Effectivess of Defensemen's play in the offensive zone : the impact of defensemen's positional changes on goals and scoring changes in offensive zone offensive play

Abstract

The role of offensive zone offensive play has increased in modern ice hockey with the increase in size of the offensive zone. Teams now need to have various forms of offensive zone team systems in order to increase the puck possession and scoring chances. The fast pace of the ice hockey today requires having all five players involved in team’s play system in every zone. In offensive zone offensive play the ability to utilize the offensive effectiveness of the defensemen can be a valuable asset for teams’ success.

To better understand the impact of defensemen’s offensive effectiveness in offensive zone offensive play, the purpose of this research-based study was to analyze where the defensemen should be situated during offensive zone offensive play and how they should change positions in order to increase the scoring chances. The focus was on 5v5 offensive play. In order to analyze the defensemen’s offensive efficiency a performance analysis was used as an approach to conduct observational study to analyze the offensive zone offensive play and defensemen’s performance of Finnish national U18 ice hockey team in season 2017-2018. The data was collected from 21 international games. Post-game analysis was conducted based on defined key concepts for offensive zone offensive play in order to observe the impact of the U18 team’s defensemen on goals and scoring chances by changing positions in offensive zone.

The results indicate that the defensemen’s offensive efficiency does have a positive impact to goals and scoring chances in 5v5 play. The defensemen’s activity and position changes in not just traditional high zone, but also in low zone, impacted significantly to the goals and scoring chances in offensive zone offensive play. The position change can be executed either by strong or weak-side defenseman, or both of them. The main purpose of the position changes is to distract the opponent and improve offensive chances.

This study provides a concept to analyze offensive zone offensive play and increase the understanding of key concepts impacting to the team’s offensive zone offensive play and how the defensemen’s offensive efficiency can be utilized.