How do you think you'll fit in to Toronto's roster and who are you most excited to play with?
Yeah, I mean obviously I'm super excited and I'm going to fill whatever role they need me in. But, like you said, it's gonna be really exciting to get to play with those veteran players like Renata Fast or Ella Shelton that I'm used to having to go down on when they're on Canada, but now it'll be nice to have them on my blue line instead.
I think I'm just pumped to get to learn from a lot of those older players. I mean, there's so much you can soak up and learn from, they've been playing for so long, and I think that's what I'm most excited for; not only to learn tips and tricks on the ice but also to learn things from them off the ice.
Jeff Marek on The Sheet talking about Brady Martin
MAREK: And actually, I think - I gotta, I gotta check on this - I was told that when he went, when he was drafted by the Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds he was trying to find a billet who could accommodate a cow, because he wanted to bring his cow. (dissolving into laughter)
PHILLIPS: What?
MAREK: (laughing) For the milk! To Sault Ste. Marie. (wheezing)
PHILLIPS: What the fuck? (laughing) That's...
MAREK: So your [inaudible] billet's like, "Can I bring my cow?" I love this kid. I wanna get him on, we gotta get Brady Martin on the show.
Kuzmenko asked about his habit of chatting his linemates’ ears off. Transcript under the cut
MEDIA: You’re always, you’re always talking to Juice…
KUZMENKO: Mm-hmm
MEDIA: You’re always talking to Kopi.
KUZMENKO: Right.
REPORTER: Is that just you, your personality? You just like to…?
KUZMENKO: Ahh… Yes. I want, uh playing hockey on ice, I don’t want, uh think what’s happen in the future with Juice and Kopi. I want understanding next move. It’s little bit better for future, for good moment, for score, for passes, for good grade chance. And I love it, speak to my partners.
(Shrugging) I don’t know, probably too much and maybe more speak I, because it’s Kopi, (he imitates Kopitar nodding frantically) “Yeah,yeah, yeah, yeah, Kuzy, yeah, yeah!”
(Round of laughter from the room, Kuzmenko grins and pinches his nose) This moment I understand, okay, Kuzy, little bit slow, it’s too much information. Yes, because the first, uh, ten games a lot of… I, after probably every shift I watching the iPad. This I want this play, this my move, listen to me and go “What you think Juice? What you want?” And, uh, so important moment to me, because I need understanding is what’s the future, how future Juice moment, how future Kopi moment is. You know, it’s little bit key for the game… For the success.
MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference 2025 - Decisions on Ice: The Next Frontier of Hockey Analytics (YouTube video. Please be advised you WILL be hearing it entirely from your left ear.)
Arda Ocal is moderating, hear from: Philippe Desaulniers (Habs, makes the tools GMs use to fetch data, reports, anything), Meghan Chayka (Stathletes), and Jeremy Rogalski (Bruins - he does get asked about trade deadlines briefly due to the banger that they had this season LOL)
I liked the diversity of voices here, felt like I was getting an interesting cross-section of the kinds of people who work in analytics & their perspectives. Lots of fun things but the first section was what I found most interesting. They talked about how analytics has changed coaching rooms, players and their relationship to analytics, and give a bit of insight on how that interface all goes nowadays. Transcript of that part below <3
ROGALSKI: Echoing what Phil and Meghan said, like, just the way to describe the game. Y'know, working with a - I started in the coach's room doing video work for them, and watching how, even a pre-scout for a game evolves from, y'know, coaches previously would watch like, three games of video and kind of look for some common trends in that, maybe do a deep dive on the season. But now you can describe, like, how a team breaks out, or how their power play formations are in so much detail that wasn't available 10, 15 years ago to put that together.
[...]
ROGALSKI: It's actually interesting you use the word 'storytelling', too, because I think Meghan's bang-on, I think, about a lot of inquiries coming our way now, which is great! But I think also in terms of, y'know, building a relationship with a coach, understanding what their schedule looks like, what their needs are, where they have windows of time to work through and educate on the data.
But also, I think packaging it in a digestible way, right? You're still, in some ways, doing the same thing with a coach where if there's a point you're trying to make, there is a time for a fact: "This guy's whatever on faceoff percentage," that's a fact, that needs to happen. But sometimes you gotta package it in a narrative that really helps them understand how they can then turn around and use that fact to improve the team or communicate to a player. So there is a component of that storytelling that's needed as well.
DESAULNIERS: To tack on what Jeremy was saying... So, I really see three things mainly that are important in order to have communications flowing between our group and the coaches.
The first thing is, really, it's really great to have a translator. You usually will have, like, someone on the team, or you want to have someone on the team who's able to speak the language with the coaches and who understands on the analytics side.
And so we'll be creating some reports, some setting up the information there so it can be consumed, and then you'll have, you, in our (the Montreal Canadiens') case it's Chris our Director of Analytics, who will be talking with the coaches and knowing what the coaches are expecting and presenting it in a way that they understand. So that's one thing.
The second thing that we found effective is, we've started creating some concepts that we try to keep as simple and as high-level as possible, but that then become part of the vocabulary that we have with the coaching staff.
So just to give an example, we'll be talking about players that are, that have a certain number of pillars, we call them pillars, which are at the bottom. They're metrics, very specific metrics, that we're tracking - you don't need to understand all the details to know that, okay, so this guy has a four pillar, or five pillar, and this way you know, like, where he stands at a very high level without having to dig into it.
The third thing that we do, that we've done, is get the coaches on board, so work on a way of organising the metrics based on what they're looking for, what their understanding of the game is, and organise the information that way. So then when they start digging into it they actually see what they were looking for.
And you get the buy-in from them, too, when you're doing that, because they've worked on it to build that structure.
ROGALSKI: I would add one thing, too, that I thought of. You raise a good point, too. I think visuals are huge here, too, right? Whether it's a heat map or just picking the right graphic or trend, or something that's -
DESAULNIERS: Colours!
ROGALSKI: I mean, reds and greens, like, it helps. It truly does help.
CHAYKA: Not to play your role Arda but I have a question for Jeremy, because you've been through some different coaches. Do you find, like, coaching staffs, as they change... From my work I find some are far more, just, ease of use and understanding and their ability to implement it in their game flow. Works a lot better for some people's style than others, have you seen that change with, like, different coaches?
ROGALSKI: Yes. It's definitely seen a change. Also, I think now you're starting to see coaches have worked with different teams, so. Before it's, you're educating on, "This is what we can offer you," now it's, you're coming in with a set of preferences, or, "This is what I worked with previously, " so.
Y'know, more recently it's been coming in with a set of expectations for, "I know this works for me, is there anything you want to add or change or do whatever?" So, it's definitely, there has been a change.
OCAL: That's a great question, I want to generalise that, like, y'know whether it's a first-time coach like Marty St Louis, whether it's a Jim Montgomery, or a long tenured coach... Let me start with you, Meghan, like, from different experience levels of coaches, in the NHL or otherwise, how have you found their acceptance and how they use that in their daily jobs?
CHAYKA: And I think it can be background, too. You know, you, you're a math grad, you like numbers. Some people come from engineering. People come to coaching in so many different ways, so they have such a different way of approach and understanding and ease with it.
And I think that they can just implement it and know what's assumptions and what's noise and what's actually important to them and their job that they need to do. So I think it's just being realistic about your personnel.
But I will say that I've noticed, doing the Draft a lot, and at ESPN and working with Draft people in the CHL and doing a lot of Junior work, that young people now expect data. They want it, they want to take control of their own, whether it's a coach or a player coming up. So I'm seeing, like, the 25-and-under crowd.
It's not, "Do I, should I use analytics?" it's like, "Why aren't we using analytics? Why isn't my agent doing that for me? Why isn't my team doing that for me?"
And I think that, too, both empowers people working in tech but also empowers, like, the person who that data is being used to dictate their career, right? Giving them some control and oversight and insight into what they actually have to improve. So it's kind of, like, flipping it on the head a little bit.
Trying to absorb everything there is to know about ice hockey within the shortest amount of time possible really does strange things to a person. You come up against questions such as what do defensemen even do aside from skate backwards and do tummy time to protect their goalie? (Broadcasts aren’t the most informative) What the hell makes defensemen effective? What do the casters mean when they say “gap”? What are defensive details?
I love watching games back, I love trying to understand the game. I love hockey <3 But sometimes it’s nice to have help, and sometimes my favourite writers/podcasters collaborate!!
Here is part 1/3 of a podcast mini-series about defending, putting it here so I can have a copy of it in case it ever gets taken down + wanted to share with everyone some of my findings! (All episodes are available if anyone just wants to listen to them!) Transcript + edits done by me, all mistakes are mine.
Published 6th November 2024, Hockey IQ Podcast: Modern Defensemen (with Will Scouch) Ep #1 - by Hockey's Arsenal, hosted by Greg Revak (apple / spotify / youtube / bonus substack link)
part 2
[START Transcript]
Greg Revak: On the Hockey IQ Podcast today, we open up a new segment: we’re bringing back our favourite Will Scouch. If you’re on the Hockey IQ Newsletter you know his work by now.
Will, good morning. Earlier than most of us probably normally get up, but it’s a good day.
Will Scouch: Yeah, Greg, thanks for having me, it’s a lot of fun. Me and Greg go way back. We’re boys from years ago and I’m excited to hop on the show. I’m a keen listener, keen reader.
[They exchange pleasantries]
GR: Beautiful. Well, today we’re gonna talk about three concepts. We’re gonna break it into three spots though, so everyone’s gotta come back next week and the week after that.
We’re gonna talk about defensemen, because everyone knows they’re important but how do we actually play the position well?
WS: Yeah, I mean, it’s a position that’s still, to me, being explored; both by, I’d say youth and junior coaches and pro coaches alike. There’s a lot of different ways that you can do it.
I mean, I watch a lot of hockey from around the world, all kinds of different levels. I’ve watched guys develop from 15 to 24 at this point, and just seeing how their games evolve and everything, and how effective various versions of this position is. And I think it’s a very interesting area that’s still being explored in a lot of really interesting ways, for sure.
GR: Yeah, I think back to David Savard; he comes out of the [QMJHL] as this high-flying offensive defenseman, and if we just forgot about the rest of his career and you just saw him today as this great shutdown, defense-first player, you’d be absolutely shocked.
I mean, you think about Rasmus Dahlin — kid didn’t even play full time defenseman until his actual draft year, he was still playing forward a ton. There’s so much to be explored here.
I feel like [to get a lot of] — for you NHL fans — to get a lot of value in the later rounds out of your defensemen, take those offensive players first, and we can find a lot of hidden gems later.
WS: Well, yeah. I mean, actually, I’ve said this a few times but your listeners probably don’t know, but I did a presentation during the pandemic at the Ottawa Hockey Analytics Conference about this topic exactly; how, when you look at the numbers and the defensive value of players in the NHL, I found that there were just as many in the top 50 defensive value of players in the NHL, there were just as many undrafted players as there were second round picks, second and third round picks combined.
So the draft isn’t really a great historical gauge on defensive ability. Offense is a different story from defensive players, which we could probably get into a little bit.
But I find, personally, that evaluating defensemen and projecting defense to the NHL is still really spotty and questionable. And I don’t know, in my line of work, watching a lot of defensemen, a lot of the ones who I think are some of the better defenders kind of go a little unheralded, because a lot of the time you don’t need to be particularly noticeable to be a good defenseman, but scouts are always looking for the noticeable guys.
So it’s a very interesting world and it’s a very interesting thing to pick through, but there’s definitely a lot of case studies you could dig into, and a lot of players you could look at as cases of, “Oh yeah, nobody was really paying a whole lot of attention to them!” or maybe people were thinking about them the wrong way. But if you think about things a little bit outside the box, you might be able to see something really interesting there.
GR: Yeah, so let's dive into why that may be. Classic example would be Lane Hutson, so maybe we'll pick on him a little bit, but I definitely want to talk about Rasmus Ristolainen, because he is an interesting case study that we wrote about on the newsletter.
So where I want to start with this is just modern day defending. How are defensemen defending today versus old times? A lot of times it was the big hit, separate the head from body. The puck’s somewhere, but let's separate the head from the body, and we’ll worry about the puck later — that is going bye-bye.
Every coach I talk to now, they prefer having the puck rather than having a head on a stake. So for me, it comes back to this old saying of, “position before possession.” We're gaining body positioning, we're not so much separating head from body, but puck from player.
All right, so we've got position before possession. It's super valuable in gaining the space that you need to have first whack in a puck or put the puck where you want it, or just push it to a teammate. Just having the idea of owning space and there's no better league at this and no league that values it more than the NHL. If you don't do this well in the NHL, sooner or later, you're going to find yourself out of a job making a heck of a lot less money in a league that probably no one really cares that much about. You want to be in the show, the big lights: you have to value this more than anything.
And this is actually the one thing that I noticed about Hunter McDonald. He's in the Flyers’ system now — he was an overager, but I was like, “This guy is unbelievable!” He’s a huge frame, you can’t miss him out there. He would just get the positioning before possession, and I was like, “Okay, that’s interesting, let me watch him further.”
And I feel like he’s going to be one of those bottom of the lineup guys who, unlikely, made it out of being an overager in the [United States Hockey League], going to college for a few years, but has those little details of a defenseman that you see in modern day play, which is positioning overall, which is an NHL trait to the nth degree.
WS: No, I know. I think I would definitely agree. Those are the players that are always really, really fascinating to me because you look at a guy like Hunter McDonald and the production just isn't amazing. But it doesn't — to me, when you look at defensemen, it almost doesn't really matter. That's kind of a very secondary-slash-bonus style of thing that comes with a player.
I see a lot of defenders every year and it seems like a thing where a lot of them, maybe at the lower levels, there is a little bit more of that “separate the head from the body”-type of player. And I think there are NHL scouts who still gravitate towards those guys but, at the end of the day when it all comes out in the wash, it's a lot of the time the guys that are kind of, I hate to say ”boring”, but just very effective, and just they're always in a good position.
The guy I always reference as a young defenseman who, I think, is just a really, really high-end defensive guy is Kaiden Guhle in Montreal. We're going to talk a little bit about Lane Hutson in a second, but Kaiden Guhle is a guy who, when he was in the junior level, just played such a great, balanced style of defense.
He was a good skater, but he had really good length. He was a guy who didn't just lay the body every single time, but he certainly could if he needed to. It was about his lateral mobility, it was about tracking rushes, keeping inside the dot lines, and preventing chances from inside and leading with his stick, but then finishing with the body if he had the opportunity or the need to do so. And he seemed to have a really good read of just how to do his job really, really well.
And so that's been a lesson for me for sure. He was a really interesting case study a few years ago, and he's become a pretty solid NHL defenseman. I mean, on a team this year that’s kind of struggling defensively I think he’s been one of the brighter spots on that defense group there, [he’s] doing a pretty good job at least suppressing chances against.
GR: I don’t watch as much as you do, prospects, but Guhle I did catch. For me, the play style wasn’t very good. He had elements of it, you could see the flashes, but he was just really brash. His decision making and his reads were quite poor. But the tools were there, and it was like, “Can he adjust?” Which I think he’s done a phenomenal job [of], and I think Montreal is probably the perfect place for him to develop a lot of that.
So I think you're spot on like, “Okay, how does he actually apply?“ Having assets is one thing, having the tools is one thing, but how do we properly apply those assets, those tools that you have in a good way? So I think another piece, for me, is if you do have the speed, is just making sure that you're controlling speed and then you're also keeping small gaps.
And just knowing with my high school team that no one knows what a gap is, let's define that real quick, which is: the difference in space between the forwards and the defensemen. So the space in between, “How much space are you [allowing]?” in hockey term slang. It's underneath you versus on the other side, which is above you or behind you. So, “How much space, what's that gap between D and O?”
(Editor’s note: He says O instead of F here, I assume because the person attacking isn’t always a forward. As in, “How much space between the defenseman and offenceman?”)
So you got the speed, shrink that gap as much as possible. Don't give them the space to operate or work in, or, I even call it the space to think, which [it often becomes] for forwards, especially unsophisticated ones.
WS: Yeah, I mean, that's really the bread and butter of a lot of the position. It's so much of this, like you said, gap control. I actually just did a bit of video work for a really high end player, [an] NHL draft pick playing in Sweden this year, who is producing really well.
But in terms of the defending side of the game, he's not the most incredible skater you've ever seen, he's not the biggest guy in the world. And a big thing that I noticed, that even at the professional level that was kind of a bit of a work in progress, was that gap management. Especially because the footwork wasn't amazing, [he was] keeping his feet a little too stationary, gliding backwards and sort of allowing that gap.
And when you watch the NHL that's the point of the whole exercise, watching the NHL and how they play. Forwards are fast and they're smart, largely. The guys who can score are the guys who know how to get through soft defensive pressure, the guys who know how to find lanes and cross up defensemen, and if you don't have the footwork or the mobility or the reach or all of it — all of the above — to track all that and manage it, then it's going to be a lot tougher to do your job.
But the interesting thing, though, is that there's a lot of different ways that you can get defensive jobs done. That's always been very interesting to me; seeing how different players approach the position in different ways and seeing the efficacy of that come out in the wash, and how their offense balances with their defensive ability. It's a very interesting world to dig into, for sure.
GR: Yeah, I think you've got a rabbit hole there. You just kind of opened up around defensive skating. What do clean feet look like? What does defensive posture look like, that actually allows you to have that kind of mobility?
So we'll leave that for another day. If anyone wants to go check it out on the Hockey IQ Newsletter, they can do so. Just look up defenseman skating development. We've got two good pieces there talking about building and maintaining defensive posture and keeping clean feet, which — actually massive base for anyone.
It allows you to have the proper gap that allows you to kill plays early, and ultimately, it's a lot about just controlling speed. You don't want McDavid building up to full speed. You don't want MacKinnon building up to full speed. You don't want anyone coming up to you at full speed. It's very hard to maintain that kind of speed going backwards [that we] even generate in the first place.
How do you kill it early? How do you get a hand on someone? Or, my favorite example is just proper pivoting. A guy dumps a puck on you, how are you going back? What does that pivot look like?
I'll let you open that up because at the NHL it's almost too good, where you can't see what a bad example looks like, but you can see it's everywhere.
WS: Yeah, I mean, it's a make or break skill in the NHL. It's where a lot of defensemen die. I mean, it's a cliche at this point to talk about pucks in deep, to talk about [getting] pucks deep in the offensive zone, get below the goal line, dump and chase. People make fun of dump-and-chase kind of stuff. But if your team is built to do it, you can do it.
You can take advantage of defensemen in the NHL who just don't have the speed or the agility or the skating ability that some of your forwards might have. It is a lot easier to skate forwards than it is to skate backwards. That's just, you know, anecdotal, but also pretty factual — you're naturally going forwards.
I think an interesting trend that you're seeing a little bit more of [is] what they would call ‘scooting’. You're the coach; I don't know if that's exactly what the terminology would be, but [it’s getting] your defensemen in the neutral zone, kind of pinching a little bit more and having them skate forwards, tracking play towards the boards.
So it's not necessarily that they're doing their backwards crossovers, it's not necessarily that they're entirely skating backwards, but you see guys who are really talented skaters or do have a lot of quickness driving play to the boards in a more aggressive way than having the play in front of them. It's about them sort of tracking that play laterally, which is an interesting thing I think you're seeing more of now.
I think there are definitely coaches and systems that love to play their defensemen more that way, and the weak side defense can sort of fill between the dot lines for them and sort of leave the weaker side of the ice a little bit more open. That's kind of what I mean. There's a lot of different ways to achieve these kinds of goals, and I think you're seeing a lot of different things popping up to adapt to this.
In situations where you have a dump and chase or something like that, or just getting pucks in deep or whatever you say, when you have a defenseman who has trouble with their footwork and turning around… Trust me, I'm a defenseman, when I play hockey, I strap on the skates — I play defense myself and that's where I fall apart, when I do fall apart. Which is often. But definitely, when play turns around and I’ve got to change directions or change my area of flow, it can be tricky. And in the NHL, I can only imagine how tricky it can be there.
GR: Yeah. I mean, a good pivot you're looking at three steps total, like boom-boom-bam and you're there. You watch an amateur game and it could be like five, six, seven, eight chops before [they] finally get going and [it’s] looking like a proper forward stride again. [Or just] getting into a good defensive posture and positioning. It's total scramble mode.
A big one for me, too, is just the direction that you pivot. Do you wait for that offensive player to commit to their lane? It's just a great defensive habit in general, letting the offenceman make the first move. If you're making the first move, you're the one showing your cards. It's kind of like showing your cards first in Poker.
Let them make the decision and then you can pivot into them. Now you can get that position before possession, or at least get a chip on them, slow them down. You can either make it easier for yourself or your partner. So one, there's the clean footwork on the pivot, and two is making sure that we're controlling the speed and we're pivoting properly in the direction that we want to pivot.
There's a ton of times where I see, especially the lower levels, players coming up, they're in a bad spot, they're skating forward, defenseman skating backwards and they just chip it off the boards. And the defenseman is like a dog just following the puck and it ends up in the middle of the ice where the forward actually went. Again, the NHL is the best at this so it's really hard to see bad examples of pivoting into and controlling the space of the opponent.
WS: Yeah. I do a lot of work outside the NHL, and the biggest thing I notice is not necessarily the number of chops it takes, but the amount of time. You can see guys taking two seconds, maybe more, to get themselves turned around, tracking pucks below the goal line.
To me hockey is a game of milliseconds a lot of the time, right? I was working with someone years ago who really shared the idea with me that, in the NHL, generally goals are not scored if you have the puck on your stick for more than either half a second or a second.
I can't remember off the top of my head, but it's so fast in terms of; when you score goals in the NHL, it's when you touch the puck for a very short amount of time in the offensive zone and get a puck on net. And so, if you have guys who take too long — and “too long” might not be very long… If the difference is relatively short at the time you're making those pivots or those changes, but the [opponent has] got a lot more speed than you and you're [taking more] time to then start generating that speed to match the opponent, you're in trouble.
And in my opinion, I think that you want your defensemen to be more assertive. I always fall back on the strategy of; make them make a decision, make them commit. That might imply that you do the committing first, but that's where the importance of footwork and tactics come into question.
You have to have strong support, whether it's from backchecking forwards or your partner. You want to be able to adapt to quick players who might fake one way, go another, and be able to use your stick or use your feet or both to be a factor regardless of what happens.
It's very interesting to watch defensemen play. I find it really, really interesting to see the different approaches of different players and especially how they evolve and get into the NHL.
But yeah, I mean, [it’s so pivotal], the skating ability; defensemen who can skate, it unlocks so many doors for their career. If you're an elite level skating defenseman, it just unlocks so many doors that interest me. If you're not, and if that's not a strength of your game, then it can be a big struggle, especially against faster opponents. Even if you're big and physical and pretty good throwing the body or whatever, there's a lot more of the game in the NHL these days. Very, very interesting stuff.
GR: I think that's actually the perfect segue into someone who, early in his career, threw the body too much and sold out too much on plays that he probably shouldn't: Rasmus Ristolainen.
Great case study, great case study from when [John Tortorella] started working with him to where he is now. Will, I'll send in the link here from the Hockey IQ newsletter so we can track a little bit better with each other.
I found him to be a fascinating player. High draft pick, 8th overall in 2013. Really pretty, smooth skating, big body — has all of the tools that you would traditionally say, “Yep, that checks [out].” And then you looked at his stat profile and it was just abysmal. His micro stats were terrible. I think the only thing he was good at was D-Zone Retrievals, which, being able to take contact, it was kind of an easy thing for him.
WS: Yeah. I remember watching Ristolainen when he was in junior hockey, because that was the earliest years of me being kind of curious about that side of the game, and I did not really recall that being a premier area of his game.
I remember him being big, but pretty mobile, and has some skill to play around with. He did have a bit of a physical edge to him, but it feels like it was that tail end of an era in the NHL where those big, mean, physical guys were kind of in vogue, and people were kind of curious and needing guys like that. And I guess that's what Buffalo drafted him to be.
I remember being very surprised that he was in the NHL the year he was drafted. It just did not look like it was really working out there. And Buffalo just seems to have been not a great fit for him, they kind of turned him into something that he wasn't, but I do think that he's turned into some sort of serviceable defenseman.
But he, to me, is a great example of one that I always look back on and go, “Man, what if?” Like, what if things went a little bit differently for him? Because there was good stuff there, it's just I feel like the development was focused in the wrong areas.
To me, 65% of the work [is] scouting, and developing — the easy part is drafting good players, the hard part is developing them and bringing them along into being good NHL players.
So to me, if you can find the most amount of things that get in the way of that process being easy, then you're doing a really good job. And with Ristolainen, I feel like in his case they inserted more things to make that journey more difficult and sort of turned him into something that he wasn't, which is always a scary thing for me to think about doing to a player.
But it's not over for him, obviously. He figured it out. Obviously, Tortorella found something for him to do, and he has shown a little bit better. But yeah, he's always been a what-if guy for me.
GR: I always liked how Tortorella, after the 2022-2023 season, was doing his media stuff and he was like “Yeah, he's our most improved player.” You're a guy who's getting paid big bucks — I think he was making five million plus that year, still is, probably — and even him, he was like, “I was just bad the first half. And then around Christmas break, I started getting going. The second half was much better.”
Basically, the first half, they were just trying to rebuild his defensive game, and this is true for anything. Zach Benson's another good example of this. If you can't play defense in the NHL, you're going to be out quick. Benson can play defense despite being — I think they list them at five foot 10, but there's no way.
WS: Yeah, no, no. I know. He's a little guy, but he's another great example of a player where I, in my work, I do not care how big you are. I just care about how you play. Even in the NHL. And I feel like Benson's a really, really good example of that; a guy who, just forechecking alone is a really… The easiest way to defend is if he can cause turnovers in the opposing team's offensive zone, a guy like Zach Benson does that extremely well.
And if he needs to track guys through the neutral zone and backcheck, he'll do it, and he does it really well, and he does it at a speed that I found to be projectable to the NHL. And again, that's another one where I was a little surprised to see him in the NHL so fast, but he didn't really look out of place there.
He's had a bit of a slow start this season, but just a really, really talented player, and one where you kind of do look at and go, “Yeah, these smaller guys can definitely defend.” They just — the expectations are a little bit higher, and maybe for good reason, but he checks all the boxes for sure.
GR: Yeah. So for Rasmus (Ristolainen), there's two big things that, when I dug into this, that Torts was working at. At this point, I was so intrigued [that] I was tracking every single time Torts spoke and Rasmus spoke to the media. So I was like, “I wonder what they're actually doing?” Which, Torts can be tight-lipped, but he gives it away if you follow long enough.
The big one was just inside, like too much, he was finding himself, Rasmus was finding himself on the outside. So whether that be outside the dots, outside on bad ice, for whatever reason, or just finding yourself outside, like losing defensive side positioning to the offensive player.
If you finish contact, but now you're on the wall and your player's got to step to the net, that's trouble. There's a great, great clip the other night featuring, I think it was (Aliaksei) Protas [who] ended up scoring the goal and K’Andre Miller of the New York Islanders. So Caps — Rangers, not Islanders — Rangers… Where [Miller] went in soft, didn't really take positioning, got beat back to net, and Protas just put out a stick and just tapped it in, Igor Shesterkin never had a chance.
A similar idea of; okay, good, maybe you got some contact, you tried to make the stop, but you still need to maintain defensive side positioning. You still need to finish on the inside. So if you're doing contact, you can't overreach.
You just can't do that. You have to stay in good positioning.
And the second piece was just, finishing with contact to get stops, like stopping movement. Offensive play is a lot about movement, and defensive play is about stopping movement, AKA getting stops. So he would maybe make a play, or get a poke check, but the puck was still moving and could be easily on the other team's stick.
So how do you make sure you're always staying in good positioning? Staying on the inside, as Torts put it. Or the other piece, which is getting stops, or finishing with contact — but smartly, not chasing the contact for contact’s sake? Being tactful in your play.
I feel like Risto really just learned how to play defense smartly. He was actually thinking and being intentional about what he was doing, rather than like, “I see a puck and a player, I'm going to go end that!” And then, boom, in the big scheme of things, it’s a net negative. Even though at the moment, it may have, especially to him — otherwise he wouldn't make the play — seemed like a positive, really it was a negative for the team.
WS: Well, that's the interesting thing too, going back to talking about junior players and the context in the draft and how defensive players might go a little bit underreported or undervalued in a sense.
I see this all the time, especially with North American defensemen, especially with Canadian ones, but there are definitely players who everybody talks about how good they are defensively, everybody talks about how solid they are. They're big, they're physical, they're mean, blah, blah, blah. But then when you watch things in detail, it's this sort of Ristolainen-style thing. You're talking about K’Andre Miller where it's like, they're along the boards, they're doing the thing along the boards, but they're losing.
They're allowing guys to get low on them, get through them, and even in the junior level, right? What good is it if you're trying to pin a guy against the boards and they give you a little shove, crouch down a little bit, chip the puck three feet out from you, you don't adapt to that, they get three feet of space on you, throw it out in front of the net, and boom, you got yourself a scoring chance, right? I see that all the time.
It's the focus on the body and not focus on the turnover, turning that possession back over, that really seems to be a tough lesson for a lot of defensemen to get over. I find that a lot of defensemen from the age of 18 to 23, in the grand scheme of things, their style of play doesn't drastically shift all that often.
And so, when I see things like that happening, I'm going, okay, I gotta either hope that this guy puts in the time in the gym and becomes, just, a strength nut, and pins that guy to the boards so they can't do anything, or they figure out a way to get into those situations, take a step back, chip at the puck. Really battle for the puck rather than focus on the guy.
Because I've seen it so many times with guys who are bigger and more physical, they apply it in a way where I feel like coaches will go, “Wow, look at you go, you're playing hard, you're playing the thing!” But then they escape, this opponent might escape, and create a little bit of space for themselves. And again, this is a game of inches, it's a game of a couple of feet, and every inch matters.
So in some cases, yeah, you get those situations where guys like Ristolainen, yeah, you're doing the thing, people clip the hits, people clip the physical play, but then five seconds later, someone's got some space on you and they generate a scoring chance. And so what do you really value, right? Personally, fewer scoring chances would be ideal.
GR: I love it. Last piece to wrap this up, because I think it'll go well into our next piece, which is point play. Shorting the zone.
I was able to find some phenomenal clips and do some photos of this for the newsletter. But the concept of; if you're watching a game in the NHL, if you can see all five of the people trying to break the puck out, low in the zone… A lot of it, you think about the NHL today, is like a swarm. We're going to do close support. I'm going to try to crowd the puck out.
A good way to respond to that is to short the zone, which basically means your defensemen, instead of hanging out at the blue line, are going to go into the offensive zone. And they're going to start with small gaps, they're going to be [at the] top of the circles, if not a little bit lower.
Tortorella is another big fan of this, so you can see it with the Flyers a lot, too. I would say [Sheldon] Keefe is another example of a coach who does this a ton. So you saw a lot in Toronto, now you'll see a lot more in New Jersey, which is the perfect d-core to make all of this work. So I think Devils are going to be good for — that's going to be a great fit.
But just the idea of crowding in the space, setting small gaps, so when you do start defending, you can either cut a play off early — it's an easy pinch there if you don't have to go very far — you can cut it off. Or, 2; create a turnover in a much better spot than what is in your own zone. Why not make it in the o-zone? So from a positioning standpoint, phenomenal place to start, good way to kill plays early.
Before they can get going, before the team can build speed, and just being able to put yourself in a good spot to take advantage both from a defensive standpoint, but offensive standpoint.
WS: Yeah, I love when I see this being deployed. I think, again, I'm a geek, like I'm a math guy, and even just thinking about the numbers here, it makes such a difference if you think about it.
The offensive zone from blue line to goal line is 64 feet. So you're looking at the difference between a guy standing at the blue line being maybe 75 feet from the net or at the top of the face-off circle where you might be 20 feet closer, maybe 20, 25 feet closer. So you're cutting down the time at which you give the defense to adapt, the goaltender to adapt. You're cutting that time down by a third-ish, a quarter to a third. I'm ballparking here, but that automatically is just based on where you are on the ice.
If you can compress the offensive zone on your opponent, you're laughing. The second thing I wanted to mention here is this is, again, why skating ability and quickness and speed are so important to me. Because it is objectively a better position to be in when you're in that position — closer to the top of the face-off circles for your defensemen.
But if you do have a situation where the opponent has possession of the puck you have to get set up, you have to cover that gap, you have to cover for yourself, or you have to have some sort of system in place where a winger can cover for you if you're caught in the offensive zone. Ideally, you have your defensemen who can wheel up, get some speed going, get positioned well to counter that attack, and have a system that can swarm whoever has that puck in the offensive zone.
I think it's a really interesting trend for sure. It's a simple little thing, it's a concept that you see definitely a lot more now than you used to, but I'm all about it. It just makes sense mathematically, and it plays into exactly the styles of player that I always look for: guys who do pinch a little bit more aggressively, but have the mobility and the skating ability to cover for themselves.
I would rather have a player who tries something creative, or tries some sort of play that could lead to a high scoring chance, but may relinquish some space on the ice, but has the ability to cover for themselves.
And I can at least as a coach, rely on them — not that I'm a coach — but rely on them to cover for themselves. To go, okay, I can rely on them to try these things, because I know that if it doesn't maybe go their way, which happens in hockey all the time, I'm not going to be upset at this player, but I know that I want them to backcheck, cover for it, because I know they're capable of it.
I think that that's sort of the trade off that you have to live with, but I'm totally cool with it.
GR: All right, so we're going to call this end of the day on some modern day defending, and we'll pick up on point play in episode two.
on Hampton Slukynsky, who recently backstopped the Western Michigan Broncos to a Frozen Four title.
Yeah, it’s crazy when you look at his stats, right, because you mentioned him just being a winner, and whether it’s highschool, whether it’s college, whether it’s whatever program, wherever he is he puts up incredible numbers.
And the beginning of his story is really about being self-taught. So this is a kid who wasn’t getting a lot of coaching — small town, like you said — small area, not a lot of coaching available, but he wants it. He wants it so badly that he was willing to invest in himself as a teenager, to go out and figure this thing out, so he’s watching YouTube videos — and the most impressive thing to me, he goes out and buys a pitching machine.
He’s listening to a podcast and some goalie talked about buying a pitching machine, and what Hampton — Hammer, as they call him, everybody calls him Hammer, his brother nicknamed him that when he was a kid, so — what Hammer ended up finding out once he bought this for himself for 50 bucks was that the way the little yellow ball comes out, it has a little bit of a curve to it.
And so it was helping him, from sort of figuring out where it’s going to go, and to this day he still uses that pitching machine. He uses it every day, he practices with it all the time.
hello link my poached apple <33 i LOVE how much Willy gushes about him in this article oh my god it's so sweet!!
ARLINGTON, V.A. — Tom Wilson can't imagine taking the ice without Pierre-Luc Dubois now. But before Dubois' arrival in the District, Wilson dreaded being on the same sheet as him, because once he lined up agianst him, he knew he was in for a long night.
"He definitely doesn't get enough credit for his defensive game," Wilson added. "I think he's probably one of the best two-way centers in the NHL right now."
"I noticed a lot playing with him and watching his game a lot, he's so strong on pucks, he's really hard to play against. He was kind of a pain in my ass back in the day. So now I know how it feels for the top team's players who have to go up against him every night," Wilson said. "He skates well, he's extremely strong on pucks. When he has it it's really hard to get it back from him."
this coupled with Carbery's recent media avail, which was referenced in the article briefly, where he talks about Dubois, this was such a lovely palate cleanser for the CURSED trade deadline alksjdaklsjdl thank you for sending the article i was saving it <33
did a little transcript:
[3:10 - 5:57 START TRANSCRIPT]
Media: I'm curious with PLD - I was just talking to him a little bit - obviously we've seen the offensive production this year, but it seems like he's really honed in defensively as well.
Carbery: Yeah.
Media: I'm curious if he's exceeded your expectations coming in, on the defensive side.
Carbery: Big time, big time. And I truly believe this, having been around him now for almost a full season, the way that he's playing... Offensively, really really solid. He's taking steps for us, feel like he's even gotten better as the year's gone along.
But with the match-ups and the way he's played a 200-foot game on the other side of the puck, and I'm constantly matching him against the best, the top offensive players on the opposing team... Like, this is someone, he's got a lot of similarities, when I look at him, like a Barkov.
And I think, by his time... Over the next few years, he'll be in that Selke conversation. I've zero doubt about it, of how he plays and how he takes pride in defending the Panarins of the world, the J.T. Millers of the world, and does a really good job and excels in that, so.
He's been such a key player for us all year long, and he, feel like he just has continued to be, (a) really consistent, and (b) gotten better and more comfortable as the year's gone on.
Media: Does he always talk to every coach on the ice, too? It seemed like he was [Carbery starts laughing over the question] talking to every guy on the ice this morning, having one-on one conversations with all of them.
Carbery: Yeah. He, um... Extremely bright, comes from a coach's family, his dad's a coach in the American Hockey League, and so you... When you, when you have conversations with PLD about the game, he is so intuitive and knows what's going on and loves to talk about x's and o's and different strategy, and...
He's one of those guys - like some guys you talk to, they can't really remember what went on in the game, they're like 'Uh, yeah, I think... what, what period was that?' Like he remembers everything that happens, so you reference one play from the previous game, he'll know exactly the time of it, what happened, who the opposing player was.
He's just one of those just that really, really is a deep thinker of the game and so he has a lot of those x's and o's hockey talks with a lot of the coaches.
Media 2: What made this the right environment for him?
Carbery: [takes a deep breath before answering] Ah. That's a hard question, I mean. [stutters some] I don't know. I honestly, I don't know the answer to that. I can just speak for him coming here, it just felt right, when he walked in the door and he got to know our guys, and you could feel early on in camp I just saw a player that felt completely comfortable in our locker room.
And there's a lot of credit that goes around to our leadership group, our players, the locker room, coaching staff, of just making him feel like he can be himself and play his game. And it's been really, really seamless, there hasn't been a lot of bumpy stretches for his game.
It's just, right when he got here he felt comfortable, got to his game, understood the expectations, and we let him, y'know, be himself and play his game, and he's excelled.
[END TRANSCRIPT]
not to make this a continued postmortem on last season but I was expecting him to get a bump from being out of LA where they were deploying him so poorly, but the turnaround has surprised even me!! Trust,,I watched some pretty brutal matches </3
It's really awesome to hear someone praising his game and pulling back the curtain a little on how he thinks about hockey a bit differently - if all of this is true, I am NOT surprised he didn't gel with Todd "just play fucking hockey" McLellan lmaooo
Not that I was in the room, but like. imagine you have a player who can recount exact sequences during a shift, a player that is SO details oriented and SO hungry to break down the game that he's apparently talking to every coach on the ice after practice, to the point media are asking "what the hell is up with that", and you somehow, somehow fail to recognise it and address it. He NEEDED help, and by 'help' i mean like half a dozen coaches to point his hockey autism at (<- opinion. complete fabrication of my mind. however!!!)
I'm a little obsessed with what all went wrong in LA, tbh, because that team is a systems-oriented team and has been for a long time now, and sounds like it could've been the perfect fit on paper given their self described "tight checking" and focus defensive responsibility... like what the hell happened there?? aside from the whole, he's a left shot and they needed a right shot, and they had too many centres which pushed him down the depth chart so they made the stupid move to put him on the wing, and they never gave him a role or explained to him what they wanted from him??? <- y'know what I probably just diagnosed everything that went wrong just now LOL
I leave us with this from your linked article, from the Known Selfish Locker Room Cancer:
As for Dubois, he laughed when asked if he didn't get enough credit for his defensive play, and instead, prioritized the team over individual accolades.
"There's a lot of hockey games that are played and nobody can ever watch every game, sometimes people watch highlights or boxscores and that's fine," Dubois said, adding, "To me, it doesn't really matter. I have one goal and it's to win a Stanley Cup. Everything after that doesn't really matter to me."
I mean, first time getting my name called in any draft, so it was a real special one for me. Honestly, I thought I was gonna cry a little bit, but I'm just super stoked.
[Max Miller on Luca Cagnoni’s progress] The biggest thing - and he talked about it when he was introduced - is he worked on his defensive game. Lucas Sbisa was the coach that was tasked with overseeing his development and talking with him and through him, the biggest thing that I heard from Luca's camp was that [Sbisa] was not afraid to be honest with him and tell him, maybe not necessarily like 'You messed up here,' but in a way where it was good coaching. Where it was firm, but it applauded success and the biggest thing you saw from him was that when the defensive game really started to excel, that's where the offensive numbers came through even when he wasn't focusing directly on offense.
29/06/2023 - The San Jose Sharks draft Luca Cagnoni 123rd overall || 26/03/2024 Sharks Prospects Rack Up Awards For Super Seasons || 4/07/2024 - Cagnoni attends his second Sharks development camp
Back then a lot of it was having the bigger-sized defensemen and they didn’t like the way that I played so offensive. But I feel like that has just been a staple of my game. People were always doubting me because of my size and the way I play, but I mean that’s just been a huge part of my life, always playing with a chip on my shoulder every game and just showing every team wrong that ‘You passed up on something.’
