How to defend 2 on 1

[AfftonDad 88]

Got in to a "discussion" a the rink last night as to what is the "correct" way for the defenseman to defend a 2 on 1 rush. I was wondering what your guys opinions are.

[jbss71 1]

Im a take the passing lane away, make the goalie deal with the shooter kinda guy.

[nickyb13 9]

your job is to stop the pass across. goalie's job to stop the shot

[Chadd 916]

It's a two part job

1. Take the pass away

2. Don't let the puck carrier cross the middle of the ice

Against a lower level opponent, I may actually press the guy with the puck if I don't think he or the other guy can make a high level play to beat me and the goalie. It's not the right thing to do according to "the book" but it can work against less talented players.

[Justin Liedloff 13]

As a former goaltender, I can tell you that it really depends on your goalie. Whenever I start playing with a new team, I always talk to the keeper and see what his (or her) preference is. Some want you to simply take away the pass and let them have the shot, some want you to play right down the middle, some want you to force the shooter into a low percentage shot.

Personally? I liked my D to play right down the middle until the shooter had no angle.

[AfftonDad 88]

Ok... good to know I haven't lost my mind.

I was playing with a goaltender last night who insisted that the ONLY way to play it is to take the non-puck carrier. I have always been taught that you take away the passing LANE (not the pass receiver). To me that generally means staying between the two. However if the puck carrier is very wide and the potential pass receiver is in the slot, I'll probably favor him (the guy without the puck) a little more. If they are both evenly spaced and centered, I might favor the puck carrier's side a little more. It's my opinion that if you take the non-puck carrier completely (at least while the play is still developing) that you'll give the puck carrier too much freedom to do whatever he wants. Having said that, as the play gets deeper and deeper I'll start moving towards one or the other (depending on the skill and/or known tendencies of the players and which side he shoots with relative to which side he is on). Sometimes that means tying up the man without the puck in front and sometimes if the puck carrier is very deep and at a bad angle and backchecking support is near, I'll start moving towards the puck carrier while staying in the very narrow passing lane that exists from the puck carrier to the non-puck carrier, staying low, covering up as much space as possible with my arms between my legs or even laying down one leg, so that he can't pass and he can't cut back across from a low percentage area to a high percentage area.

I did tell the goalie though that different goalies have different preferences and I'll play it however he wants me to as long as he lets me know in advance. He said it doesn't have anything to do with preferences... ALWAYS TAKE THE GUY WITHOUT THE PUCK.

BTW... just the thought of how that would look is pretty funny to me... Man up on the guy without the puck and then he gets the pass so you immediately switch to covering the guy on the other side that just passed... that could get pretty exhausting.

[wrangler 157]

I like to force the puck carrier to the outside a bit, while not straying too far from the middle of the slot. Then as we get closer to the goalie, and the puck carrier's angle gets worse, I slide away, to cover the other player, and let the goalie take the puck carrier. This allows me to attempt to prevent the other player from receiving a pass, or stuffing home a rebound.

[Law Goalie 147]

As others have said, it's part communication with the goalie, part situation (depending on who has the puck, who the other guy is, and where they are on the ice), and part responsibility. Allowing a guy to walk right down the middle for an unpressured shot while you cover a guy off to the side is obviously not helpful; likewise, hurling yourself at the puck-carrier and allowing a pass to a more dangerous player in a more dangerous spot. However, the WORST thing you can do in a 2-on-1, and the main reason why goalies who don't trust their D tend to insist that they do something consistent (ie. take the pass away, 'let me worry about the shot'), is to neither limit the shooter nor cover the pass, and end up backing right in on the goalie. If the goalie can't rely on you to take the pass away, he can't commit to the shooter; if he can't rely on you to limit the shooter's options OR take the pass away, he effectively has to play it like a 2v0 where you might end up screening or actually running into him.

[black hills tj 5]

Ask the goalie. Communicate. Talk to the goalie, and have the goalie talk to you as the play is happening. Unless the goalie states something else, and taking into account the players' skill levels, I, like most of the rest of you, take away the passing lane and adjust my position as the play unfolds.

[MyBoxersSayJoe 133]

I usually favor the pass and take the lane away. But I don't favor them so much that I give the puck carrier an open-invitation to just walk right in.

[Stoop 1]

However, the WORST thing you can do in a 2-on-1, and the main reason why goalies who don't trust their D tend to insist that they do something consistent (ie. take the pass away, 'let me worry about the shot'), is to neither limit the shooter nor cover the pass, and end up backing right in on the goalie. If the goalie can't rely on you to take the pass away, he can't commit to the shooter; if he can't rely on you to limit the shooter's options OR take the pass away, he effectively has to play it like a 2v0 where you might end up screening or actually running into him.

So don't do this:

http://video.oilers.nhl.com/videocenter/console?catid=4&id=141294

[tareatingrat 4]

I'll take the pass away, favoring the shooter's side. As was mentioned above, I don't like to back up down the middle because I don't like to back up straight into the goalie.

Also, I'm a terrible defenceman, so, yeah.

[iceNsteel 0]

In a no checking way I think the best thing you can do is take away the passing lane and hold a defensive line that prevents the puck carrier from gaining the center lane of the ice. Most of the time they'll hold the puck waiting to make the pass in an open lane and close enough that the goalie can't adjust. If the pass never becomes available they're forced to either take the puck behind the net and start a cycle, or take a low percentage shot. In my experience most of the time they take the low percentage shot.

[Law Goalie 147]

So don't do this:

http://video.oilers....tid=4&id=141294

That's pretty bad. Hejda would definitely be off my Christmas card list.

On the other hand, he managed neither to screen the goalie nor run into him, so the Oilers couldn't add him to their list. The Oilers, let us not forget, managed to blow out Roloson's knee in the '06 Finals on what was, if memory serves, originally a 2v1.

[black hills tj 5]

So don't do this:

http://video.oilers....tid=4&id=141294

Just watched that video...anyone else notice that everything in the pics on either side of the video had Bauer clearly visible? Hooray for product placement/branding.

[Harv 86]

http://sports.yahoo....?urn=nhl-282565

Is it just me or is having the goalie "take the shooter" on a 2-on-1 the most ridiculous hockey axiom we all still abide by...?

[Law Goalie 147]

Spectacularly poor reasoning.

Is it just me or is having the goalie "take the shooter" on a 2-on-1 the most ridiculous hockey axiom we all still abide by?

First, if you take it as an axiom, you've already misapplied it; second, it's nowhere near the most ridiculous. Throwing sticks in front of shots *is* treated axiomatically by some teams and coaches, and it is infinitely more ridiculous: it turns a high-paid, highly-skilled goaltender into the subject of a game of pure chance.

Even if the defender executes the play perfectly -- he takes a few pokes at the puck, blocks the passing lane, and maybe lays down the perfect slide (off the net, so as to not take out his own goalie) -- the player with the puck is essentially left with a short breakaway. Which is an awesome deal for him.

This is exactly why 'essentializing' or 'totalizing' claims are universally suspect in serious discourse. (Which is, of course, a totalizing claim itself, requiring unpacking.) He's arguing this as though "taking the pass away" means that the D and F2 vanish from the ice like a pair of self-cancelling Platonic sprites. Bollocks. Again, if you take the rule of thumb (which is a milliner's expression for testing the consistency of flour between your thumb and forefinger) as axiomatic, you create a reductio ad absurdum where none exists.

Think about it: if F2 went and sat down against the boards outside the blueline, would the D go and sit down with him? If F2 just goes way, way wide, deliberately attempting to draw the D off the shooter, only a complete moron would fall for that: the length of the pass and the angle of the subsequent shot would be extremely low-percentage until and unless F2 started angling back towards the goal -- at which point the D no longer has to go out of position to cover him.

I love 2-on-1's. You put it in coast, get comfortable and go showtime. No pressure.

Rhetorical hogwash -- and he repeats it.

All I know is, as a forward, I love nothing more than realizing I'm on a 2-on-1, putting it in neutral, and getting my head up to do whatever I so please with the puck. I could pump-fake my little heart out and enjoy my mini-breakaway.

Champagne dreams on a beer-league imagination.

... If the goalie were made aware that the pass was now his responsibility, it would help his chances of reacting to a pass and thus, getting over to make a save -- he'd be expecting it.

This is utterly false. A defenceman playing a shooter is no guarantee that the shot won't come. Has this guy never seen a shot come off a 1-on-1, let alone a goal?

If the D forfeits his responsibility for the pass to pressure the shooter, as Bourne is arguing he should, the goalie is *still* responsible for the shot, and now wholly responsible for the pass as well. Exactly as I described earlier, the shooter now has has viable shot and pass options.

Spend more than two minutes watching any decent goalie, and you'll notice that their shot-ready stance is significantly different than their moving stance: lower, deeper, more settled, and, as a result, less mobile. In setting up for a shot, a goalie is less able to react to a play that changes the shooting angle, eg. a backdoor pass.

Now let's proceed to the conclusion:

We all fear change, but we need to keep evolving. Pressuring the puck-carrier just makes more sense.

I love it. He spends the whole article pursuing one line of reasoning - D should take the puck-carrier to the neglect of the pass - and then ends with a platitude and a retraction into generality. It's a classic weasel move. If you argue a very specific point and conclude with a much more general formulation, you can try to claim, if someone attacks your premises, that the conclusion is still sound -- if you don't mind looking a fool. Eg.:

Power corrupts.

Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Dictators have absolute power.

Therefore dictators are bad.

If I point out that power does not necessarily corrupt, or that it's rather difficult to prove an absolute, or that dictators are limited in their power by the effective exercise of their bureaucrats, Dumbo the Logician gets to say, "But are you saying dictators aren't bad? Huh? Are you saying you love fascism? Do you hate democracy?" -- that is, while everyone with a brain rolls his eyes back into it.

OF COURSE the D should pressure the puck-carrier on a 2v1 -- as long as it doesn't limit his ability to be responsible for the pass, just as his responsibility for the pass doesn't mean he's absolved of any duty toward the shooter. Bourne has been arguing all along, by way of strawmanning, that the D by default axiomatically takes the pass and ignores the shooter completely, when they should axiomatically do the opposite. Now, all of a sudden, he backs away to "pressure the puck-carrier." Classic.

The fact is that what we call a "2 on 1" is actually two players against two. Since goalies are by their nature prevented from playing man-to-man in the open ice (that woud leave the goal untended, for one thing) the D is likewise limited from playing man to man: he has to play a sort of biased zone coverage, in which he has dual responsibilities, one of which (covering the pass option) takes priority as long as the pass remains a high-percentage play.

You'll notice, for one thing, and as Bourne never mentions, that 2v1s almost invariably develop in high-level hockey into a puck-carrier wide and F2 driving the net down the middle. Why? Because any idiot knows that if the shooter is coming straight down the middle, the angle and his options are greater. Intelligent offensive players won't even try to rush the puck down the middle in a 2v1 except to get the D to overcommit to them; they'll play it to the wide man, precisely because they know the D would force them at the blueline, and then would cover them all the way in.

[Chadd 916]

You have put more thought into that one reply than he has put into the entire run his blog has had. He's a joke, the sad thing is that some people take him seriously.

[Sav25 1]

I love this thread - nice one Afftondad.

My team currently play a strict "stay on the free man" game - to the point where you're literally smelling the free man, and letting the puck carrier do whatever he wants - with the goalie 99.5% that no pass is possible.

Works for us most of the time, but occasionally our goalie has a bad day and we can lose a few goals.

I like the idea of blocking/controlling the pass but pressuring the puck carrier at the same time - not sure how well I could pull this off though...I need more hands and sticks!

Any advice would be good?

[Law Goalie 147]

You have put more thought into that one reply than he has put into the entire run his blog has had. He's a joke, the sad thing is that some people take him seriously.

That's the terrible thing about waking up and working on Victorian poetry: it makes you take trifles seriously, so that even in dismissing them, you give them more attention than they deserve.

[AIREAYE 248]

That's the terrible thing about waking up and working on Victorian poetry: it makes you take trifles seriously, so that even in dismissing them, you give them more attention than they deserve.

LOL I wanted to stop reading after "self-cancelling Platonic sprites"

I sometimes get caught as D on 2 on 1s but my timing/positioning isn't there yet. Often times I resort to try using my stick in the passing lane because I've backed up too much and often times I fail...

[Law Goalie 147]

Hah!

I love this thread - nice one Afftondad.

My team currently play a strict "stay on the free man" game - to the point where you're literally smelling the free man, and letting the puck carrier do whatever he wants - with the goalie 99.5% that no pass is possible.

Works for us most of the time, but occasionally our goalie has a bad day and we can lose a few goals.

I like the idea of blocking/controlling the pass but pressuring the puck carrier at the same time - not sure how well I could pull this off though...I need more hands and sticks!

Any advice would be good?

Mentally, it's about weighing threats and covering options. Physically, being able to make constant fluid adjustments in position as you're skating is key, as is an accurate, active stick and the ability to use your feet - your skate-blades are like two extra sticks with very high lies. Use them well, and it's like you have three sticks; use them badly, and you'll put it into your own goal.

[wrangler 157]

LOL I wanted to stop reading after "self-cancelling Platonic sprites"

I wanted to hear more about how milliners use flour.

[Law Goalie 147]

I can't believe I did that. I must have been wearing a loaf of bread for a hat. And speaking of Ryan Miller, check out this windmill glove-save...

[AfftonDad 88]

Mentally, it's about weighing threats and covering options. Physically, being able to make constant fluid adjustments in position as you're skating is key

That is what makes hockey such an incredible sport to me. When played well, everything is in such perfect balance and you can completely change the complexion of a play by a small difference in positioning. The angles in hockey are a geometrical thing of beauty. When you are skating backwards defending an even man rush on a player you can actually FEEL when you have the forward at the perfect equilibrium point where he knows he can't go to the inside or the outside. That is a great feeling.