Zone Entry Offense: Middle Delay with Depth Speed
Offensive zone entry strategies to improve your team's rush performance
Entering the offensive zone with control of the puck is a practice that teams of all levels, skills, and ages would agree is preferable to a dump-and-chase. But often lost in the discourse is the ‘how’. So, here's a brief word on using a ‘middle delay’ to improve your team’s offensive zone rush.
First, getting depth on zone entries is critical. Typically, we think about the puck carrier gaining depth, whether through a dump-in or a player driving the puck wide.
But what is often missing are the players off the puck. If a player away from the puck takes the depth role, then the puck carrier can utilize the space up high to challenge the defense. This poses the question, “Are you going to step or fall back?”
On Twitter/X, I used to post a mixtape of a “Clip of the Day.” Here is an example of the Middle Delay to get us started:
Now let’s take a look at Mitch Marner from the 4 Nations Face-Off championship game:
Stop up Delay
In the first period, we see Marner almost come to a complete stop, high in the middle of the offensive zone, as the USA defense drops back trying to sort out all of Canada’s threats.
Marner is one of the world’s best at pulling players to him (into his orbit so to speak). His delays and middle threats drag defenders into poor spots and often make them flat-footed. His sacrifice provides his teammates with space and with adventageous conditions.
This one doesn’t result in a goal, but showcases how effective this general concept can be in breaking down an opponent on the rush.
Overlap with Sam Bennett
Next, we see a very tight 3v2 situation with plenty of USA backpressure that basically turns the situation into 3v3 or 3v4, which isn’t overly dangerous. Yet the offensive genius that Marner is attracts USA #23 to drag across the middle. That allowed an overlapping teammate (Sam Bennett) to dive into the recently vacated space for a partial breakaway.
If you pay close attention, you can see where Marner is looking… sideways and backward to sort and defeat the backcheckers.
Marner’s ability to get to the middle of the ice and sacrifice himself allows for offensive generation for his teammates who are flanking him. It’s a strategy that has generated offense time and time again. Try it out!
Here are further examples of how players are generating rush offense against an organized defense:
Further Reading