Hip checks are easily my favorite type of hit - so satisfying to watch. They seem to be a rarity nowadays... probably because clean hip checks are being called as tripping/interference. Damn shame.
A lot of these are pretty close to tripping and interference, if you ask me. The ideal hip check should be hip on hip, not you just bending down and letting someone skate over you and go flying. And the whole purpose of them is that you can do them from angles that you can't do other kinds of hits. Skating backwards with the puck carrier and then transitioning into sudden lateral movement to cut them off is a skill, that's what makes a hip check beautiful.
That first one is probably the single best executed hip check I’ve ever seen. Perfect timing, not too low, not too close to the boards, just perfect in every way
Love hip checks, even on the receiving end they are usually the least jarring. But I do sometimes wish there was a rule against doing them in a congested area. Just because of how wildly peoples skates fly around when they flip
I was just about to type how I could believe there was a hip check video without Rob Blake. Of course I am a biased Kings fan, but Doughty and Blake have had some monster hip checks during their time on the ice. Great video. Always a fun compilation showing these hits!
Jay Wells had some of the greatest hip checks back in the 80s. Just as the puck carrier was about to skate by him along the boards he would turn his hip and crush him. It was like running into a wall.
11:15 I remember that image of the guy being fully upside down against the glass being on one of the Calgary newspapers after that game haha. I've never seen somebody include that hit in a montage before so I'm glad you found it. The only other ones that are vivid in my mind are Subban's hit on Marchand and Mclaren's hit on Letowski.
Hip checks can be so dangerous, and are usually called tripping/interference (Had one by Letang earlier this year with that being the case) but man if they aren't beautiful to watch if done well.
Orlov and Gudas are the only players I can think of that still routinely throw clean hip checks. Hate that some of these got called for penalties. All of them I saw were clean.
I like Radko Gudas very much, but he occasionally goes too low or too high with his hits. But he gets better with age. IRL he is such a super nice guy.
Without fights after specifically. Especially as a player in a league where hitting is allowed, it really pisses me off when people try to fight after clean hits. It's so annoying that in the NHL, after every clean big hit, everyone tries to fight the hitter and it feels like big hits almost don't happen as much anymore because of it.
I always liked Darius Kasparaitis. Although not a big man about 5'11 210ish he could really knock the piss out of people. His hit on Eric Lindros just about killed him.
This is a true art form. It's not so much strength and brute force, it's angle, timing, anticipation and luring a skater to where he's sure the threat isnt there and suddenly you close right on him and bang
the reasons you don't see these anymore are a) because it's easy for them to be called penalties because they're frequently low; b) they carry a high risk of injuring the targeted player's knee(s); and c) if you miss the hip check you are suddenly out of the play and the other team likely has a high-end scoring chance.
@@DeltaHighlights Great reply, I went back and relooked in frame by frame, and it yup, it does look more like his entire back hit him than just his hip/butt as I had always thought, so I'll give you the decision of shoulder! Cheers :)
It's funny. I was thinking how ironic it was that the Kings were victims of a number of these hip checks in the video because Rob Blake used to throw some great ones, but then the last clip made me smile. 😀
7:07 I couldn't understand why the Avs were so pissed, that was an absolutely perfect hip check. Then I noticed the score and time and went "Oh, nooooooo....."
I’m amazed that when somebody hunches down in front of another player that the other player doesn’t give them an upper cut with their stick to the face.
