Hockey Prompt:

To answer your question with another question, what is a trick play? Would you define something like using a mini stick on a breakaway as a gimmick or a trick play? Or, is a trick play merely something that tricks the opponents? If it's the latter, how could you possibly say they have no place in the sport? The end result of any play is to beat your opponent and put yourself in a better position to achieve your goal. Could you imagine hockey without head fakes, drop passes, slap passes or even bank passes? Removing trick plays would be tantamount to turning a great sport into a tabletop mockery of its former great self and would result in its gristly death.

If you find yourself defining plays as gimmicky and simply too flashy for a once-great sport then you would be indisputably wrong. A player is not a gimmick merely because they have the talent to scoop the puck and pull off the Michigan in the same way that a larger, stronger player is not a gimmick. The only gimmick in hockey is fighting; it has no effect on the outcome of games and does not provide any tangible boon to the players with a better fighter on their bench.