Last week, San Jose filled their vacant head coaching spot by hiring Ryan Warsofsky. My breakdown of the hiring can be read here.

With Will Smith, Macklin Celebrini, William Eklund, Henry Thrun, and a few nice prospects in the cupboard, it sure seems as if the Sharks are trending in the right direction. It will take a couple years before they really start to push towards the top-half of the Western Conference, but there is now a nice group of young players for Warsofsky to develop. Things certainly look better than they did 12 months ago.

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With the news that CapFriendly was bought by Washington and will be going dark sometime in the next month, now is a good time to give PuckPedia a look. That site doesn't quite have all the tools and widgets that CapFriendly does (for now), but it's a very good resource for contracts and cap space, and it's surely going to grow now that it's one of the few spots where that kind of information is being kept. They aren't affiliated with Dobber Hockey in any way, they are just a good resource that we're going to have to learn to use, so check them out.

** Be sure to grab your copy of the 2024 Dobber Fantasy Hockey Prospects Report!**

Just letting everyone know that work on the 2024 Dobber Hockey Fantasy Guide has already started! It's not coming out for a couple months yet but the work never stops even though the Cup Final is still ongoing. We want to thank everyone for their support, whether it's this guide, the Prospects report, or anything else. It's certainly appreciated by myself and the rest of the editors here are Dobber Hockey, so thank you.

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Watching the Stanley Cup Playoffs it dawned on me that something I hadn't written much about recently was work by defencemen in the defensive zone. Watching certain defencemen commit critical turnovers despite not having many touches on the puck gave me a bit of inspiration to write about this.

Too often, the wrong players are blamed when things go wrong defensively. One example I always think of is actually a forward and it's Pierre Engvall. When he was in Toronto, he was very rarely in the team's top-6 forward mix, which meant very little time spent with the Big Four of Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner, William Nylander, and John Tavares. In the 2021-22 season, those four forwards averaged 11.4 defensive zone touches per 60 minutes at 5-on-5, according to tracking data from AllThreeZones. They were also responsible for 6.9 zone exits (of any type) per 60 minutes. Comparatively, Engvall managed a whopping 16.8 defensive zone touches per 60 minutes of 5-on-5 play and 10.1 zone exits per 60 minutes. When the Big Four were off the ice, Engvall was often tasked with getting the play moving up the ice from the defensive zone. When a player has more responsibility and more touches, they are more likely to turn the puck over. Think of it like car accidents: people that drive to and from work every day are more likely to get into a car accident than people that infrequently leave their house/apartment. It is simply a matter of usage.

To put it another way, here are the five players credited with the most giveaways during the 2023-24 regular season: David Pastrnak, Nikita Kucherov, Leon Draisaitl, Mathew Barzal, and Connor McDavid. These are simply players that are tasked with doing all the work to get the team out of their zone, into the offensive zone, and figuring out how to get the puck in the back of the opponent's net.

For that reason, let's look at some players who had a high rate of defensive zone touches and exits relative to their team. Data will be sourced from AllThreeZones but additional stats are from Natural Stat Trick or Frozen Tools. All of this is at 5-on-5.

Quinn Hughes

It isn't that Hughes was a turnover machine; even though he led Vancouver's blue line with 52 giveaways, his giveaways per 60 minutes was lower than Ian Cole and Filip Hronek. It is that Hughes did so much work in the defensive zone for the Canucks and wasn't at the top of the giveaway list. What really stands out is how high his rate of zone exits with possession was, because it was Hughes and then everyone else:

To be honest, that level of puck movement with very moderate rate of turnovers shows a superlative performance. This probably doesn't have to be said too often, but it was an unbelievably good season from Hughes.

Rasmus Dahlin

Initially, the plan was to write about how much responsibility Dahlin had moving the puck out of the defensive zone. He did, and that's evidenced by his zone exits and defensive zone touches per 60 minutes:

What strikes me isn't what Dahlin did, it's that Erik Johnson is just behind him for zone exits per 60 minutes. Not for nothing, but if Erik Johnson is the number-2 defenceman on any team in terms of rate of zone exits, it's probably not a great sign for the offence. He may have learned a thing or two in Colorado, but that he far exceeded every other non-Dahlin defenceman is not a great sign. Maybe there is a reason they have a new coach.

Jake Sanderson

Having written about Sanderson already this offseason, I won't go long here. All I will say is that he had a tremendous amount of defensive zone responsibility, and it did lead to a lot of turnovers: he led the league in giveaways per game and was fourth in giveaways per 60 minutes. He already is very good and will only get better, but maybe turning the keys to the team over to a 21-year-old defenceman had some negative consequences.

Sean Walker

When we talk about what happened with the Flyers over the final third of the season, I often wonder what happens if the team doesn't trade Walker. He led their regular defencemen by rate of defensive zone touches, exits, and exits with possession. He and Travis Sanheim led the way by exits with possession and Rasmus Ristolainen wasn't too far behind:

Ristolainen was injured from mid-February onward, so once Walker was traded, it was Sanheim moving the puck, and then guys who weren't typically responsible for it across the first 50 games of the season. It put additional responsibility on players in crunch time, and it's a wonder if that led to some more problems that led to their poor goaltending. It will be interesting to see what this blue line looks like in September.

Olli Maatta

Alright, on a blue line with Moritz Seider, Shayne Gostisbehere, Jake Walman, and Jeff Petry, any guesses on which regular Detroit blue liner led the team in rate of defensive zone touches, exits with possession, and puck retrievals? Olli Maatta wouldn't be listed for this paragraph if the answer wasn't obvious:

Considering Maatta played most often with Gostisbehere, and by a wide margin, he had a lot of heavy lifting to do. Detroit is up against it, cap-wise, once they re-sign the players they need to sign, and Maatta is one of the few skaters that has no trade protections, which means he could very well be elsewhere next season. That should make their defensive zone responsibilities fun to watch.

Neal Pionk

Pionk rarely played with Josh Morrissey as a partner, so it makes sense that Pionk did a lot of the heavy lifting when he was on the ice at 5-on-5. What was curious to me is that Pionk was *miles* ahead of Morrissey by defensive zone touches:

In fairness to Morrissey, he was more efficient with his touches (meaning a higher rate of zone exits) so he did well whenever he did have the puck. However, Pionk (and Dylan DeMelo) led the team by giveaways per minute so maybe new head coach Scott Arniel is going to look at changing assignments in the defensive zone. We shall see.

Colton Parayko

Not that St. Louis has a bevy of high-end puck movers, but Parayko led the team's blue line in rate of defensive zone touches, defensive zone retrievals, exits, and exits with possession. No, really:

This isn't to slander Parayko, because he's a fine defenceman I would want to have on my team. It is to say that he's not quite the elite playmaker/puck-mover that Torey Krug should be, Nick Leddy has been, or Scott Perunovich could be. That Parayko leads in all these categories might tell us more about the team than it does him.

There are other defencemen worth discussing like Drew Doughty, Henry Thrun, and John Marino, but we have a whole offseason to fill so we'll get to them eventually. Later this week, I will look at forwards in this regard to see which players are doing the heavy lifting.