Defensemen of a certain age in the NHL drop off a cliff. There are some extreme outliers, but for the most part, deals for defensemen over 30 don’t tend to work out. That hasn’t stopped even the most heralded general managers for paying for past performance and holding on a little too long.
There’s no expiration date on the body of an NHL defenseman, but it’s certainly a different game for them than it is for forwards. Wade Redden, a 15-year veteran of the NHL, knows the toll the game can take on your body. He was a top-pairing, minute-eating defenseman with Ottawa who parlayed that success into a mega contract with the New York Rangers at 30. Two seasons later, he was playing in the American Hockey League after an unceremonious demotion.
Redden is obviously an extreme case of someone’s body letting them down, but you see it often. Forwards can play later into their 30s, while defenseman begin to deteriorate. Redden pointed to a few things, including the physical aspects of the sports, as reasons for corrosion of skills.
“I guess the one thing that defenseman are more prone to is just getting hit on the forecheck,” Redden said. “You’re forced back, and you always got to get to the puck first, and it usually results in getting hit more. So I know personally that was the case.”
Redden said that for some of the top defensemen, logging big minutes can also inhibit their longevity.
“I think it definitely takes its toll,” he said. “Especially when you look at the top [defensemen], they’re usually playing more minutes too, 25-30 minutes a night.”
Some elite guys can sustain successful careers later. Look at the final season of Nicklas Lidström – who was elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame this summer, in his first year of eligibility. He finished fifth in Norris Trophy voting – the year prior, at age 40, he won the award given to the league’s top defenseman – and finished with some of the best possession numbers in the league.
“The good ones can obviously get out of traffic and wouldn’t get hit as much,“ Redden explained. “Actually, speaking of that: Duncan Keith last year. I just kept expecting him to just slow down in the playoffs. He was playing 30 minutes a night and just, there’s a guy that’s kind of a step above even the top guys.”
Keith was the winner of the Conn Smythe trophy, awarded to the most valuable player in the Stanley Cup Final. He also, at 32, has eight years left on his deal. The Blackhawks better hope Redden’s assessment is right, and Keith’s legs will be able to sustain that kind of mileage.
If there’s one thing NHL teams love to do, it’s give defensemen absurd contracts. Handing out massive extensions and signing free agents to ludicrous deals is kind of the price of doing business in professional sports. Look at a team like the New York Rangers, who handed out big extensions to players like Dan Girardi and Marc Staal on the back end. At least one of those deals, and also Dan Boyle aging finally, are starting to hurt the team.
It’s a different game for a defenseman, and teams are starting to take notice. Most general managers are slowly adapting, giving younger, better skating defenseman a shot. That will make it even harder for some of the older stars, who have lost foot speed due years of gravity and being run into by forwards.
“Fifteen years ago or something, you could lost a step and the rules allowed the big strong guys to get by and wouldn’t be exposed as much because there was a little more hooking and holding and stuff like that,” explicated Redden. “Now, if you’re not moving it definitely catches up to you … it certainly creates more turnover. When a guy loses a step, he’s not going to be around as long.”
Redden admitted that foot speed is one of the biggest things that goes first. Some defensemen can still use a knowledge of the game to cheat a bit and get by, but it certainly makes it a more arduous task. It can especially be difficult for athletes who are creatures of habit. They have a proclivity to do things a certain way – the way they’ve been doing it for a decade – but then age forces them to adapt so quickly.
It leaves teams in a tough position: what do you do with an aging defenseman? Do you just let them walk away, when they’re seemingly at the top of their game and let them go to the highest bidder and be someone else’s problem? Or do you hope that they’ve found some magic serum? Right now, a lot of teams are electing to choose the latter, for reasons that aren’t evident on the ice, but may be evident in the locker room.
Girardi is the perfect example of this for the Rangers. His play this year has earned him a demotion from his coach – who admittedly pointed to the strong play of Kevin Klein for the reason Girardi no longer plays alongside Ryan McDonagh for the toughest minutes and toughest assignments on the team. Redden and Girardi’s times in New York overlapped, but Redden knows what it’s like to be that veteran defenseman on the way out.
Redden said he thinks Girardi can still be an effective player, but teams need to find the right roles for their veteran defensemen. He also mentioned a guy like Matt Greene and compared him to Girardi. Two guys that have value to their teams that Redden thinks you can depend on in the playoffs. It’s just a matter of knowing that they’re not the top guy anymore. In Los Angeles, that’s Drew Doughty. In New York, they’re hoping Ryan McDonagh can blossom into a Norris winner.
“I think a guy like [Girardi or Greene] is so valuable as a leader, as one of the guy’s that been around there so long that you keep him around and you keep him a big part of it to help nurture the younger guys coming in,” Redden said. “You’ve got to look at their contracts. He’s going to be around there a while so you’ve got to find a way to utilize him and get the best out of him.”
The contracts are the key here. If a guy already has the deal, you need to find a way to make him happy and also utilize him in a way that gets the most out of what he has left in the tank.
“You don’t want to bury him down in the minors like happened to some guys,” Redden joked, harkening back to his own career.
Especially now, that you can only bury up to $950,000 of a player’s salary cap hit. But the fact remains: a guy like Girardi has not been good this season, and started to decline big time last year. His mere presence on the ice has an impact on his teammates.
“[Klein] was playing so much better than [Girardi] that I made the switch,” Rangers head coach Alain Vigneault said after originally demoting Girardi. “For some reason, [Girardi’s] overall game, especially with the puck, has not been as efficient as in the past. He’s working at it, watching a lot of video to see where he can improve.”
The Rangers will clearly afford their veteran defenseman some leeway. After all, there’s a letter stitched on his jersey and he logs tough minutes, to a different level of ability, against top talent. Just take a look at the top forwards he’s faced, by minutes: Evgeni Malkin, Claude Giroux, John Tavares, Sidney Crosby, Alexander Ovechkin. That’s talent.
He’s been various degrees of effective – a 68.8% percent goals for average against Ovechkin is amazing, while he only posted a dismal 22.7% goals for average against Crosby, both at even strength.
So how can teams avoid the mistakes of giving inflated contracts to defensemen, that in all likelihood, won’t live up to them? There are some signs of aging to look for, but for the most part, hope the defenseman is maybe a hall of famer like Lidstrom of Zdeno Chara in the future – whose big body is even starting to fail.
“I think foot speed’s the biggest one,” Redden said. “Some guys are smart enough that they can get in position but I mean a big part of the game now is speed and some of the forwards, what they can do with the puck at a high speed, it puts a lot of onus on a defenseman’s skating ability.”
Redden said the biggest thing is: a guy’s got to be intelligent but also still able to keep up. It seems a lot of defensemen, at age 30, keep that intelligence, but it’s keeping up they have a hard time with.
