What can the Blue Jackets learn from the best defences in the NHL?
Using AllThreeZones and HockeyViz data to identify trends that the best modern defences are using to keep the puck out of their net
Looking For Solutions and The (Injured) Elephant in the Room
The Blue Jackets were completely decimated by injuries this year. They played 9 games this season where the team they were playing had more injuries at the time of competition. They lost the bedrock of their D corps in Zach Werenski a player who, in an extremely small sample size, was having a monstrous season.
This isn’t the best image of this data but it serves the purpose. The vertical-axis is DZ retrievals/60 and the horizontal-axis is Exits w/ Possession per 60 and his performance leads the NHL on both counts. It’s likely that these numbers would have come down with increased sample-size but, after looking back through previous years’ data, his skillset has consistently put him in this echelon and is the reason he’s getting paid slightly more than $9.5 million per year.
In some cases, CBJ did not have the horses to compete in the NHL this year and it wouldn’t have mattered which system they were playing. But in another case, there is a deficit in the Blue Jackets playstyle that must be addressed. Jack Han often says that sometimes you need to look for upstream solutions to your problems.
But first, I’ll show you what that deficit was this past season by comparing the Blue Jackets to select top defensive team using AllThreeZones and HockeyViz data. I’ll also look through the lens of a very specific player transaction that can provide an incredibly valuable data point to any team looking to learn from the impact of systems on performance.
The Team Context
Before we can start looking upstream, let’s see what information we can find about what the team did this past year. Some readers may already know that the Blue Jackets struggled to keep the puck out of the net because they watched the games but it can be nice to get a little more information about how bad the problem was.
The Blue Jackets
Yep. This handy infographic from HockeyViz.com shows us that the Blue Jackets allowed more shots from everywhere than the NHL average. They allowed especially more shots from close to the net. All of this information is weighted to the number provided at the top (xGA/60: 2.99). Expected Goals Against is a measure of the amount of shots weighted by their location to the net. Some private models also factor in pre-shot movement, closeness to the shot of a defenceman and some other factors that affect shot quality but this still gives us a good idea of what was going on without more detailed data. The “+16%” next to that metric tells us that it’s that much more than the average NHL team. For reference, here’s what Carolina, L.A., and Colorado, the teams who allowed the first, third, and eighth lowest Expected Goals Against, respectively, in the regular season (according to naturalstatrick.com), looked like this past year. Each of these teams does it a different way but I’ll we will look more into that in a bit.
The Good Teams
A Step Deeper
Now, we’ll transition to AllThreeZones tracking data and look at the way that these teams defend. First, if you aren’t familiar with Corey Sznajder’s data and terms, please take a look at his explainer here. That will go over the more important terms to understand: denials, retrievals, clears and what exactly he’s looking for in this tracked data.
Columbus Blue Jackets
It’s not hard to say that it’s just a poor showing all-around. Not too much to see here, especially in an injury-plagued season with players playing well over their heads. Still, you can see directly what Columbus was. A passive entry defending team who struggled to lock down the zone but showed some promising glimpses at exiting with possession.
Carolina Hurricanes
Carolina is an excellent all around defensive team. They are the hallmark of team defense, lead by one of the best to do it; Jaccob Slavin. They are extremely aggressive at defending the blue line and don’t allow much offense when they are in the zone. The unique Carolina system rears its head in the zone exits section. Instead of trying to initiate offense with controlled zone exits, Carolina simply prefers to send loose pucks into the neutral zone so they can start hunting. They don’t care about the quality of possession, because they are likely to chip pucks into the O zone and start their ferocious forecheck.
Los Angeles Kings
L.A. is also a team that loves to aggressively protect their blue-line spearheaded by the excellent Mikey Anderson. They allow entries against but don’t necessarily allow carries against and they get a lot of denials. They defend well in-zone by limiting danger and let passes come from below their goal line to the point. Their zone exits aren’t exactly clean but they have a high success rate in turning a retrieval into an exit. They are an interesting lens to compare to the Blue Jackets, but we’ll dive into that later.
Colorado Avalanche
Colorado may be the blueprint for the modern style defense that Columbus may seek to play in the future lead by pinnacles of the sport Cale Makar and Devon Toews. It’s just too bad that Jared Bednar and Nolan Pratt, the assistant coach responsible for defense, were previously in the Columbus system where they won the Calder Cup with the then-Lake Erie Monsters (with Zach Werenski and Dean Kukan on the roster). This team is incredibly proficient at exiting the zone and defending off-the-rush with their top players on the ice, even if they give some back in-zone. This team also suffered from injuries, moreso in their forward corps, and didn’t show out as well as they did in 2021-22 when they won the Stanley Cup.
Diving Deeper Still
Now, we know what these excellent teams did differently but we still don’t have a good idea to what degree these results were influenced by systems or players. A team-specific visualization of each individual, while keeping the context of the NHL, is a great tool for getting a good idea how individuals performed. We’ll take a look at some of the main categories into which AllThreeZones likes to break team defense data.
The Blue Jackets
In terms of exiting the zone, The Blue Jackets pretty much boil down to Zach Werenski and everyone else. While Werenski likely won’t continue to be this good, partly to small sample size, he has always been a great puck mover. Gavin Bayreuther shows out as generating exits but there are some other red flags in regards to deployment and sample-size. The more concerning data is the team Entry Denial%. Whether it be down to coaching or lack of players with established NHL experience, the Blue Jackets were almost unilaterally below league average at defending the blue line. Since the entire team is grouped in a pretty neat bundle, we can say it was a flaw of the system and roster as a whole. More on that later.
The Good Teams
Carolina
Nowhere is Carolina’s system more clear than in these two charts. Some defenseman are better at exiting the zone than others but the entirety of the team remains below NHL-average because they simply don’t value this facet of the game. Additionally, nearly the entire team stops entries and denies carries above NHL average. Rod Brind’Amour has built success on aggressively contesting the puck in the neutral zone and it’s working well for them.
Colorado Avalanche
Colorado is built on some incredibly strong puck-moving defensemen. Cale Makar is an almost unprecedented generator of exits with possession and he’s partnered with a very dangerous Devon Toews. Sam Girard and Josh Manson’s (when healthy) are incredibly proficient in this regard as well. Devon Toews and Bowen Byram appear to be asked to defend the blue-line aggressively and their respective partners then retrieve the puck more often (Cale Makar and Sam Girard/Josh Manson respectively).
Los Angeles Kings
We can see here again, similar but perhaps more distinct than Colorado, a bifurcation in responsibilities within the Kings’ D-pairings. The right side defensemen (Drew Doughty, Matt Roy, Sean Walker) retrieve the puck and exit the zone while the left side defensemen (Mikey Anderson, Vladislav Gavrikov after the trade deadline, Sean Durzi when playing on his off-side during the regular season and Alex Edler) aggressively protect the blue-line.
The Lessons
Have an Identity
The Carolina Hurricanes exemplify this trend better than anyone else. I’m reminded of something Brandon Naurato said in a recent article by Sam Stockon of Gulo Gulo Hockey. Go give it a read, it’s fanstastic insight to an up-and-coming coach at top college hockey program. For now, I’ll bring to the front the important paragraph.
“When asked what he takes away from that loss to Quinnipiac, Naurato answers ‘Just be the best at the process that nobody knows. What do [people outside the program] see? They see the style of play and do they win or not. They’ve got players; they win or don’t? There’s a million ways to do it. Quinnipiac does it with older guys, so do other teams…It’s not young, old, whatever. You just got to make it yours and be all in.’
The Carolina Hurricanes are the team embodiment of head coach Rod Brind’Amour. They live to aggressively attack the puck and every bit of their system plays to that. They find success because they’ve been able to acquire players to plug into a system tailor-made for their strengths and, if they aren’t immediate fits, a remarkable clarity on the steps forward to fit into the team structure.
That’s not to say that LA or Colorado don’t also have distinct identities but they don’t necessarily depart from the norm so uniquely as Carolina. Each team splits their d-pairing responsibilities along a left-right axis but otherwise they have a tendency to play very different games. Both feature activation heavy d-corps that are allowed to play up-ice but they are driven by very different forwards and at very different paces.
The Development of a Modern Prototype Pairing
The “old” hockey trend of ages past would have pairing a “rover” style offensive defenseman with a “stay-at-home” type defensive defenseman. In place of it top teams are pairing aggressive entry defenders (Mikey Anderson, Devon Toews) with talented puck-retrievers (Drew Doughty, Cale Makar). Aggressive entry defending forces pucks deep into the zone, right into the hands of an excellent puck retriever. The Colorado Avalanche are a team that is built around defenseman building possession from the back end, if they find success in a similar split of duties there’s no reason other teams shouldn’t be stealing that style. Devon Toews may be the exact blueprint for a defenseman who uses that activation to maintain a tight gap in the neutral zone which actually makes him better at breaking up plays at the blue-line than a defenseman who lets the play come at them.
The Vladislav Gavrikov Thing
Vladislav Gavrikov was pilloried prior to the trade deadline as being the next Ben Chiarot by some in the analytics community. Since moving, he’s been nothing less than stellar. I think Dom Luszczyszyn said it best in his breakdown of the top UFA targets.
“I was a huge skeptic of Vladislav Gavrikov at the deadline, but all of that has changed after 20 games with an actually good team. In 20 games with the Kings, Gavrikov was on the ice for 59 percent of the expected goals and 70 percent of the actual goals. That carried over to the playoffs where he was at 56 and 66 percent respectively, with his pair being the only one that won their matchup.”
Explaining Gavrikov’s jump in performance doesn’t simply boil down to being put on a better team but that he was also that he was asked to do the things that win hockey games more and fit his skillset better (aggressive and proactive defense of the blue-line). I’m reminded of a couple of quotes, the first from a recent Pierre Lebrun article where Bill Zito talks about acquiring Carter Verhaeghe.
“You have to have the opportunity for the player to not only play but to achieve. It was a good fit. High marks to our analytics guys.”
The second, another callback to Brandon Naurato, “‘Say somebody’s really good at being F1 on the forecheck. Well if we have a passive system, I’ve taken a great skill away from him. Say he’s good at hunting, and I’ve got him skating backwards and we’re in a trap. Well, he’s not great at that, so I put him in a bad spot.’”
The Blue Jackets put Vladislav Gavrikov in a bad spot and it’s wonderful seeing him released and playing to his best self. If this team wants to learn from that mistake, they’ll have to develop a system that gives new players the opportunities to play the way that accentuates those strengths.
The Next Steps for the Blue Jackets
Here, the earliest upstream solution to the Blue Jackets woes in the defensive zone is their passivity at the blue line. That, in and of itself, may also have its own upstream solution (alluded to in Devon Toews playstyle) and the Blue Jackets lack of forechecking pressure may be partially to blame as well. However, ff the Blue Jackets can steal some pairing duty assignment tactics from the LA Kings and Colorado Avalanche, they can build a system more conducive to winning hockey games. Theoretically, they already have the horses in their system to play this way, they simply lack the time and experience to impact the roster. The system should be suited to play to the obvious strengths of Zach Werenski (dynamic puck retrieving and zone-exiting)and the projected developing strengths of David Jiricek (puck retrieving and breakout passing), Denton Mateychuk (rush defense and activation), Stanislav Svozil (rush defense, forechecker manipulation) and Corson Ceulemans (activation and transition). Colorado has proven that you can have an activation based system and still find success in aggressively defending the blue-line and it is imperative that the Blue Jackets do as well.
Next article, I’ll take a look into the offseason marketplace for defensemen that Jarmo Kekalainen can target to bolster the D corps while waiting for the youth to arrive.