In a lot of ways, Don Cherry is like Old Yeller’. At one point or another, he helped to bring along our development. Before the annoying signal barks turned to irascible and hostile frothing at the mouth, there was some semblance of value in what he aimed to direct us towards.
Really, though, they were both just chasing cars.
At one point or another, CBC is going to have to take Cherry out back. It will be a sobering moment for all of Canada; if not crushing. That’s not to say it shouldn’t happen; or doesn’t need to happen, frankly. 
A Canucks Army alumni, Cam Charron used to get confused by Cherry. Three years since, these takes concuss.
Don Cherry: “You know, I hardly missed the game. I really did. I am the fan of the Jays and the whole deal. I’m really ticked off because, I’ll tell yeah, we got stiff. I’m saying what the baseball players said! First of all, two balks. Everybody knows it, the American announcer said two balks not called!”
Ron MacLean: “Didn’t look like a balk though, after they replayed it.”
Don Cherry: “Balk! It was balk! American balk! Greg Zaun said it was a balk, he knows. Then we have the home run, the guy reaches over”
Ron MacLean: “You think, yeah?”
Don Cherry: “Incoherent rambling, refers to the Toronto Blue Jays left fielder, Ben Revere, as a left winger”
Now, this is a hockey blog that covers the Canucks, so I won’t spare much of my time or effort on debunking the wealth of absurdity in the opening salvo of Saturday’s episode of Coaches Corner. There’s too much there and we’re talking about just over a minutes worth of commentary.
Yeah, not sure what the umps got wrong there. Call on the field was a homerun and nothing about the review indicates otherwise – certainly not with the degree of certainty which would be needed to overturn the original ruling.
Also, what’s an American balk? Do fireworks go off when you take your base? Does Kenny “Fuckin'” Powers come on the Jumbotron?
Don Cherry: “Alright, watch Giordano, boy – he’s wearing a mask now, but that’s ok – watch Giordano! Puts it over there (in the corner) there’s the winner, there’s the winner, puts it in, they’re all happy. That three-on-three, is that exciting or what?
Now, I gotta tell you what everybody (or everything?) makes me happy. These experts say “possession of the puck. Why give the puck up all the time? Possess-” you know these guys, the intellectual guys, you know and everything”
What makes this nugget especially great is that he’s conflating the concept of a controlled zone entry with raw possession of the puck. To what exact end, I’m not entirely sure. 
Regardless, the idea that somehow throwing the puck away into the opposition’s corner is going to increase the team in question’s odds of scoring a goal is laughable at the most basic and intuitive levels. I remember being a spry and bordering on happy five year old at one point, with my father, Old Man Jerk, as the acting bench boss for my hockey team. In an effort to relate hockey to our fragile eggshell minds, he described the game at it’s core as one of keepaway. Simple enough.
More than a decade later, the innovations made in the field of analytics – shot-based metrics, especially – has proven that he was more or less right. 
That’s not really what irked me, though. Dumb people are going to say dumb stuff and when it comes to possession metrics there’s no shortage of applicants in the world of hockey. What Cherry is actually trying (and failing) to articulate, is his beef with the idea of a controlled zone entry as being the preferable option to playing dump and chase. With, of course, a one-goal and one-game sample. Makes sense.
As you may or may not know, I’m tracking zone entries for the 2015-16 NHL season. I have a life, so there’s no guarantee I’ll cover the entire season, but I’m building a sizeable database of information all the same. In my (admittedly) limited sample of games, I would say roughly 70-80% of goals have been scored on controlled zone entries. This number is especially startling, given that I’m much less forgiving in my taxonomy of a controlled entry than most.
Don’t take it from me and my severely handicapped body of knowledge, though. Take it from Corey Sznajder, who tracked an entire season’s worth of information and revealed his findings on his own, personal blog, quite recently…
Zone entries show how often each team and player entered the offensive zone and how often they did it with or without possession of the puck. Studying this is important because we already know how much of an impact out-shooting your opponent and winning the territorial battle is in hockey, but determining which factors drive this is still up for debate. Through the work of Eric Tulsky, Geoffrey Detweiler and Bob Spencer, we were able to determine that zone entries and being able to enter the offensive zone with possession of the puck is a major factor in out-shooting your opponent during five-on-five play. Their work showed that entries done by possession lead to twice as many shots as compared to dumping the puck in, so teams who were able to carry the puck in more than their opponents were more likely to win the shot/territorial battle than ones who do not. They found this through tracking zone entries for the Philadelphia Flyers and Minnesota Wild during the 2011-12 season and Tulsky presented the findings at the 2013 Sloan Sports Analytics Conference. Most importantly, they determined that being able to enter the offensive zone with control of the puck is a repeatable skill and therefore, worth tracking in future seasons.
I think the best part is that he goes on to rave about the play of Tyler Toffoli and the first example of his prowess as a finisher is a goal he scores on a controlled zone entry. Then again, I’d never accuse The Canadian Donald of anything resembling self-awareness.