For the last few games of the season, I’ve been tracking zone transitions by Oilers defencemen. I introduced Zone Exits here and have updated it through the last 11 games. This post is about Zone Entries Against, explained here.
As a brief summary, teams that allow the opposition to enter the zone with control of the puck tend to give up more shots than teams that force the opponents to dump it in. This makes intuitive sense. If you force a dump in, the other team has to reacquire possession of the puck before they can get a shot.
So your goal, as a defender, should be to:
- Deny the opposition from entering the zone at all (Zone Entry Denial)
- If “1” isn’t possible, to force them to dump it in, so that they have to try to get it back (Uncontrolled Entry)
For the last 10 games, I tracked whenever an Oilers defenceman was targeted on a Zone Entry Against (meaning they were the primary defender on the zone entry). I did not include when other teams dumped the puck and went immediately for a line-change or when the primary defender was a forward. I also didn’t include when the Oilers brought the puck back into the zone themselves (usually to regroup).
For more information on the project, see my linked posts above. For much better writing on the subject, see Jen Lute Costella’s work here.
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Zone Entries
I have to say, tracking Zone Entries Against has been one of the more enlightening aspects of this project for me. Already I find myself noticing subtle changes in positioning and gap control, which I was aware of before but didn’t zero in on while watching a game in particular. The game goes quickly and while we remember the tire-fire in the Oilers zone, we don’t often remember the slightly poor gap control that allowed the puck into the zone in the first place. Like a vaccine for an illness, preventing Controlled Zone Entries is about the stopping the tire-fire from happening in the first place.
Before we get started, a few definitions as reminders:
- Times Targeted – Number of times defender was targeted on a zone entry
- Denied – The defender prevents the opposing team from entering the zone
- Controlled Entry – The opposing team brings the puck in maintaining possession (usually carrying it in)
- Uncontrolled Entry – The opposing team gets the puck in but loses possession and has to get it back (usually due to the defenceman forcing a dump in)
The Raw Data
I present the raw data first for reference but I’ll quickly move in to more useful ways of parsing it.
So What Does That Mean?
In order to make sense of these numbers, let’s look at them as percentages. This chart is sorted by Controlled Entries Against. Remember, the goal is to have fewer Controlled Entries Against and Zone Denials are ideal (if relatively rare).
Two things strike me immediately. One is that there is an enormous gap here from best to worst… even larger than Controlled Zone Exit Percentage. When an opponent attempts to gain the zone against Sekera, they can only do so with control 1/3 of the time. Against Clendening, it’s almost 4/5! That’s a wild difference, especially since Clendening faced softer competition.
The second is that this chart does not match up with the Zone Exit one. Just because you’re good at Zone Exits, does not make you good at defending the Zone Entries… at least in this 10 game sample.
Andrej Sekera stands head and shoulders over everyone else here. His Denied Entries are good, but where he really shines is forcing the opposition to dump the puck in. He’s better than every other Oiler defenceman in this 10 game study and it’s not close.
The next group features Reinhart and Fayne, both somewhat maligned, but both show up reasonably well. Fayne did a great job at denying zone entries performed well at forcing dump-ins as well. You can see why Fayne and Sekera might work well as a pairing despite their relatively poor Controlled Zone Exit Percentages. Your zone exits are perhaps a bit less important if the other team can’t get the puck in! Reinhart, meanwhile, continues to show his ability as a fairly balanced defenceman. He played reasonable competition in these 10 games, moved the puck consistently pretty well and forced a lot of dump-ins at the line.
Pardy has, again, a rather small sample size against two non-playoff teams (Vancouver and Calgary) at the end of the season and managed to avoid the top players from either team… so we’d need a larger sample size to say much about him.
Then we come to Nurse and Oesterle. They do an equal job of preventing Controlled Zone Entries and are fairly similar when it comes to Zone Denials. Neither are particularly strong when it comes to holding the blue line.
There is, however, one difference between them. This next chart looks at how many times each defenceman is Targeted and how many Controlled Entries they allow per 60 minutes of play. It is sorted by Controlled Entries / 60, with the best at the top.
Despite similar percentages, Nurse allows more Controlled Entries into the defensive zone than Oesterle, mostly due to be targeted more often. In fact, no Oilers defenceman gets targeted on zone entries as often as Nurse does.
It had been pointed out to me that maybe the answer is in the untargeted zone entries. After all, there is some subjectivity in whether a defenceman has been “targeted” or not. So, for the last 5 games, I made a separate note every time there was a non-targeted entry (either a dump-in from a long way back or one where a forward was the primary defender) on a defender’s side of the ice. I’ll save the trouble of another chart and just say that it didn’t explain much in this situation. Nurse still had the most entries on his side. For whatever reason, the opposing team is attacking the line against Nurse at a higher rate than any other defenceman.
There’s one more point from this graph. Look at the rate of Controlled Entries allowed by Fayne and Sekera. Maybe that’s the reason why that pairing does well. Together, they allow almost half as many Controlled Entries as the Nurse / Clendening pairing. Though I didn’t count “tire-fires”, I don’t remember many of them while Sekera and Fayne were on the ice. Maybe it’s because they stopped them upstream.
Puck Retrieval
One more factor to consider. Jen Lute Costella recently had an excellent post commenting that while most teams generate more shots via Controlled Zone Entries, some teams are able to generate a high number of shots off dump-ins as well. There’s a missing piece to this zone entry puzzle.
Thankfully, for the last 10 games, I’ve also been tracking Puck Retrievals. Any time the puck was dumped in and there was some forechecking pressure, I tracked whether the closest defenceman to the dump in succeeded or failed at recovering the puck. I did not include situations where there was no active forechecking pressure, where a forward got the puck first, or where the goaltender handled the puck. A Successful Recovery involves not just getting possession, but successfully passing it to another player on the team or getting it out of the zone. Anything that causes a loss of possession (or a failure to acquire possession at all) is an Unsuccessful Recovery.
The key column is on the right. That’s the Percent Success rate.
There are a few factors to consider in this chart. Firstly, the numbers were surprisingly small (at least to me). A large number of dump-ins had no pressure (e.g. the other team attempted the line, failed and then went for a line-change) or had the goaltender touching the puck before anyone else. Given the frequency of goalies involved in dump-ins, I plan to add this to my tracking next year.
Second, the range is a lot narrower than I expected. Generally, we’re talking about a 15% gap from worst to best (Pardy’s small sample size excluded). Compare that to the 43% gap from worst to best in Controlled Entries Against or the ~30% gap in Controlled Zone Exits.
Third, when a defender forces the other team to the dump it in, it’s usually his defensive partner that has to deal with the puck recovery (except in cases of a ‘chip and chase’).
Finally, despite the way I’m presenting this, it is not truly an individual stat. Defensive pairings (and sometimes the first forward back and the goalie) work together on a puck retrieval. So an Unsuccessful Recovery for a defenceman may have as much to do with his defensive partner as it does with himself. Still, I think it’s worth tracking as the missing piece of the Zone Entry Against puzzle.
That all said, in this 10 game sample, Sekera, Oesterle and Reinhart had the most difficulty with puck recovery while Fayne and Nurse were strongest. Pardy also looked good, with the same caveats mentioned above.
Summary
Andrej Sekera is a monster at preventing Controlled Zone Entries. He does so at a higher rate than any other Oilers defenceman and it is more impressive than his puck movement skills (at least as far as Zone Exits go). He is the only undisputed top 4 defenceman on the Oilers out of the 7 tracked and it shows in this measure.
Mark Fayne, while no Andrej the Giant, also prevents Controlled Zone Entries at reasonably high rate, through both forcing dump-ins and outright denial of the zone. I hypothesize that it’s this skill that helps Fayne’s corsi numbers, despite his poor puck movement. Combined with his good puck retrieval skills, he complements Sekera well, collecting and moving pucks when Sekera forces dump-ins.
Griffin Reinhart also shows well here. He prevents Controlled Zone Entries at a rate equal to the veteran Mark Fayne. Given his reasonable puck movement skills, I suspect if Reinhart shot right, he’d have played far more games for the team this year.
For all of Jordan Oesterle’s strengths in getting the puck out of the zone with control, he gives some of it back here. Working on his positioning and gap control will help him become an NHL regular. He doesn’t necessarily need size. He just needs to watch a lot of Sekera tape.
Darnell Nurse also struggles with gap control. He’s able to battle and get some pucks back after dump-ins, but he allows too many Controlled Zone Entries. The opposing teams seem to be on to him as they target him heavily. It’s also worth mentioning that, just as in the Zone Exits post, Nurse has been highly inconsistent game to game in his ability prevent zone entries. There are games where he’s at Sekera-levels and games where he’s more like Clendening. Rookies.
Adam Clendening was not good here. He had terrible gap control, which I suspect is due to his lack of speed. Combined with his poor puck movement, he was not a supportive partner for Nurse and lost his spot to the other Adam.
Adam Pardy showed well by a number of different measures I recorded. Controlled Zone Exit Percentage, Zone Entry Denials, Puck Retrievals… he did a lot well in the three games I tracked. Each time I chalked it up to small sample size and quality of competition (both players and overall team). Yet, he can’t control those things, was coming off injury, and performed well. Maybe there’s a player there?
Next Up
- A few have asked how these zone transition numbers correlate with corsi, so I intend to explore this.
- I’m going back and tracking some games earlier in the year as I’m curious how Klefbom, Davidson, and Gryba look by Zone Exits and Zone Entries Against. I’ll see how far I get. The sample size will be small, but maybe I can provide some useful data.
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