Off the schneid, without a doubt

Monday night the Sharks played a great game against the Calgary Flames, winning by a record score of 9-1.  In that game, 8 different Sharks players scored goals (Dany Heatley had two), but 6 of those 8 players ended long scoreless droughts.  This was what Randy Hahn and Drew Remenda called "getting off the schneid."


That is an interesting phrase - it means to end a period of negative results with a positive result, and in sports, to end a long period of failing to score.  Here is the best definition I could find, from The Word Detective:

To be “on the schneid” means to be on a losing streak, racking up a series of losing, and especially scoreless, games. “Schneid” is actually short for “schneider,” a term originally used in the card game of gin, meaning to prevent an opponent from scoring any points. “Schneider” entered the vocabulary of gin from German (probably via Yiddish), where it means “tailor.” Apparently the original sense was that if you were “schneidered” in gin you were “cut” (as if by a tailor) from contention in the game. “Schneider” first appeared in the literature of card-playing about 1886, but the shortened form “schneid” used in other sports is probably of fairly recent vintage.

The sports world is full of these phrases.  I really like this one.