How the Florida Panthers built a Defensive Juggernaut for Cheap
Using active and aggressive defensemen, who wield a variety of modern defensive concepts, who are insulated by talented possession-driven forwards
The Sources
Throughout this breakdown I’ll be frequently referencing a couple of sources. If you aren’t yet aware of them, here are some helpful links.
AllThreeZones.com - Hand tracked data from Corey Sznajder. His playercards FAQ and glossary will be helpful in understanding some of the metrics used later. All of the Scatterplots and team-based bar charts are from his website and data.
The PDOcast from Dimitri Filipovic, especially his breakdowns with Darryl Belfry which are all on Youtube. A major source of inspiration and overall remarkably accessible hockey analysis.
Belfry Offense, Darryl Belfry’s book published over the summer with supporting clips, as well as very many of his tweets where he covers players who display exceptional skills
The Stats
As of January 19th, at 5v5 Florida Team Defense Rankings: 2.08 GA/60 (4th overall behind Winnipeg, Vancouver and Boston), 2.29 xGA/60 (3rd overall, jumped by Dallas and Minnesota) while being 9th in GF% and 4th in xGF% (behind Edmonton, Los Angeles and Carolina).
In terms of shot and possession metrics, Florida is ranked 3rd in attempts against per hour with 52.15 CA/60 (behind Carolina and Edmonton) and 3rd in shots on goal against per hour with 26.6 SA/60 (behind LA and Carolina). All the while being 2nd in attempt share with 56.7 CF% (behind Carolina) and 4th in shot share with 54.97 SF% (behind LA, Carolina and Edmonton).
Florida’s shot heatmap from HockeyViz confirms the NaturalStatTrick data. The mountain of red in the offensive zone and an ocean of blue in the defensive zone suggest a team that is significantly out-shooting their competition.
The Florida Panthers D Corps
The Florida Panthers have built an incredibly stout defensive team. It helps that they have a Selke pillar 1C in Aleksander Barkov and an incredibly talented possession driver in Matthew Tkachuk on separate lines, more on them later, but their D corps was largely misfits and also-rans prior to their joining Florida, Aaron Ekblad notwithstanding.
The team’s defensemen in order of TOI:
Brandon Montour (23:09)
Gustav Forsling (22:13)
Aaron Ekblad (21:23)
Niko Mikkola (20:09)
Oliver Ekman-Larsson (19:03)
Dmitry Kulikov (16:50)
Josh Mahura (12:37)
The team’s defensemen in terms of acquisition method:
Montour- Acquired in 2021 from the Buffalo Sabres for a 3rd Round Pick
Forsling- Claimed from waivers in 2021 from the Carolina Hurricanes
Ekblad- Drafted 1st overall in 2014 by the Florida Panthers
Mikkola- Signed as UFA in 2023
Ekman-Larsson- Signed as UFA in 2023 (after being bought out by the Vancouver Canucks)
Kulikov- Signed as UFA in 2023
Mahura- Claimed from waivers in 2022
With the exception of Aaron Ekblad, each of these 6 players makes less than $3.5 million AAV (to a total of $12.5 million). The total acquisition cost, again outside of Ekblad, was a 3rd round draft pick and their cap hit.
Modern Defensive Theory from Darryl Belfry (Belfry Offense)
First, let’s talk a bit about Exit Kill. I’m using a lot of information from Darryl Belfry from either the PDOcast or his book Belfry Offense. If you haven’t read it, or watched/listened to the PDOcast, it’s worth it to upgrade your hockey knowledge.
Belfry starts his coaching and style of play from the offensive zone backwards. Every aspect in his book is interconnected so it can be difficult to begin on some of these topics. I’ll start by saying that prioritizing offensive zone possession is the most important systemic starting point because this is both the most dangerous game-state for your opposition and the safest game-state for you team. Everything flows backwards from there.
Good offensive zone defense begets dangerous offense by mitigating risk hesitation. Attacking the interior is inherently risky but you have to do it to score goals against increasingly good goaltenders. You have an appetite for those risks if you are confident in your ability to get the puck back.
The most important events are puck recovery and, in the event that puck recovery fails, exit kill. In the event that the exit kill doesn’t result in clean possession, but rather a loose puck in the neutral zone or otherwise, then puck recovery and neutral zone re-entry are the priority. In the event the other team exits the neutral zone and has or regains possession, killing the entry is the priority.
In these three events, exit kill, neutral zone re-entry and entry kill, the Florida Panthers display their dominance. From a roster perspective, it starts with Aleksander Barkov and his defensive play but Sam Reinhart, Matthew Tkachuk, Carter Verhaeghe, Anton Lundell, Sam Bennett and Eetu Luostarinen, among others, are all important cogs in the machine.
From their possession play, the Panthers have found an opportunity to activate defensemen which plays to their strengths and mitigates their weaknesses.
Mitigating Weaknesses
I have hyperlinked each players NHL Edge profile.
Each of these defensemen, save Niko Mikkola who is exactly 50th, is below 50th percentile in skating bursts over 20 mph. Only Gustav Forsling is an above average NHL skater in terms of speed bursts and top-skating speed.
There are some flaws in trying to determine too much from “skating bursts” and top-speed as they relate to actual skating ability.
Firstly, these percentiles are not sorted positionally. It makes sense that forwards hunting pucks from a positional disadvantage would be skating harder and therefore faster. So then, perhaps many of these defensemen are perfectly fine or average skaters when compared with their fellow positional compatriots.
Secondly, as we will also establish later, the Florida Panthers tend to control the game. Their players spend less time “chasing” and therefore may also simply be asked to “burst” less.
Thirdly, there are areas where certain members of these players have skating proficiency, especially Forsling and Ekman-Larsson, so this also isn’t to say that they are poor skaters.
The primary point of using this data is to illustrate that Florida defends without demanding large bursts of speed from their defensemen and how that could have helped them beat the market.
Breakout Kill
There is no team that shuts down offense from opposing breakouts better than the Florida Panthers.
The Florida Panthers ability to kill exits starts with their below net forecheck.
The Panthers, through the safety net cast by the dynamic skillset of their top forwards, are enabling their defensemen to activate and kill plays early. No better is this illustrated than in the opening shift in their game against the LA Kings on Jan. 11th.
The key players to watch are FLA16 - Aleksander Barkov and FLA42 - Gustav Forsling.
To start, I’m already in awe of FLA16’s middle-ice discipline. He only chooses to leave the middle when he senses an opportunity. He’s intentional and calculating, he’s big and agile.
You can also see FLA42 attaching to his check early and taking the middle of the ice. He’s the weakside defensemen and he’s not content to wait “safely” at his station on the far side blueline. At the same time, he’s disciplined.
When the puck moves to the weakside, he’s able to time his forward movement to dissuade the outlet pass from LA8 - Drew Doughty. Not dissimilar to Pavel Minyukov’s technique.
It’s important to note that FLA16 coming from the middle does a lot of work defensively. In order for LA8 to hit the high-value ice, he’d have to slip a pass in front of his goaltender and through a balanced and prepared defender.
FLA42 gives him reason to hesitate in the face of FLA16’s pressure and LA8 has to cutback and LA has to reorganize.
This gives time for FLA42 to reattach and ultimately results in him breaking up the exit. Barkov recovers the puck in the neutral zone, tries a move and ultimately chips it deep. Florida misses a chance but LA ices the puck.
Through activation and playing up ice, Aleksander Barkov, Gustav Forsling and the Florida Panthers denied the LA Kings’ top unit a chance at creating offense and kept them on the ice through a line-change. They killed the breakout and stopped an exit.
Defensemen Activation
Let’s revisit the breakout kill this time without Florida’s top players on the ice but first we’ll check in with Belfry Offense once again.
Belfry details his four pillars of offensive zone play with the equation:
OZP Shape = Triangulation + Active Defense x Rotation Speed.
I’ll focus, for now, on the last two. In the case of these clips, Florida is performing without the puck in the offensive zone but they are still displaying the last two pillars with prominence.
Active defensemen
The defensemen are active and engaged because of their absolute trust in F3. F3 is not a luxury on these teams, it is a constant presence and therefore the D can rely on F3 being there all the time. It eliminates engagement hesitation. Teams who defend well in the OZ shift the responsibility of pinching engagement off the defenders and onto F3 whether directly or in its effect.
Rotation Speed
Teams who defend well in the OZ sprint off the puck. They just do. They anticipate role change and move without hesitation.
Often, the pinnacle of this sort of play has been the Colorado Avalanche. With MacKinnon or Rantanen operating in the high 3v2, the Avalanche enable their defensemen to jump up into the play and look for cross-seam passes. Makar and Toews don’t hesitate to do this because they have a forward already occupying the blue-line.
Florida does this a bit differently as they apply it to loose-puck situations. Keep these in mind as you watch the next clip.
Here’s a short clip showing FLA77, Niko Mikkola, proactively attaching to his check when possession is still ambiguous. FLA15, Anton Lundell, puts the puck into the corner for a puck-battle. The F1 is FLA94 Ryan Lomberg.
The F2, FLA15, flushes the puck carrier, who recovered the loose puck with an assist from the LA Kings player in battle with FLA94, behind the net for a change of sides.
Then, the player in middle ice support position, the F3 FLA27, Eetu Luostarinen, attacks the LAK player to pressure the carrier as he changes sides, much like Barkov did in the previous clip.
FLA77, because of his prior activation, is already in a good position to pinch and affect the play. There was absolutely no engagement hesitation only intention and moving forward.
While this is happening, the both FLA forecheckers off the wall are sprinting to hold the blue-line.
In this case, it’s FLA15 who recovers the puck behind his pinching defenseman.
In this way, Florida has found a different way to fulfill the engagement conditions that Belfry detailed in his book. Because the active D doesn’t wait for a forward, Florida’s system requires off-puck sprinting. Their pinching defenseman being in early position helps to slow down the breakout which buys time for the forwards to reload.
Here’s a third clip of the Panthers’ breakout kill. This time, FLA5, Aaron Ekblad, has his position near the dot on the weak-side. He takes this active position even without a weakside wing to attach to.
NSH59, Roman Josi, recovers the puck and swings behind the net. FLA5 is already in a threatening position and we see Florida execute the same forecheck as we have previously.
FLA18, Steven Lorentz, is in middle ice and pressures the side-changing puck carrier. The first forechecker off the wall, FLA12 Jonah Gadjovich, sprints to the space behind the pinching defenseman which allows FLA5 to step up and create a loose puck.
There was, perhaps, a little engagement hesitation from FLA5 who could have been more proactive here and possibly gained possession had he attached to NSH9 a bit earlier. At the same time, it could have instead been a reactive patience that could have also prevented NSH59 an easy, straight-line clear out of the zone.
Florida is killing exits through quickly applied pressure by asking their defensemen to station low(er) in the offensive zone which eliminates engagement hesitation and leads to off-puck sprint reloading, from forwards, for cover.
The aggressive spatial position of the defenseman means they don’t have to skate particularly quickly or aggressively, they are already there. This slows down the opposition breakout. If the puck is cleared behind the pinching defensemen, it’s probably off the glass or through a stick. The puck doesn’t get to go linearly or directly. This way they at least act as a sort of speedbump for puck-path.
This way, the Florida defense’s lack of true top-end speed is masked by position and attitude.
Rush Entry Denial
Although activating defensemen to kill exits and retain possession in the offensive zone is the ideal outcome, oftentimes the puck will still find a way out of the zone. Here, Florida’s aggression and modern techniques still pay dividends.
In Belfry’s Interconnected Game Model, Rush Entry Denial is the next defensive action (technically, it’s Neutral Zone Re-Entry, but we’ll get there in a second) downstream of Offensive Zone Possession Exit Kill.
Each of Florida’s defensemen, at least in Corey Sznajder’s tracking sample from AllThreeZones.com, rate out very highly in terms of Entry Denial% and Carry Against% with only Kulikov and Mikkola diverging from the pack.
This suggests not only that opposing teams have trouble getting into the Florida zone with control but that Florida is creating turnovers and loose pucks before they can get there.
Oftentimes, their capacity to limit transition-offense-against comes from the downstream effects of their great capacity to disrupt breakouts, such as the puck being on the outside and without immediate support, but it doesn’t end there.
Florida is also among the leagues best in killing any offense that originates from the Neutral Zone. This includes offense from the opposition recovering their own exit clears, from re-grouping after killing a Florida uncontrolled exit or from turnovers originating in the neutral zone.
Importantly, they’ve simply come to the conclusion that neutralizing speed is better done skating forward.
Some of their defensemen have weak pivots, Oliver Ekman-Larsson was bought out because his ability to defend the rush had deteriorated, Niko Mikkola isn’t exactly graceful in any direction, Ekblad isn’t the most fluid skater either. Instead of asking these players to sit back and cast a wide defensive net, they are asked to skate forward and defend.
There are two different versions of defensive forward skating. One, weaponized best by the fluid skating of Gustav Forsling, is a technique used when skating towards the opposition to aggressively close gaps and can be deployed across the ice.
Here, FLA42 is deploying the first technique in two different situations. First, he uses his stick to take the middle, closes the distance on an arc and attacks with his stick from the passing lane to create pressure.
DET8 gets the puck across the blue-line but musters little else. Nothing was likely to happen, considering the line change, but Florida gets the puck in a more advantageous position than behind their net.
Unfortunately, FLA 13 drops the puck to no one and Detroit recovers the puck in the neutral zone. Here, we see FLA 42’s up-ice motion, middle-stick placement and forward skating help to match the puck carrier’s speed and neutralize a controlled entry off of a neutral zone turnover.
Here, Gustav Forsling demonstrates the technique as it relates to Exit Kill. His fluid footwork, attacking on an arc and intelligent stick prevent, or dissuade, play back to the inside then, once the opposing player has declared their pass, he matches the stick for pressure.
Ekblad, then, is first to the loose puck because he was able to take long and intense forward strides.
The second type of forward skating, often used by Oliver Ekman-Larsson and Niko Mikkola, is used when skating with the opposition to maintain tight gaps and match speeds. Perhaps it’s also used to mask backwards skating inefficiencies as well or maybe it’s just preferred as a method to push neutral zone attackers to the outside.
In this case, the forward skating is a feature of Florida’s up-ice weak-side D position. Previously, we’ve seen that position pay dividends as the breakout changes sides but here we see it work as the puck goes up the strong side.
FLA91, Oliver Ekman-Larsson, is “surfing” across the middle of the ice and is able to match speed and maintain an incredibly tight and responsive gap through the neutral zone.
His matching, and FLA9’s backpressure, force the Detroit puck carrier into a 1v1 situation without quality options. It lead to a controlled entry but it very much did not lead to a chance.
Each Florida defenseman makes good use of the modern technique of defensive forward skating to help stifle opposition neutral zone attacks. Oftentimes, this technique is employed in conjunction with their aggressive activation on exit kill and helps to mitigate some potential skating weaknesses or enhance specific skating strengths.
Neutral Zone Re-entry
Working backwards to the area of the game downstream from Offensive Zone Possession (technically Possession Line Change is the next closest for Belfry’s Interconnected Game Model but it’s outside the scope of this examination) is Neutral Zone Re-entry.
The Panthers are creating incredibly well off of Neutral Zone Reloads, the offense that comes after a clear or missed breakout pass leaves the zone. A type of offense that Darryl Belfry oftentimes says is the playoff equivalent to rush offense (this episode is specifically about Jack Eichel and Vegas and the types of offense their D helps to create, but throughout his book Belfry Offense Florida is very much cited as a similar playoff re-entry team).
If these pucks get put into the opposition’s zone without control, you’ve only given them another chance at beating your exit kill. Here, the Florida Panthers use smart routes to create time and space for their teammates which leads to increased danger and offensive zone possession (which in turn means less danger against).
In particular, players like FLA13 - Sam Reinhart and FLA23 - Carter Verhaeghe, in combination with Aleksander Barkov and FLA19 - Matthew Tkachuk, wield these routes with precision.
Here, FLA7 gathers a chipped clear in the neutral zone. He immediately moves the puck to the middle where the Florida Panther’s attention to post-entry detail is on full display.
FLA23 is an excellent entry anchor. FLA15 moves the puck to him and immediately darts to space (“middle speed”) to attack the heels of the strong side defender. FLA 23 beats the defenseman with an area pass to space and the Panthers have found another 2v1 and a dangerous scoring chance.
Furthermore, their Rush Entry Denial is also feeding a similar sort of non-breakout transition offense.
Though both of these metrics are offense related they should still be considered part of the “defensive identity” of the Florida Panthers. Rather, it may be more appropriate to consider the Panthers a territorial or possession-forward team, one who limits chances against by defending well up-ice and by maintaining possession.
Possession Through-Line
For Florida, the system isn’t necessarily about players with rigid positions, it’s about their location on the ice. The hockey player closest to the job does the job. It doesn’t matter whether your position is listed as D or W.
Dimitri Filipovic recently espoused some of this see puck go for puck style on a recent PDOcast episode.
The cornerstone value that drives this style is possession. They allow the closest man to go because that’s the best chance they have of slowing down the opposition and winning possession.
Man-on-Man
What enables this style, and runs through their play across the ice, is the man-on-man structure that originates in the defensive zone. The beauty of this style lies in its simplicity. It makes the reads and “rules of engagement” for Florida Panthers defensemen incredibly easy. If they see an unchecked player in front of them, it’s an absolute green light.
This relieves some of the mental burden of more complex or position based structures. They don’t have to worry about getting back in certain time or checking to see if someone else is getting beat and they have to cover for them, they just have to focus on their actions and disrupting the person directly in front of them. They have more mental capital to use in the immediate play.
Traditionally, man-on-man isn’t preferred to more complex zones and coverages, or the trendy box-and-one defense system, because there are theoretical matchup limitations against some of the best athletes in the sport come crunch time.
Here, the Panthers are aware that possession and territory, by building from Offensive Zone Possession backwards a la Belfry, are the best ways at eliminating high danger chances against, rather than worrying about the specifics of coverage. If you’ve allowed a high-danger chance against there are a litany of mistakes made prior to the chance, including letting the opposition have the puck in the first place.
Said more simply, the tradeoff of theoretically worse in-zone defense is more than made up for by gains made in possession via crystal clear rules of engagement.
Possession Security through Rush Routes and Activation
As mentioned before, the Florida Panthers have excellent rush routes on Neutral Zone Regroups. These routes extend to rush routes off of controlled breakouts and through the neutral zone as well.
Here, all of the Panthers’ talented forwards deftly utilize entry blue-line anchors and soft space passes behind the defense to move possession securely into the offensive zone.
Through this sequence of clips, you can see the Florida F2 work to attack the heels of the strong side defender to get a puck recovery behind the defense or to create space for the second layer of the attack.
Florida gets excellent entry-anchor play from talented players but they also run routes and have a simplified decision tree that makes it easier on these talented players.
In this way, their talented forwards’ security in transition further helps to insulate their defensemen. If the puck is consistently and reliably moving into the offensive zone, the players across the ice and move up more confidently and aggressively.
The Florida Panthers defensemen are also excellent and detailed in their routes moving forward off the rush. Here is where FLA62, Brandon Montour, shines.
On the breakout, FLA62 times his route from the weakside to receive a middle-bump from the half-wall winger. Because he is the highest up-ice of the defensive triangle, he carries the puck and leads the exit. He finds FLA19 who acts as the blue line anchor, delays and finds soft ice behind the defense where FLA9 can recover the puck.
Now, FLA62 and FLA28 maintain spacing and arrive in the middle for the second layer of attack. FLA62 pulls a defender out of the middle and FLA28 gains possession but can’t fully handle the pass.
Montour, along with the rest of the Florida defensemen, is adept at swiftly moving through role changes to make sure the puck carrier is supported.
In this clip, FLA 17, Evan Rodrigues, creates a loose puck that clears the neutral zone. FLA25, Mackie Samoskevich, wins the race through the middle to the loose puck(It’s hard to tell if FLA17 placed the puck there intentionally, but I wouldn’t rule it out).
FLA77, who early recognizes his position as the most up-ice member of their team, activates and follows the play. Once he reads puck possession, he joins the rush and skates his route to land on the netfront. Sustained O zone time follows with a high danger slot chance that misses the net.
Not many coaches would see Niko Mikkola’s profile and skillset and give him the green light to move forward but in Florida it’s demanded of him.
This clip starts with FLA25 and FLA17 getting jammed up on the boards. FLA82, Kevin Stenlund, was the assigned center and first forward into the zone and tracked back below the goal line to disrupt the Nashville forward, this was a green light for FLA28 to start moving through the vacated middle responsibility.
He maintains speed to be an off-wall pass option and FLA7, the weak side defenseman, sprints wide to stretch the neutral zone structure. FLA17 hits him in stride, a quite fantastic play from the neutral zone wall, and they’ve created a chance.
From there, FLA28 shows excellent middle rush habits by attack the far side of the net. FLA7 could have found FLA25 coming in the second layer, but at least FLA28 moved in a way that created space for it.
The pass narrowly misses but it’s a great example of Florida’s encouragement of defenseman activation. I don’t believe there are many teams that would have two defensemen lead a 2v1 from the blue line in.
Florida wants defensemen with an attitude inclined toward activation.
This ranking is Shots off of Neutral Zone Turnovers Against/60. To put it simply, other teams are not creating offense from Florida’s Neutral Zone turnovers.
From both their excellent forwards running detailed routes and their defensemen stepping up to ensure the carrier is supported, the Florida Panthers have become a remarkably safe team in transition.
I’ve demonstrated as well how intentional forward skating from top players like Gustav Forsling, and even players like Niko Mikkola and Oliver Ekman-Larsson, helps the Panthers recover from turnovers which, on top of the security in possession, helps the Panthers reach top of the league status at preventing shots coming from Neutral Zone Turnovers.
The conclusion that I would like to draw is that activating defensemen in the neutral zone does not necessarily mean you are playing a risky style. You can activate defensemen into the rush and have it result in safe movement through the neutral zone.
Wrap Up
In conclusion, the Florida Panthers have created a defensive juggernaut by maximizing strengths, namely having Aleksander Barkov and Matthew Tkachuk, and by leveraging those strengths to find a market advantage in their D corps.
They create a possession forward team who stifles breakouts and neutral zone offense through middle occupying forwards and active forward skating defensemen. They insulate the risk of their defensemen with sprint reloading, exceptional rush routes and entry anchors and they use man-on-man structure to create fast play through attitude and position over speed.
They have maximized performance from the defensive group that, outside of Aaron Ekblad, was acquired for a 3rd round pick and $11.85m AAV.
Future Considerations
Now, I’ll transition into the more speculative part of the piece. Here, I’ll look into the interesting stat that triggered the examination and connect some dots as they relate to Florida wielding their roster strength to capitalize on a market weakness.
The Starting Point
First, I’ll just go straight to the unique stat that triggered my line of examination. In clicking around with filters on AllThreeZones.com, I stumbled across an unusual stat, featuring many of the Panthers’ defensemen, which, when combined with the neutral zone denial rates, paints the picture of a team that does its best defensive work up-ice.
This statistic is Forecheck Pressures/60. Here’s Corey Sznajder’s definition from his player cards FAQ.
The first off-puck events tracked relate to the forecheck. Starting with Forecheck Pressures & Exit Disruptions, which are how often a forechecking player forces the player exiting the zone to make a play with the puck. All pressures are counted as such & disruptions are credited when the forechecking player forces an uncontrolled exit (clears, turnovers, missed pass, icing etc.). These are shown because forcing turnovers or a failed exit is shown to lead to goals & chances, while forcing bad exits gives the defending team a higher chance of recovering the puck & attacking
Specifically, as it relates to defensemen I would key in on Exit Disruptions. As I’ve show in the first “Breakout Kill” clip, Gustav Forsling’s positioning and stick clearly disrupted the exit.
Traditionally, forechecking is a forwards job. As the NHL gets faster, and the positions become more interchangeable, forechecking will move more towards a total team concept as we instead ask the body closest to the action to do the job rather than the player assigned a position on a scoresheet.
Here, in the metric of Forecheck Pressures/60, we can see that the Florida defenders distinguish themselves. Josh Mahura, Oliver Ekman-Larsson and Niko Mikkola are pressuring the opposing offense at among the highest rates in the NHL. Josh Mahura doesn’t have the best sample size of games, so his performance could be an abberation, but the AllThreeZones tracking data set is still very much a work in progress for the 2023-24 season.
Here too are breakout defensemen like Travis Sanheim, Pavel Mintyukov, Andreas Englund, Luke Hughes, Alex Vlasic, Nikita Zadorov and Kaiden Guhle as well as stalwart aggressive defencemen like Dougie Hamilton, Brent Burns and Mackenzie Weegar.
First, there’s a major caveat to using this data to draw conclusions. The total number of “Forecheck Pressures” for defensemen are extremely low. All of them barely register on the scatterplot in relation to forwards. To use this single metric as an explanation for a teams, or even a single defenseman’s results, would be irresponsible.
That being said, in previous years, Carolina (all of defensemen), Colorado (Devon Toews especially but also Manson and Girard), New Jersey (Severson) and Tampa(Hedman), have had defensemen appear high on the list.
What is perhaps more safe to conclude is that these teams don’t discourage these defensemen from participating in the forecheck.
When combined with their neutral zone/entry defense, perhaps we can begin to paint a picture of how these tracked stats relate to controlling the neutral zone. Perhaps a defenseman being involved in forecheck pressures has little to do with their individual talent and more to do with their sharing ice with dominant possession teams.
Defenseman participation in the forecheck or in preventing transition success, especially re: offensive zone activity, is perhaps an area for further and more specific examination. Perhaps this could be an area that distinguishes pure “rovers” from modern activation defending defensemen.
I believe the “next step” or probably the current step for NHL teams, will be in encouraging these up-ice defenseman and enabling that type of play by discovering how they can then limit offense going in the other direction.
Corey’s data is fantastic, but I’d like to take a deeper look at how defensemen can kill/disrupt exits, how those relate to different systems and the role of pinching in all of this. Perhaps a Defenseman O Zone Possession Plays tracking research project is in order.
Mostly, I’d like to view forechecking and transition prevention through the lens of defensemen particularly in how they activate. This may simply be a looser definition of “Forechecking Pressures” or “Exit Disruptions” or it may include pinching with location bins or in reference to forward roles or downstream success.
If we can then get specific game to game exit disruption data perhaps we can also associate it with game to game xG or observed goal performance and get a closer look as to how these skills or metrics are associated with overall performance.
Connecting Dots
This last part is sort of just for fun. It’s a look at the more roster building/market advantage perspective of Florida’s supporting piece acquisitions.
I think we can see that Florida, under Paul Maurice, implemented a play-structure change that paid significant dividends in the playoffs. We can see that it follows a lot of Darryl Belfry’s philosophy which suggests there’s a good through-line in terms of prioritizing offensive zone possession.
What I believe Florida realized is that defensemen activation is more about attitude than it is ability. Darryl Belfry details the marriage and attitude and ability in this situation with his breakdown of Charlie McAvoy.
This Florida team, and especially their recent player acquisitions, are constructed from the DNA of aggressive teams (Anaheim, Buffalo and Carolina). These players have been coached and prepared to have the correct attitude and were perhaps better suited to receive an aggressive and fluid up-ice message.
Dmitry Kulikov, Josh Mahura and Brandon Montour all played in the Anaheim Ducks organization. This team has recently developed excellent modern defensemen who have seen success after moving away from the org. These include: Hampus Lindholm, Josh Manson, Jamie Drysdale. Currently on the roster they have excellent young defensemen Pavel Mintyukov, Olen Zellweger and Jackson Lacombe as well as veteran Cam Fowler.
The connecting dot for the Florida Panthers, then, is Sylvain Lefebvre. He was hired as an Assistant Coach under Paul Maurice when he joined the staff. He was an assistant coach, under Dallas Eakins, of the San Diego Gulls, Anaheim’s AHL affiliate, from 2018/19 until 2020/21.
After that, he was briefly hired by the Columbus Blue Jackets to be an assistant under Brad Larsen but was correctly fired, just before training camp, for refusing to get the COVID Vaccine (Rocky Thompson, now finding success on the upstart Flyers, was let go from San Jose for similar reasons).
That year, the Blue Jackets implemented a man-on-man structure presumable due to the offseason work in building the structure. The next year, they changed D systems to disastrous results (from here).
Sylvain Lefebvre’s understanding of a man-on-man system and how it liberates active defensemen could have come from his time in the Anaheim system. Then, the team was able to add value on the margins in their pickups of players with the appropriate attitude.
Lefebvre only directly coached Josh Mahura, who is currently the least played Panthers’ defenseman to be featured in this breakdown, and Montour was added before his arrival.
The next major connection for the Florida Panthers is their assistant coach Myles Fee and his station as video coach for the Charlotte Checkers in 2019-2020. 2019-2020 was the last year of the Checkers’ affiliation with Carolina. The next year, they would become the Panthers’ AHL affiliate.
That 2019-2020 Checkers team featured current Panthers such as Gustav Forsling, Eetu Luostarinen and Steven Lorentz. Forsling and Luostarinen are near perfect fits for the Panthers’ system and Lorentz has published some great forechecking results as a large middle-occupying centreman.
Myles Fee’s last stop, prior to moving to Florida, was a video coach for the Buffalo Sabres for 2020/21 and 2021/22. Those teams featured prominent current Panthers Sam Reinhart and Brandon Montour.
Now, Fee’s arrival on Maurice’s staff didn’t coincide with the arrival of these players, and Lefebvre only directly coached Mahura, but the throughlines and DNA of the player and coach acquisitions perhaps begins to sketch out the silhouette of a cohesive Front Office top-down strategy under Bill Zito.
I wasn’t expecting one of the most in depth explanations of the panthers Defense to come from a Blue Jackets blog. Insanely high level of detail here, great job