possibility. The secret is to combine the flashy expertise with substance.

“Hockey IQ is about processing pressure, your space, your timing, how you support your teammates, etc. It’s also about trying to find the right solution before the window to make the right play closes,” stated Lafranchise, a former AHL blue-liner himself. “The hard part is that, with the game being as fast as it is, that processing speed has to be incredibly quick.”

Despite being a six-foot-six, 226-pound defenceman, Buffalo’s Owen Power is finest recognized for easy skating and smarts. The 2021 first-overall choose, like most individuals within the sport immediately, believes a participant’s hockey IQ will be improved via expertise, video work, and correct teaching. In Power’s case, years spent taking part in aggressive lacrosse, basketball, and volleyball helped him develop spacing, physique positioning, and sample recognition on the ice.

“You see nowadays that a lot of guys are just playing one sport (as kids). They go out and do skills with nobody else on the ice. For me, you pick up a lot of stuff from other sports, and you pick up a lot of stuff playing games versus just stickhandling through cones,” Power, 23, stated. “(Hockey IQ is) definitely something you can teach and work on. Is it maybe a little harder than some skills to teach? Yeah … But there are already some guys (in the private coaching space) who are pretty good at teaching it and have helped guys a ton.”

Multiple individuals interviewed for this story puzzled if, in a copycat league just like the NHL, the newest in teaching traits are contributing to the notion that gamers are dumber.

“Teams that turn the puck over are the teams that lose, so coaches are really harping on their players to not turn the puck over,” Johnson stated. “Well, the only way to really ensure you don’t turn the puck over is to limit your risk. Sometimes that’s not the smartest approach because now you’re limiting what (your star) players can do. There’s a fine line there.”

Others see it in another way, pointing to the smarts required to execute throughout the rigorous, forecheck-heavy programs of latest Stanley Cup-winning golf equipment like Florida and Carolina.

“Playing hockey is simple, but playing simple hockey is difficult,” is how one former NHL coach, who requested to not be quoted for the story, put it. Simple hockey, he stated, wins.

Is this dangerous information for the way forward for hockey or no large deal?

An novice scout for an NHL staff discovered Kucherov’s feedback to be flippant.

“To me, it sounds like sour grapes from a guy who scored only two goals in the last four years in the playoffs and lost in the first round each time,” the scout stated, earlier than rattling off 9 “creative, perceptive, and smart” NHLers below the age of 25: “Macklin Celebrini. Connor Bedard. Will Smith. Gabe Perreault. Ryan Leonard. Matthew Knies. Beckett Sennecke. Zach Benson. Matthew Schaefer. I could go on and on here.”

Don’t rely the scout amongst these fearful about expertise dilution via growth.

What those that agree and disagree with Kucherov are in lockstep on is that all the finest NHL gamers are additionally the neatest. Hockey IQ is arguably the largest separating talent.

“The thing that separates players now, to me, isn’t how fast they are or how strong they are or how much skill they have. If they’re five-foot-10, or, heck, that kid drafted last year that’s seven-foot-one, it’s not that, no,” stated Eakins, who spent his five-plus seasons as an NHL head coach between Edmonton and Anaheim. “It’s all about how they think. I call it their processor. How is their processor working? How does the processor work?”

Eakins and Lafranchise each talked about the significance of discovering the “quiet ice” in immediately’s sport. Forwards and defencemen who constantly discover it — see: Kucherov — rocket up the scoring leaderboards. Another separator: self-confidence, which Kucherov would not lack both.

“I absolutely love his mindset,” Dahlin stated of Kucherov. “He puts himself (out there) as a smart guy (with the way he trains), and then he believes he’s way, way smarter than everybody else. That makes him a better player. I love his mentality. More guys should think like him.”