Calculating Danger: Developing Defensemen with Coach Matt Deschamps
University of Michigan assistant coach Matt Deschamps discusses the details he prioritizes in developing a modern defenseman
Today we are going to present an interview transcript from a conversation our Sam Stockton had with Matt Deschamps, a current assistant coach at the University of Michigan. An expert in developing defensemen, Deschamps has helped players from Owen Power to Seamus Casey develop their defensive prowess.
Background
Deschamps is currently responsible for running U of M’s defense corps and penalty kill. Before that, Deschamps made stops with the USHL’s Chicago Steel, St. Lawrence University, and at the Austrian club RedBull Salzburg.
Deschamps spoke with Hockey’s Arsenal over the phone about his approach to defensive development in a wide-ranging conversation on everything from stick detail to the relationship between technical skills and tactical intelligence from youth hockey on up.
The conversation jumps off from the topic of the challenge of evaluating a defenseman’s performance through metrics beyond just points. Deschamps frequently returns to two big themes: first, the importance of tailoring coaching and objectives to each individual player, and second, the value for defensemen in adopting a proactive approach rather than a reactive one.
This conversation has been edited for clarity and brevity. We inserted links for further details on the concepts discussed.
How to Evaluate Defensemen
Hockey’s Arsenal: I wanted to start off with a super general question. It seems like if you want to evaluate forwards, you could do a decent job if the only thing you ever looked at was point production, whereas for defensemen that would be a much more limited perspective. When you’re looking at a defenseman (whether using statistics or watching film), what sorts of things do you look at first?
Matt Deschamps: “On SportLogiq, if you’re evaluating forwards, you could look at offensive driving plays. You can see analytically if he was driving a lot of offense, but for D, it doesn’t really tell you the story. [Instead] possession-driving plays because that’s all over the ice. That’s that player having and advancing a puck to his teammates. That’s a little bit better of an indicator, but the evolution of analytically trying to grade a defenseman’s game, it is partly what you as an organization value and how you track it.”
HA: So for you, what sort of metrics might you check in on first to try to assess the quality of a defenseman?
MD: ”I think it’s their chance involvement and expected goals for and against from an analytics standpoint. And then I would look at their possession-driving plays. That could be on a defensive retrieval if they’re able to collect that puck and move it to a teammate successfully. That’s within say neutral zone play where you’re regrouping a puck and you take the puck from your partner and successfully make an outlet pass to a forward, and then it moves up into the offensive zone. So really, it’s possession-based or pass-based, if you’re able to advance pucks. It’s a big thing for defensemen. You want them to defend, but you also want them to—the tagline is ‘make a good first pass.’”
HA: And then more qualitatively, what sort of things might you be looking for on tape to evaluate a defensive prospect?
MD: “Are they good at owning the middle of the ice? Do they push the play outside? Do they dictate with their stick? Are they physical, and are they doing that early or are they chasing a play down because they didn’t read it early?”
How Defensemen Should Defend
HA: On the subject of dictating with your stick, what does it mean or look like to you to do that well?
MD: “You might take an angle skating forward at a guy—where is your stick placed, and are you forcing the player with the puck to an area he might not want to go to because of where your stick is and the angle that you’re taking? Are you giving false information because you want to take something away later? Those are the things that are within that bucket of dictating with your stick. You’re taking the passing option away from that forward, and you’re also taking time and space away from him.”
HA: And is that something that changes whether you’re doing it in the defensive zone versus trying to do it defending the rush?
MD: “Off the rush is always defending the middle and trying to take away the next pass, either behind you or through you, not down ice. Whereas in-zone, you have to be checking to see where the most dangerous threat is—that’s where your stick should be to take away. A lot of the time, if it’s below the goal line, where should your stick be? Should it be defending a pass to the dot or defending a pass to the other side below the goal line? Typically, the one that’s more dangerous is that pass up and to the circle, because that can be a low-to-high quick shot. Whereas if you’re taking away that middle high-danger pass, they have to change sides, and it’s still below the new, so that’s less dangerous. You’re calculating danger.”
Value of Defenders Being Physical
HA: For you, what is the role of physicality for a defenseman in the modern game? Obviously, the overall direction of the game seems to be trending away from that, but maybe for that reason, it still seems like something that can be super valuable in the right situation.
MD: “There’s huge value in it. It’s something that I think is different for each individual based on size, skating ability, and really just their overall demeanor. A guy who’s smaller and just doesn’t have that real mean streak in them, you can’t go and tell ‘em they have to blow everybody up and be really, really hard. Now, if you have a bigger guy that has a want to be physical, then you wanna embrace that and teach them how to do it without taking penalties and while being disciplined and how to do it early. With smaller mobile guys, it’s about trying to allow them to leverage their size to their advantage. Get into hands, get up under guys, stop their momentum. Whereas bigger guys, you would teach more to be body-on-body, be physical, be hard, stop movement. It all depends on the player”
HA: So what distinguishes effective physicality from recklessness?
MD: “Eliminate hands. Eliminate the opposing player’s hands is number one. If you do that, in any fashion—whether it’s high physicality, whether it’s skating into somebody’s lane—that for me is being physical and eliminating a guy’s ability to possess the puck.”
Defensemen Finding Their Identity
HA: In looking at your whole defense corps, how do you strike a balance between keeping everyone on the same page and having some shared structural identity with letting each player do what makes them special?
MD: “It’s being good at juggling. You’re juggling a lot of skillsets and personalities, making sure that the details for each player has been defined, and really at the end of the day, you’re trying to reiterate those key points for each player and the group and making sure that the guys are dialed into the details. And if they do that, those guys grow themselves, and they grow off of each other.”
How to Defend High-Level Hockey
HA: In your experience, are there things that a lot of defensemen tend to struggle with as they transition from junior to college, or does it tend to be more individualized for each player?
MD: “I think it’s a little bit of both. There’s certain things that players coming from junior to the NCAA level—it’s faster, so we talk about seeing the levels of speed, and a lot of young defensemen have a hard time reading what the speed is underneath the puck, what the threats are underneath the puck. Those are things I think in general when defensemen take the next step, they have to adjust to. And then a lot of it is strength and speed and footwork and being efficient, and then a lot of times, it’s a focus on their stick. How do they dictate? And just trying to teach those guys that throughout the year.”
HA: There seems to be a conversation across sports today about how the players entering the pro level are more advanced in terms of technical skills than they’ve ever been but some of the more abstract, hockey IQ type skills might be lacking. Is that dynamic something you’ve seen play out?
MD: “I think you see it at the youth level for sure. With everybody really focusing on the quote-unquote skill development of the game, something’s going to fall to the wayside, and a lot of that is game tactics and in-game recognition. And then this is blanket, just from the youth hockey sphere, you can see that there is a lot of individual skill, maybe less of the game tactics. And that’s not everywhere. If you have a really good coach at the youth level, they teach the kids how to see space, how to make passes, passing to where the player’s gonna be not where he is. Those kinda things. And that’s tough to do in a one-on-one private lesson, where you can work on your hands and your feet and your shot, but actually knowing how to use a nine iron instead of a driver for the tempo of your puck, so the puck goes to space at the right time, that is a skill, and that’s a game skill that’s high IQ that’s harder to find nowadays.”
Developing Hockey Defensemen IQ
HA: As a coach, what are the ways you can try to fill in that gap?
MD: “You can develop [that kind of hockey IQ]. It’s skill blended to small area games into practice drills, and then you need some free play too. Where there’s no winners, no losers, no consequences. It’s free. They’re out and they’re able to be confident to try things and make mistakes and not have a consequence of a winner and a loser or minutes decreasing. That’s where you see, it’s been talked about year over year over year, the kids from Minnesota having access to playing on the ponds or the backyard rinks, where those are some ways to be able to do that.”
HA: On a somewhat related note, I’m curious about how you view risk factor for younger defensemen. It feels like that’s one of the biggest determinants in earning ice time and getting a role as you climb levels. How do you see that play out?
MD: “The maturity of risk calculation is a big one for defenseman. They have to have confidence in that judgment, but it is something learned. It’s something that can be built. Like, within this situation, you have to make a read. Are you the last guy back? Should you be trying to go through somebody’s triangle? Is it the last two minutes of a period? Did you just score or did they just score on you? Are you trailing in the third period? All those things, or are you against their first line or are you against their fourth line? Those are all calculations of risk management. Am I going to do something really uber offensive if I’m against their top line, if I make a mistake it could be in the back of the net pretty easily? Or is it against their fourth line, where they really don’t create offense, so I can try to take more risk?”
HA: What NHL players do you find yourself turning to most often for examples of some of the concepts you’re teaching on video?
MD: “I think we have a ton of Michigan alums playing in the NHL that we can draw from, so typically like to use those guys first, as their guys that our guys know and have seen the path through. I think there’s some other D. It all depends too on what you’re showing and who you’re showing it to. I wouldn’t show something that Radko Gudas does to a small, offensive defenseman that doesn’t play the game hard. That doesn’t make sense. You’re trying to find somebody with certain traits that your player has that then you can say ‘hey, this guy does this here.’ A smaller defenseman like Jared Spurgeon is a great defenseman to show defending-wise or Nick Blankenburg, another great example of a smaller defenseman who competes really hard and how he uses physicality with the frame that he has to go against guys that are five inches, six inches taller than they are and still execute and stop guys, eliminate hands, those kind of things.”
How to Succeed as an ‘Undersized’ Defenseman
HA: Could you expand on, with Blankenburg in particular, what impresses you about how he’s able to play physically as an undersized D?
MD: “I certainly think that he uses every inch of his size to his advantage. He plays with a big heart, and he competes, and he’ll block shots, but when you see him going into the corner, he does a really good job of getting into guys’ hands and eliminating their speed. He gets right up underneath them. He doesn’t go shoulder-to-shoulder, because why would you do that if say you’re 5’10” and you’re going against somebody who’s 6’5”? You’re just gonna bounce off, but if you go through their hands and get up inside them, you can take their stick away, stop their momentum, and then you end up in a position to get the puck. It’s being smarter.”
HA: What other defensive details do you focus on when watching defensemen that someone who isn’t as locked into to this aspect of the game might not pick up on?
MD: “How they set their gap on the line rush, how they’re able to make their gaps tight, and everybody’s different. It’s just watching the guys who are really elite at it, how they manipulate the gap and how they dictate from the middle to force guys into areas they don’t want to be in. That’s what I see all the time.”
HA: Is there anyone who springs to mind as exceptionally good at that skill?
MD: “It’s a great question. There’s quite a few, and it’s kind of a laundry list. Obviously, Owen Power does a great job of stepping down and setting gap. I think Rasmus Dahlin does it as well. Trouba does a good job, just in a different fashion, especially as the weak side D. He usually finds himself getting into physical situations in the middle of the ice because his timing is really good, and then the elite skaters—the Quinn Hughes, the Luke Hughes, those guys—can set gap really well because they are so efficient with their skating.”
HA: Something about that phrase “setting a gap” implies a degree of agency and dictating an opponent’s option. I assume that’s sort of what you’re looking for, rather than just being totally reactionary. Could you expand on what it looks like to be that guy who dictates, rather than just responds?
MD: “100%. When you just respond, you’re just retreating, and typically, the gap is larger than you’d like, and you’re essentially giving up lines. Our game is a game of real estate, and we want to kill plays as early as possible and not give up lines. If a D finds a way to shorten that gap and step in and use their feet, whether it’s skating forwards or pivoting backwards. Everybody’s different, but if they have the knack to do that, they can see where the threats are and be more more aggressive. If the threat is not wide or underneath, then they can be aggressive and try to set gap and kill a play early. That’s dictating, rather than just seeing a puck go on the half wall and then you just start backing out. That’s having a soft gap, and typically you’re then giving a team real estate that you don’t want to give them.”
Further Reading
Seamus Casey
Owen Power
Modern Day Defensemen