One Simple Habit to Defend The Rush Better
"Good habits formed at youth make all the difference." - Aristotle
Years ago when people would evaluate defenceman, many people (including professionals) would rely on public base level boxscore stats such as goals, assists, +/- and penalty minutes that barely scratch the surface. Nowadays when people evaluate defenceman, base level stats won’t suffice as they don’t paint the whole picture. The game and evaluation methods have improved drastically over the past decade, to now we can simply refer to microstat areas of players’ games such as @JfreshHockey's microstat cards to further evaluate players in specific areas.
When looking at how superior a defenceman is defensively, we can now look at areas of their game like:
Entry Defence (how skilled a player is at defending rushes against):
Denial rate
Carries allowed
Chances off entries
Zone Exits (how skilled a player is breaking out of his/her zone):
Controlled Exits
Carry Exits
Pass Exits
Uncontrolled Exits
Dump Out
Icing
Failed Exits
Entry Defence & Zone Exits (read about that here) are two indisputable skills & high frequency plays in which defenceman need to possess if they are looking to advance their hockey playing career.
When looking at Entry Defence, the importance of this skill is growing as more teams are relying on controlled zone entries over uncontrolled zone entries as the latter produces less than half the amount of shots & goals (here is a great start to understand why). Having said that, there are a number of guidelines players can use to thrive in this area:
Is the defenceman possessing a good gap on the attacker?
Is the defenceman limiting his/her crossovers? (more on this here)
Is the defenceman’s outside shoulder lined up with the attackers inside shoulder?
Is the defenceman angling the attacker well & trying to cut off the play before his/her own blue line?
However before we consider any of this, we need to take a step back and rewind to an even more important piece.
Proper entry defence begins when the puck is on its way out of your defensive zone during a breakout.
Far too often in the defensive zone do defenceman make a pass up to a forward who then exits the zone, and then that same defenceman will decide that it’s okay to lag behind the play. They figure that they’ve done their job at keeping the puck out of their net, and can now relax until the play comes back again. With a defenceman deciding to not rush up the ice along with the other skaters, s/he potentially puts her/himself at a disadvantage (worse gap & tougher to angle) for when a turnover occurs, and the next rush against you begins.
What defenceman should be doing is at least skate up with the play (keep up with the oppositions’ forwards who are back-checking), or even better attempt to jump past their check (more on that here). Being up in the play will give yourself a higher percentage to kill the oncoming play sooner, and potentially before it can even develop into a threat. Getting into a habit of taking 3+ hard strides after breaking a puck out of your end should be sufficient (but not always).
Overall, defenceman defending the rush should aim to achieve one of three things when defending the rush in order to improve their individual and teams performance significantly:
Force a dump in
Force an offside
Force a turnover
What Not To Do
Example 1:
In this perfect video example, notice how CBJ8 (left side of screen & last man back) gets puck watching and skates up the ice at a very casual pace, not keeping up with the nine other skaters on the ice. With CBJ’s neutral zone turnover, TBL20 quickly gains possession & attacks against a CBJ8 who was only able to skate up to and pivot at the top of the circle, demonstrating an unfavourable gap. With speed and space available, TBL20 uses that to his advantage and releases a shot just outside the dot to find the back of the net.
Example 2:
In the above clip you may notice that this play is 4v4, however the principles still remain the same, if not be more important as there is more room on the ice to pick up speed. Moving on, the biggest red flag is that VGK7 isn’t even in the frame until COL29 crosses centre ice, illustrating horrendous entry defence gap, especially by a player who has been selected to compete in his second Olympic Games with Canada next year.
From looking at both angles, we can see that VGK7 did indeed make an effort and take multiple hard strides to follow COL’s last forward out of the zone (which is good) until the forward made the line change prior to the goal, however after the handful of hard strides, the near 60+ foot gap between COL29 & VGK7 is again, completely unacceptable. VGK7 must continue to skate cover as much ice as possible and try to skate up right behind VGK61 in order to give himself a fighting chance.
What To Do
Example 1
Focus on the RHD of Team Red after he makes the D-D pass and notice how he takes two crossovers and a mohawk to build up his speed exiting the defensive zone, keeping up with the Team White forward closest to him. Although he isn’t skating at top speed up the ice, the RHD still gets past the centre ice line and possesses a respectable gap to apply enough pressure (forming a 2v1) on Team White’s 91 in the neutral zone to force Team White for a regroup back in their end, successfully killing the potential play before it can develop.
Example 2
In this breakout, we can see CAR74 retrieve the puck and poke the puck to defence partner CAR19, who then rims the puck out of the zone for an uncontrolled exit. Although CAR74 is now out of the screen, we can tell he hustles to get back up with the play due to his speed as he comes up to his blue line on a great angle to force a dump in, which his team wants.
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