LOS ANGELES — As the puck arced high over Tampa Bay’s lightning-bolt logo at center ice, Frank Nazar turned on the jets and sped through the neutral zone, trying to gauge the trajectory like a center fielder or a punt returner. Area passes, by definition, aren’t particularly accurate — they’re estimates, they’re hopes. Nazar judged this one pretty well, but even with his breathtaking speed, he didn’t quite get there. He was a little behind and a little to the left.
But this wasn’t just any area pass; it was a Teuvo Teräväinen area pass.
“If you watch, the puck lands and spins right to me,” Nazar said, the awe still fresh some six weeks later. “The puck will be going toward their goal line, but as soon as it lands, it’ll bounce and spin toward me. … He’s like Tiger Woods with the spin.”
A couple of days later, Teräväinen laughs at the very idea of this. With some prodding, he reluctantly admits that he’s a 4-handicap golfer, and he relents that his short-iron play might translate a bit to his area-pass prowess.
But backspin? On a puck? Come on. Be serious.
“That’s too much,” Teräväinen said.
Is it, though? Let’s wade deep into the weeds with Jason Dickinson, perhaps the Blackhawks’ most analytical mind. Hell, it turns out backspin is just the start.
“I don’t know if it’s as scientific as you might think, but when he passes a puck, there’s always spin on it,” Dickinson said. “Sometimes guys pass it real flat and crisp, but he always passes it with spin. Because the way it spins, it’ll come off the shooter’s stick differently.”
Teräväinen is not the only player to do this, but Dickinson said the 31-year-old Finn takes it to degrees other players can’t even fathom.
“It’s not so much that it’s spinning in (to your blade), it’s the rotation of it,” Dickinson said. “He’s going to get it to me with counter-clockwise spin, and that’s going to come off my stick better because when I hit it, I’m putting counter-clockwise spin on it. But if he’s going to pass it to (Connor Bedard, a right-handed shot), he might deaden it, because it’s harder to put forward spin on it.”
Teräväinen just shook his head at this one.
“They might be joking with you,” he said.
That’s Teräväinen being Teräväinen. Getting the shy and humble veteran to talk himself up is impossible. Or, as Dickinson put it, “Getting Teuvo to talk at all is impossible.” But there’s a reason he’s one of the smoothest playmakers around, a passing machine who could probably routinely score 30 goals a season if he ever thought to actually shoot the puck.
“He 100 percent knows who he’s passing to and what they like,” Dickinson said. “He didn’t say that to me, but I would say for sure, just watching the way he does things.”
Is Teräväinen really able to identify a teammate, map out his trajectory, recall his handedness and puck preferences, and deliver a bespoke pass in a fraction of a second as defenders descend upon him? If so, is that just instinct or is it super-processing speed?
Does it matter? Because he’s doing it. And has been for a dozen NHL seasons, since breaking into the league and helping the Blackhawks win the Stanley Cup in 2015 as a 21-year-old. Sure, there are moments of chaos when he’s just chucking the puck out of the zone, or tossing a pass on a wing and a prayer like any other player. But in the flow of the game, Teräväinen routinely does things that leave his teammates astonished.
Teuvo Teräväinen takes his passing ability to degrees other players, even his own teammates, can’t fathom. (Brian Bradshaw Sevald / Imagn Images)
Nazar called Teräväinen one of the smartest players he’s ever played with. And that hockey sense goes far beyond tailor-made passes. For coach Jeff Blashill, those moments of chaos, when the Blackhawks are hemmed in their own end, are when Teräväinen’s hockey IQ really stands out.
“The game of hockey for me, while we have structure, there’s an unbelievable fluidity to it,” Blashill said. “So, guys have to be able to make what we would call hockey reads on the fly all the time. The smart players are the ones that make those reads better than others. Where Teuvo separates himself with his smarts is he has really good defensive hockey smarts. When the chaos happens, he knows who to cover, he knows where to go, he knows what play to take away. And (he has) offensive hockey smarts. He knows how to find the right spot to be to get a puck, he knows when he gets a puck what he’s going to do with it next. All those things constitute smarts, and are probably what has allowed him to have a really good NHL career.”
Even Teräväinen’s less specific passes seem to have eyes. His lobbed area passes come with a purpose, and he has a pool shark’s eye for bank shots. One such billiards play came during a preseason game in Minnesota this year. Teräväinen, from the slot in his own end, saw Nazar — who already had two goals in the game — make a break for it from the right side. There were three Wild players in Nazar’s vicinity, so he couldn’t make a direct pass. Instead, he managed to perfectly calculate Nazar’s angle and speed, banking a soft pass off the far wall just beyond his blue line. The puck caromed down the left side of the ice, allowing Nazar — who had blown past the Wild defenders at this point — to pick up the puck without breaking stride for a breakaway opportunity.
“He does that all the time,” Nazar said. “He reads the ice so well and he’s able to know what plays are there before he even gets the puck. So once he gets it, he’s ready and he’s making the play. Obviously, his skill goes a lot into that, because he can make those plays. But just being able to know where guys are at and where to place pucks — it makes him stand out.”
Teräväinen, again reluctantly, will acknowledge that he’s got pretty good vision out there. But even that comes with a bit of self-deprecation.
“I don’t know, I just try to play the way I play,” he said. “I guess I’ve been playing for a long time now, so I’ve been learning from mistakes and trying to do things the right way. It’s the same game over and over, so there’s going to be the same kind of small situations you go through a lot of the time. So you might know where the puck might go, or where the dangerous areas are. But I don’t really think too much, I just play.”
The funny thing about Teräväinen is that he barely looks like he’s trying. He’s never hurried, never straining. Nazar plays like his hair’s on fire at all times, Bedard is dancing with the puck every shift, Oliver Moore is darting into puck battles with abandon, Dickinson is working his tail off to defend and kill penalties. Meanwhile, Teräväinen always seems to be coasting along without a care in the world.
And this is the guy Jonathan Toews nicknamed “Turbo,” a moniker that’s stuck for more than a decade in both Carolina and Chicago. Maybe it’s an ironic nickname, like calling a short guy “Stretch” or a big guy “Tiny.” Because nothing about Teräväinen screams “Turbo.” Not his footspeed. Not his effort. He sometimes looks more like one of the DMV sloths in “Zootopia” than he does Nazar, all fast and furious and frenetic.
“Just strolling along,” Dickinson said.
But, somehow, he’s always in the right spot, always has his stick on a defender, always clearing pucks and killing penalties and triggering transition offense. And, when he’s playing with Nazar, he’s somehow always right alongside him.
“I always think about that,” Nazar said with a chuckle. “We work well together somehow. It’s pretty funny.”
That’s where the smarts come in. Hall of Famer Duncan Keith led the Blackhawks in ice time for 15 consecutive seasons because he knew how to conserve his energy on the ice. He could skate as well as almost anybody in the league, but he only turned on the jets when he really needed to. He coasted and cruised most of the time, using his heightened anticipation to ensure he was in the right spots with the least effort.
Teräväinen clearly was paying attention as a rookie.
“That’s what’s so clever about him,” Dickinson said. “He doesn’t need to work harder than anybody else in a lot of areas because he’s ahead of them mentally. He knows where I already want to put the puck before I know I want to put the puck there, and he’s already reading it and going into that space. So he creates open ice for himself not by using his feet, but by using his brain. Walter Gretzky always told Wayne to go to where the puck is going, not where it’s been. That’s Turbo. He’s just taking it a step further, where I’m not even sure I want it there yet, and he’s already read it: ‘Well, Dicky’s options are either to rim it to me here, to pass it direct if he’s making a great play, or to shoot it and the rebound comes to me.’ He’s already processed the three options and has decided that the puck is most likely going to come here. And sure enough, it does most of the time.”
All of this is very uncomfortable for Teräväinen, of course. He doesn’t really want to talk. He certainly doesn’t want to be talked about. He just wants to lace up his skates and do his thing. But his thing is so different than anybody else’s in the Blackhawks locker room, and so different than most players in the league, that his teammates can’t help but talk about it.
“Maybe they’re all lying,” Teräväinen said hopefully.
Nah, that’s just spin.