Is being left handed an advantage or disadvantage.

A couple of interesting comments made today regarding which hand people play hockey with got me thinking,

In Boxing, being left handed is an advantage as your opponent is more likely to have trained and sparred against fellow right handers and so struggles to adapt when against a left handed opponent whereas the southpaw is more comfortable as they are used to fighting right handers and can use this to his\her advantage.

So it begs the question

Is being being left handed an advantage or a disadvantage in UWH ? or does it not make a blind bit of difference ?

What do you like or hate about playing against left handed person ?

is it harder to swerve\dummy a player of the opposite hand ?

it was mentioned in a different thread about common tackling errors, what are they, what should you be doing instead ?

If you had 2 players of equal skill in a squad and 1 position to fill in the team, could their left or right handedness swing your descision as to who would fill that role ?

What do you think ?

Much harder.

I like practising my offhand dummies.


I hope not. If skills and effectiveness were equal then I'd pick the fitter one of the two.

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Not much differetns the only advantage you have are against some teams that dont have left handed players so they sometimes make mistakes so the puck is easy to steal.

Nothing i'm left handed and play by training much 2 handed.


No its always effective when done on the right time on the right way.


No. but maybe i have the luck in my club we have many left handed players.

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Left handers are great to have. It is important to switch on asap to opersition lefties coz they can just catch you out for a second. I always try to asses at the start of a game if a team has left handers when waiting for the first strike to take off.
Cheers
Belle

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When bashing the puck along the right wall it might even things up for a lefty. Then again, just do not bash the puck

Advantage... mainly since most of the players you will come against are righthanded, meaning you are more used to playing against them than they against you.

Doesn't really bother me too much to be honest... although I find that they tend to make more stick fouls against me (right handed). When tackling a lefty for me it seems that their arm is often in an inconvenient position, so I imagine it is the same for them tackling me. My advice: play forward and leave the tackling to the people who can't swim at the back.

Oh yes indeed.

OK- example: for a right hander swimming with the puck getting tackled by a lefty coming from his right (stick side). The leftie to get to the puck will reach over the arm and hand of the righty to get to the puck, often hitting them in the process. Other option is going under the arm, but then it is nigh on impossible to tackle without touching the arm first. Sin sin sin.

No. There are advantages and disadvantages to both. I would take the one who first called me 'Superjols'.


That said... I often end up floating around in the rightforward position, and a lefty back is pretty handy since most people prefer shooting to the opposite side to their stick (ie a lefty to the right). Means that I get more quality passes and less dross. At my age it has to be good pass for me to score.

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Faster than a speeding puck...

The poll doesn't give an option to say both.

I can't say neither as there are definitly advantages but also disadvantages. Tackling is a great example, the different arm angle means sometimes they will get to a puck and swipe it clean when a righty might not have a shot at it, but then sometimes the arms get all tangled up and the lefty ends up in the box just becasue he had to attacka at such a weird angle. I know it SEEMS lefties end up in the box more often but I'm not sure about the reality, that just could be coincidence that all the most of the lefties in the US are dirty hacks. So overall I can't say if its better or worse, BUT if there were two players and one spot, anre truly EVERYTHING else were equal between them... it may be a decider, if say he would be the only lefty on the team.

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Thanks for the signal Tuck.

I've recently started playing leftie to rest my weary right arm. There are times I feel like I can get the puck and make moves that normally I couldn't. But there are also times that I can't get to the puck. I agree with Tuck that lefties seem to get the most calls against them but that might have to do with the refs mostly being righty and not able to detect that the righty was at fault or there should be no call, or equal puck at worst. Playing lefty has put me in spots where I get tangled and have no idea who initiated it, and I'm involved in the play so I should know.

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Mostly an advantage as many players do not know how to play against a left handed player. We lefties often do the basics in automatic reverse to righties, which confuses many players.

I like the challenge of playing against lefties as they often are unpredictable, more skillfil and less likely to be a basher.

No, you just have to learn to swerve/dummy both ways, including body position.

I feel that right handers get away with more stick fouls on lefties as some referees are not familiar with spotting this. During the last competition I played in, I even took a couple of referees aside to show them the fouls that were occuring so they could pull them (the classic smack the glove to dislodge the puck and the sweep/lift under the arm).

I don't think it would come down to who is left handed or who is right handed. What about team play, fitness, probability of receiving sin bin times etc.


By pure chance, I have played in a team of lefties (no righties). When the teams first lined up, I thought we were going to get our butt kicked. It was an even game and we did not spot the left hand feature of our team until the game was nearly finished.

Cheers,

I think that Lefties get many more calls against them. It is impossible not to tangle up in certain situations when going against an opposite handed player. Good or Bad, it just is.
I also know it is an advantage against many high level players because they do not expect an attack from the different angle. The faster the game and the more physical the more the advantage.
I am Left handed and do resemble the Dirty Hack my brother mentioned. I probably have more sin bin time at worlds than most other player on the list and I only played in 2000. Many of the calls I have no idea what I did. Many were valid however.