ROLES & RESPONSIBILITIES
(July 2019)
In general, as a defenseman you will be watching plays unfold, and controlling the flow of the game. You will direct and influence the other team when they have possession, and help your team initiate offense.
Neutral Zone
The two most common scenarios for defensemen in the neutral zone are:
· Defending an attack after a breakout from the other team, or
· A regroup / counter after regaining possession in the neutral zone.
The responsibility of the first forward back is to pick off a man and basically ride him into the zone to take away a chance at a pass to the high man
DEFENSIVE PRINCIPLES
(Mar 2021)
The Starting Point Is The Same:
· Eliminate time and space
· Steer into bad ice
· Stop movement
A proper starting point when playing defense is getting onto the defensive side of the puck (closer to your goal than your opponent).
Once positioning is established, we next want to close off the time and space of the opponent so they begin to run out of options.
Attaching to players gaining speed and steering them into poor areas before they get the puck is a great strategy.
On the puck defense:
This is the player closest to the puck carrier.
Angling is a key skill to shrink available space to the opposition.
Off the puck defense:
Gaining positioning before touching the puck is the best predictor of who will win a given puck battle.
DEFENSEMEN DEVELOPMENT
WHERE DO TOP PAIRING DEFENSEMEN COME FROM (3 ARTICLES)
(Aug 2013)
As expected, the draft is the most common method of obtaining top talent. What’s surprising to me though is the high percentage of players that were obtained outside of the draft, at ~50%. It’s always seemed as if top-pairing defencemen were drafted by their respective teams and held on to until they were grey but this list suggests that around half could be made available while they’re still top-tier rear guards or are at least able to grow into that role.
The majority of these players joined their teams simply by having their name picked on their draft day.
At first glance it looks a little sporadic, but you can get a rough sense that the front of the draft is a better place to find top defencemen than later on in the draft:
From this, it looks like the first half of the draft goes according to plan. The very first few picks yield a large amount of talent and the odds of picking a top defenceman decrease as you progress through the draft. Something odd happens midway through the draft though. After pick 90 (round 3), top defencemen get selected in disproportionately large amounts relative to their draft position.
Each of those trades involved identifying a team in some sort of position of weakness (cap issues, inability to resign players, etc.) and capitalizing on that by having two things:
1) Valuable, cap-friendly assets (1st round picks, valued prospects), and
2) Cap space
AGGRESSIVE DEFENSEMEN EXPERIENCE SHARP DECLINES
(Nov 2021)
offensive and defensive impact on shot quantity are both higher than their impact on shot quality. As these players decline, the positive events may still occur more frequently than the negative ones (which will be reflected in shot quantity and perhaps the eye test), but the return from these events will turn negative (which will be reflected in shot quality and should ultimately be reflected in goals) because the bad events are more severe than the good ones, and the frequency no longer outweighs the severity.
Their positive impact is dependent on succeeding on a high enough percentage of their aggressive plays that they offset the big losses they suffer when their risks fail. In these high-leverage situations, it does not take a large drop in success frequency to see a large drop in expected returns.
THE DEFENSIVE ZONE
Hit Zone
The strong side d-man is responsible for the hit zone.
the defensemen’s main job is to make a hit for a turnover. If a hit can’t be made then the defensemen must contain the forward by keeping inside positioning and staying between his check and the scoring area.
Support Zone
This zone has two main responsibilities. The first is to defend against any passes from the hit zone to the slot. The second responsibility is to read and react to the success of the d-man in the hit zone.
Net Front
The net zone is generally the responsibility of the second defensemen back
the key to succeeding in this area is by keeping inside positioning on any net front presence.
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