OHL Hockey News

Tyler M:

If its hitting you need to get bigger and stronger or your gonna take a beating
you can search positioning on google
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Thomas S. Monkeyson:

I played defense at the junior olympic, high school and collegiate levels and I can honestly tell you that there are an infinite number of ways to play the position depending on your body size, skating ability and general hockey skill. I’ll take you through my development as a player in the hopes that it might allow you to gain some perspective on your own abilities and opportunities.

I started playing Junior Olympic hockey when I was in elementary school. I grew up in a small town so I was immediately placed on the B team at defense due to a lack of players and my size (I was 5’11" as an 8th grader). I was still learning to skate so I survived and got promoted to the A team by playing physical (annoying) defense and taking cheap shots whenever I thought it would give me an advantage.

My high school team was initially extremely talented. I started at D as a defensive zone specialist that covered for the more talented offensive players and broke up odd man rushes. My line mate was extremely talented (He went on to play for the US national Inline team) so I basically covered the back end while the other players scored 10 goals a game. I learned to play angles at this stage in my development because I was constantly being bombarded with 2 on 1 and 3 on 1 rushes. In those situations its rare to come up with a stolen puck (unless the rushing players play stupidly) so I constantly attempted to disrupt the passing lanes and push the player with the puck toward the boards so my goalie would be able to take a shot at an angle that was advantageous for him.

We lost all of the other starters after my freshman year so I started developing a better offensive game from the defensive position. Hockey is a game about creating and disrupting flow punctuated with moments of extreme sharpness and brutality. A quick, accurate shot is much more useful than a "hard" shot. Defensmen often use their slapshots so often that it becomes a detriment to other facets of their games. I scored around 50 goals from the defensive position over the last 3 years of my high school career and only 1 was from a slap shot. The others were primarily quick snap shots and screened wrist shots. My strategy was to be where the other team didn’t expect me to be and do what the goalie and opposing defenseman didn’t want/expect me to do. I scored goals on wrist shots from the blue line because I knew the goalie didn’t have a good view through his defensemen and I was able to place the puck at a spot that was hard for him to by the time he realized I had shot the puck.

Hockey can be a very cerebral game. Its important to understand spacing and the tendencies of your opponents. As a defenseman, your job can be easily described as attempting to create favorable situations for your goalie to make a save combined with creating unfavorable situations for the opposition.

Try different things and see what kind of style fits you best and feel free to email me if you have any specific questions or comments.
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