Al a very effective way to start is with a tight backward turn and about 3 crossovers and then backward stides
i.e. If the D is on the left side he would face the left side boards and skate a tight hook backward to the inside to create some torque and a few cross overs then the back stride with no crossovers.
I was recently watching peewees do skill testing. One of the drills was 100' straight backward skating. After wathching several good skaters have slow starts because of poor cross overs, I asked a senior coach that I was standing by what he thought of cross over starts. He gave an answer very similar to Coachys.
Then he said "The reason you don't like crossovers is because you used to play basketball"