Brent Burns is making headlines because of a coaching decision as the San Jose Sharks moved him to right wing for a game.
Of course this caught a lot of people by surprise and even confused some people who wondered about his Norris eligibility. The Sharks had some fun with his position last night in their pre-game lines graphic, but the funniest image ended up coming from a totally accidental place.
NHL GameCenter (The NHL’s game summaries) usually visualizes some of the lines on their website and last night’s version got a little confused. It wanted to list Brent Burns as a defenceman, which led to an unusual formation in the graphic.
Reddit user Prince_Nico captured this screenshot of the confusion:
This is something that might be more familiar to soccer fans who are used to their team’s experimenting with formations.
There is only one example of a team really experimenting with different formations in hockey and that is Sweden’s torpedo from the 2002 Winter Olympic Games. Perhaps someone will try this again in NHL someday as team’s experiment more with a more creative offensive approach.
