2024 NHL Draft: Top European Pro Defensemen (Silayev, Solberg, Jiricek, Badinka)
Last time out, I covered the top North American defensemen and this time I’ll take a look at the underlying data for defensemen who played their draft year in pro leagues across Europe. This data was manually tracked by Lassi Alanen.
This cohort is wildly different from the CHL group. Adam Jiricek was a preliminary favorite for best defenseman in the class before poor pro showings and a torn ACL dropped his draft stock. Anton Silayev rocketed up draft boards with unprecedented KHL production before cooling off. Stian Solberg was a relative unknown plying his trade in Norway until excellent international showings boosted his stock. Dominik Badinka is a perhaps underrated player who finished the season with 33 games in the top league outside of the NHL after performing well in the Swedish J20.
These two lefty defensemen are both primarily viewed as defensive defensemen with potentially undefined offensive potential. For Anton Silayev, his shooting and pinching look like his primary contributions to offensive zone play. He activates through the middle of the ice at times but it’s hard to say there’s much strength in terms of offensive generation.
If there’s any offensive capability to hang the potential for future growth on, it’s that he finds a way to keep the puck in zone and get off high danger shots.
Silayev demonstrates at least some desire to move off of the blueline and perhaps these patterns can be leveraged for later offensive potential. Tall players can have later developing puck skills, so being in the right positions can have him primed if these skills mature later.
Solberg is more offensively balanced but there’s still really not much to go off of, at least in this tracking data. Largely, that’s to be expected. Solberg’s most impressive performances came from the World Championships which isn’t tracked.
He shoots from the point a lot, passes to high danger areas occasionally and seems to be pretty good at finding those passes. These sequences mostly come from in-zone situations so perhaps he has the simple and contained game required from NHL middle-pair defensemen.
As far as transition goes, the two players both struggle to have significant impact. Silayev’s Entry and Exit % are pretty good but his success rate and volumes are not up to par.
For Solberg, his ability to exit the zone looks like an anchor. He’s significantly more involved at entering the zone which could suggest that activation is a part of his game. Still, both of these players leave plenty to be desired in transition.
Defensively, both look fine at the pro level but without standout attributes. It’s possible, and likely probable, that Silayev’s uniqueness is suppressed by the difficulty of his league. Not many defensemen play in the KHL at this age and his length, mobility and defensive reads are actually quite good.
For Solberg, his most notable defensive attribute is weakside breakups. He’s at the very least somewhat engaged with his stick in the defensive zone and is adept at getting it on high-danger crosslane passes.
As puck movers, neither are particularly interesting. Where Silayev has some high potential retrieval success, Solberg has more consistent results. Silayev dramatically struggles to create advantages and get off the wall which suggests he will need to develop this area of his game in order to handle NHL forechecks as well as create transition after his defensive stops.
Solberg has some ability. He’s an average puck retriever and slightly above average at getting pucks to the inside. Still, his capacity to improve the condition of the puck for his team isn’t stellar.
Adam Jiricek struggled to show some of his quality in his early minutes in the Czech Extraliga but Dominik Badinka, also a Czech right-handed defenseman but playing in Sweden, showed well in junior and earned his way into the SHL senior lineup.
Offensively, Jiricek settled mostly for point shooting and had quite a lot of trouble generating any kind of playmaking. On the flip side, Badinka was a conservative shooter but mostly sought to distribute from the blueline.
Both struggled to contribute to rush offense but were average in in-zone sequences. Both were also pretty good at moving off of the blueline to maintain possession.
In transition, Jiricek generated a volume of exits but struggled in nearly every other category. Badinka, on the other hand, was average at all aspects of zone entries but quite good at exiting the zone with control in his otherwise average volumes.
In terms of the finer points of transition, both struggled to do any of the most advanced techniques or utilize the center lane in transition.
Defensively, Adam Jiricek generates significantly more stops and looks like a burgeoning neutral zone defender. While his work in his own zone leaves something to be desired, he’s got a solid foundation to build on.
Badinka, on the other hand, struggles to generate stops and doesn’t look like a good neutral zone defender. He gets sticks on weak-side passes but otherwise it looks like there’s a lot of room to improve.
In terms of moving the puck, Badinka looks quite exceptional whereas Jiricek struggles to recover possession or give his team advantages.
For Badinka, his ability to recover possession on retrievals, especially at the SHL level, looks quite exceptional. Perhaps there are some role or teammate insulation effects but for now he looks at least solid in a key area for NHL defensemen.
Badinka still struggles to get the puck off the wall and to the inside and doesn’t create spatial advantages for his team but he was also playing in an extremely high level league.
Grouped Statistics
It’s important to remember that all of these players play in different leagues and the style of play can potentially vary drastically.
Before I get into the tracked stat scatterplots, we can compare the relative NHLe if you’d like to compare point totals for potential projections. The relative NHLe scores can give us an idea of the relative strength of the leagues compared to the NHL.
According to Thibaud Chatel’s analytics work, the KHL points still translate the most directly to the NHL. As far as win shares, a measure of defensive contributions, the SHL may be the true second most difficult, or NHL-translatable, league to play in.
You may notice that Solberg’s Vålerenga is not shown on the chart. It grades out below but overall similar to Poland in terms of NHL translation.
Point Production:
Anton Silayev: 11 points in 63 games, 2 points in 5 KHL playoff games, 3 points in 10 MHL playoff games
Dominik Badinka: 4 points in 33 SHL games, 13 points in 17 J20 games
Adam Jiricek: 1 point in 19 Czech Extraliga games
Stian Solberg: 15 points in 42 Vålerenga games, 9 points in 17 playoff games and 3 points in 7 World Championship games
Combined Tracking Data
Now, I’ll put their raw tracking stats in the same scatterplots, not adjusted to league, to get an idea of how they relate to each other.
To give us a view of the total defensive performances, I’ll look at Lassi Alanen’s base defense scatter.
Here, Badinka’s J20 profile paints him as the best entry-defending and defensive player among the cohort. Comparable to, but with more defensive plays per corsi against, than Stian Solberg.
Badinka’s SHL profile paints him as similar, though a worse neutral zone defender, than Anton Silayev. Adam Jiricek is a great neutral zone defender but is still below average in terms of total defensive plays.
In terms of raw defensive plays and underlying contributing stats, Dominik Badinka’s J20 Nationell data lead the way. You may notice that there are quite a few J20 players that look really good but that should be an opportunity to demonstrate why quality of league has an effect on data.
Badinka’s defensive plays performance in the SHL leads the way among the pro cohort followed by Solberg’s Norway, Silayev’s KHL and Jiricek’s Czechia.
If Chatel’s win-shares are good reflectors of defensive difficulty of the respective leagues, then Badinka looks like by far the best defender of the bunch. That doesn’t necessarily qualify him as the best NHL projection considering Silayev’s unicorn size and skating combination but it shouldn’t count for nothing either.
Although Solberg doesn’t grade out particularly well considering his league’s relatively low difficulty, it should be mentioned that he is a particularly physical player who is certainly special in his capacity to use his body.
He performed quite well against NHL competition as the 1D on Norway’s World Championship roster.
Solberg = Red, Badinka=Yellow, Jiricek= Green, Silayev = Blue.
Looking deeper at neutral zone defending, we can see that Solberg is great in a balanced approach whereas Jiricek is more “killing” leaning than he is forcing dump-ins.
In both cases, Badinka’s neutral zone style forces dump-ins moreso than creates turnovers whereas Silayev is near average at both.
Stian Solberg = Red, Anton Silayev = Blue.
As far as Retrievals and Breakouts go, we can continue to see the difference between Badinka’s SHL and J20 performance. Determining which is closer to his NHL projection, and which was the result of roles, should be the highest priority for an NHL GM or Scouting Director. In the SHL, he was the best retriever of the bunch. In the J20, one of the best at accessing the inside on breakouts.
Jiricek’s retrieval struggles stand out but we still need to acknowledge potential role assignment or league differences there. Silayev is good at retrieving pucks but still better at getting pucks to the inside than Badinka was at the SHL level.
Across both metrics, Solberg was the best player. While his pure retrieval escape success rate wasn’t as good as Badinka’s SHL data, it was better as a total than anyone else’s performance. Though it isn’t a high quality league, it still graded out as better than Badinka’s J20 performance which is a worse league than Vålerenga.
Historical Comparisons
To get an idea of where these players rank in terms of previously high drafted European defensemen, I’ll bring some of their draft year playercards.
Simon Nemec and Rasmus Dahlin were not included. Dahlin was truly special as a defensema and Nemec did not have any tracked data from Lassi Alanen.
Not all of the above players are expected to be as high caliber as the extremely high picks featured but it should demonstrate the difference between top European and North American prospects in terms of track data domination.
Both David Reinbacher and Miro Heiskanen demonstrated high quality and well rounded tracking data.
Heiskanen, in particular, was particularly strong defensively and looks much stronger there and on retrievals than any total performance of the 2023-24 prospects. He was excellent in transition and created well off of the rush.
Reinbacher was a capable and well rounded puck mover who was excellent at creating advantages for his team and prioritized high danger passing. He, too, was no slouch in his own zone.
Mortiz Seider and David Jiricek were less well rounded but showed certain exceptional abilities that made them worthy of high draft picks.
Seider was dynamic off the rush and did so with a great volume of entries in combination with inside lane use and delay plays. Defensively, he was dynamic in the neutral zone. He struggled with retrievals which could leave hope for other developing prospects.
David Jiricek stands out for his ability to access the inside lanes on breakouts and in transition. This past season, he demonstrated both of these abilities with the Blue Jackets but especially with the Cleveland Monsters in his playoff run.
Though he was a great neutral zone defender he did so primarily through preventing entries and not necessarily through creating turnovers. Similarly, he did not create breakups in the defensive zone but was great at getting sticks on crosslane passes.
Jiricek, like Sieder, was horrific at efficiently turning dumped pucks into possession for his team. Though his tracked data was quite good in the NHL, he was still a very high-risk reward puck retriever.
Similarly, Seider was excellent at xG Buildup and Jiricek had incredible involvement in his team’s offense despite lower overall contributions, both signifiers that the players may have been deserving of higher production.
Dmitri Simishev and Alexander Nikishin are two of the other highest quality Russian defense prospects. Although Nikishin went in the third round, he was an immaculate defensive defender in nearly every facet.
Simashev was an above average neutral zone defender but made most of his difference on retrievals.
Both struggled to get to the inside on breakouts, suggesting a potential KHL systems explanation, but Nikishin still had tools to create advantages.
Silayev compares well with Simashev, his pinching and shooting give him an offensive(or offensive zone defending) advantage, but Nikishin looks like the clear best defensive defenseman of the bunch.
It’s difficult to find comparisons for Solberg’s Vålerenga, and Sweden’s 2nd tier HockeyAllsvenskan is still a better league, but perhaps these two recent draftees can give us a bit of context.
Simon Edvinsson looked like an elite offensive and transition defenseman but still struggled in terms of overall defensive presence and in puck retrievals. His ability to create advantages and offense for his team has been unmatched in defensemen drafted as of late.
Axel Sandin-Pellikka didn’t have much in the way of standout skills. He was great at exiting the zone with control, good at shooting and neutral zone defending but best at beating defenses by himself.
At the junior level, ASP looks more dominant. This may be our best barometer for Badinka’s excellent junior performance and, potentially, Solberg’s excellent, if disconnected, Norway pro experience.
Here, Sandin-Pellikka was highly involved in transition and in creating offense. He was able to make an excellent impact by passing for his teammates and completing highly dangerous transition plays.
Badinka, on the other hand, showed a lot more transition that was otherwise hidden at the SHL level. He still remained an excellent neutral zone defender but still wasn’t particularly good at breaking down players and creating turnovers in any zone.
His retrievals weren’t as good as his SHL performance but he was very good at using his body and passing to teammates in better space. He doesn’t have the total offensive impact of Sandin-Pellikka. Considering his well rounded defense, transition and blue-line playmaking he more than held his own.