DCHP-2

spinorama spinnerama, spinarama, Spinorama, spin-o-rama DCHP-2 (July 2016)

• n. — Hockey

  a move where a player evades an oncoming opponent by pivoting 360 degrees while maintaining control of the puck (see Video).

  Type: 1. Origin — The term was reportedly popularized by Danny Gallivan, a Hockey Night in Canada commentator for the Montreal Canadiens from 1952 to 1984. He used the term to describe a move by Serge Savard (see Canada's Sports Hall of Fame reference, see the 1985 quotation). The term is currently most prevalent in Canada (see Chart 1). It has been generalized early to other sports, e.g. in 1980 to a field hockey context from UBC Vancouver. Until the mid-1980s, references to a Savardian spinarama are quite common, after which time the popularizer's name was dropped.
  See also COD-2, s.v. "spinarama", which is marked "Cdn".

  • While the term is used in other sports contexts today, it derives from hockey contexts (see the earliest quotations).
  • The term has many spellings, but spinorama and spin-o-rama seem to be the most common ones today.