The word "grit" is tossed around in hockey but there is no statistic to measure true grit.
By JOANNE KORTH
Published April 6, 2004
TAMPA - The puck slides precariously into the corner of the ice and waits for someone to chase it down.
But not just anyone.
Most likely, it will be someone with more than a couple of bruises on his arms, legs and rib cage. Someone with a scowl and half a dozen stitches on his face. Someone who appreciates the thankless nature of a job no one wants, but must be done.
Someone with grit.
"Grit to me is a play that doesn't show up in the score sheet," Lightning defenseman Dan Boyle said. "Usually, it's a little thing that if you don't know your hockey you might not notice, getting the puck out somehow or blocking a shot. They're not flashy plays, but they usually mean sacrificing your body for the good of a play."
As the Lightning begins its quest for the Stanley Cup with a first-round playoff series against the Islanders - Game 1 is Thursday at the St. Pete Times Forum - now would be a good time to get cozy with the term grit. The playoffs are all about grit.
And not everyone has it.
Grit is chutzpah. Grit is moxie. Grit is stubborn courage. Grit is determination, endurance, fortitude, guts. Grit is staying in front of an opponent's net knowing some hulking defenseman is going to play Chop Sticks on your lower back with his stick. Why do it? Because there might be a slap shot to deflect or a rebound to bang in.
"It's paying the price, being willing to get hurt to have the team be successful," Lightning associate coach Craig Ramsay said. "It's somebody who's willing to go into traffic and get the job done. We're lucky right now, we've developed a whole team of them."
Like the coarse side of a sheet of sandpaper, grit is best put to use in craggy situations. When the puck goes into the corner, the first player in is almost certain to get pounded into the boards for his efforts. The gritty player might come out on the losing end of the collision, but wins the battle.
"It's the guys who show up every night; guys who don't take a night off," Lightning defenseman Cory Sarich said. "Guys that aren't afraid to get a little dirty, but not dirty in the sense of chopping people in the head with sticks. Dirty in the sense of taking a hit to make a play, giving your body up on the ice. The biggest thing is a very hard work ethic; guys who give 100 percent all of the time."
Grit is one of those cool words in the English language that sounds like its meaning. Hiss, sigh, crumple, cuckoo. Say it out loud: Grit. Grrrit. It's a close cousin to grate and grind.
"Yeah, it sounds perfect," Boyle said.
In the real world, grit is the guy who comes to pump your septic tank. Dives into the crawl space under your house to check for termite damage. Climbs onto a ladder to prune the bougainvillea plant - are those thorns or hypodermic needles? - growing out of control in your back yard.
"Guys who have jobs that are nasty but need to be done," Boyle said. "People who work in the garbage industry or the sewers. People who have jobs you wouldn't want to do yourself have grit."
It's a word hockey players first start to hear when they are juniors, when winning starts to matter. By the time a player reaches the NHL, there is no higher form of flattery.
"They use the word character. Now, we've got a lot of characters in this game, we all know," said Terry Crisp, the former Lightning coach and current Predators television analyst. "But when a coach says, "Yeah, this guy's got grit,' that's probably as high a compliment as a coach is going to give."
Grit comes is all shapes and sizes. It can skate like the wind or take a while to build momentum. But it's always there in a pinch.
To take a hit. To block a shot. To chip a puck.
"They talk about tough hockey players, but I always like to see one, not so much one who can fight, but one like Martin St. Louis who plays with grit," Lightning forward Tim Taylor said. "He's tenacious on the puck and wins a lot of battles. Getting the puck out, that defines grit to me."
Tough is another big hockey term, one that usually applies to players willing to make a statement with their big bodies. Tough guys intimidate. And while it is possible to be both tough and gritty, they are not the same thing.
St. Louis is 5 feet 9, 185 pounds.
That's 185 pounds of grit.
"A lot of guys are tough," Crisp said. "Being tough is one thing when you're 6 foot 4 and 225 pounds and can wail the snot out of somebody. That's being tough. But grit is when you know you're not going to win, or you're outmatched or oversized and you hang in like a dirty little terrier and figure, "If I gnaw on his ankle long enough he'll fall over."'
