Positioning and team systems: from one player to five.

From skills to strategy

Hockey Canada's Coach 1 manual (Version 1.1, 2022) sets out a ladder of terms, and its 2020-21 skating guide lists the same steps as the order in which players learn the game:

1. Technical skills: skating, shooting, passing, checking.
2. Individual tactics: one player using skills to gain or deny an advantage, such as faking and driving to the net in a 1-on-1.
3. Team tactics: two or more players working together, such as a 3-on-2.
4. Team play systems: coordinated movement of all players, such as a 2-1-2 forecheck.
5. Strategy: choosing systems that impose the team's style, build on its strengths and exploit the opponent's weaknesses. The manual's example is dumping the puck in and forechecking hard with a 2-1-2 against defence players who handle the puck poorly.

Who plays where

An NHL.com explainer from the Seattle Kraken (31 August 2022) describes five skaters in front of the goaltender: a centre, two wings and two defence. The centre takes most faceoffs, leads breakouts and defends in the team's own end; wingers battle in the corners and screen the goaltender; defence partners coordinate so that one stays back when the other joins the attack. More on each role is on the positions page. Hockey Canada's 2020-21 guides add that there should be no position specialisation before U13 and that all children should play every position through U11.

Defence principles from Hockey Canada

Hockey Canada's 2020-21 guide "Developing Skilled Defencemen" is the most detailed federation source on positioning found for this site. It says that by the mid-teens defence players need anticipation, reaction and an understanding of team play, not just technical skill. Its main principles:

Skating

Limited crossovers when skating backward, staying square to the opponent, Mohawk pivots without crossing the feet when turning from backward to forward, and "heels and hips" with a pivot to the middle when turning to meet a rush.

Retrievals

A shoulder check, an angled approach and deception, exploding to the puck to buy time, and knowing the next play before touching the puck.

Breakouts

Called the essence of attacking. Defence pairs and the goaltender agree a shared set of calls for the options, such as quick up, wheel, over, reverse, rim and set.

Regroups

First option a quick pass up to the forwards; defence-to-defence passes to spread the forecheck; defence joining as the second wave.

Neutral-zone defending

Protect the ice between the faceoff dots, pivot to the middle, receive the rush rather than attack it, keep a good gap ("stay up, don't step up"), steer the attack wide while staying inside it, and keep the stick on the ice to take away lanes.

Defensive-zone coverage

Play the defensive side, stick on the ice and in passing lanes, body protecting the path to the net, "stick on puck, body on body" with shoulders square and no lunging, built up in practice from 1-on-1 to 3-on-3.

Shooting from the point

Head up on every shot except one-timers, get pucks through traffic, shoot for teammates' sticks and walk the line to move the puck to the middle.

For high-performance defence players, the guide suggests roughly 35 percent technical skills, 10 percent individual tactics, 40 percent team tactics and transition, and 15 percent strategy.

The 2-1-2 forecheck

According to Wikipedia, the 2-1-2 puts two forwards deep, one high and both defence at the blue line. The first forward (F1) pressures the puck carrier, the second (F2) reads the play and covers passing lanes or recovers the loose puck, the third (F3) stays high on the puck side, and the defence hold the line and pinch on pucks rimmed along the boards. Hockey Canada's Coach 1 manual uses the 2-1-2 as its example of a team play system.

The neutral-zone trap

Wikipedia describes the trap as a defensive system with one forechecker, usually the centre, forcing the puck carrier toward the boards, the wingers near the red line challenging and blocking passes, and both defence near the blue line as the last line.

Stan Fischler, writing for NHL.com on 23 January 2023, says the New Jersey Devils under coach Jacques Lemaire played four skaters in the neutral zone with one sent into the attacking zone, forcing opponents to give the puck up in the middle or dump it in, and that the Devils swept Detroit in the 1995 Stanley Cup Final. Fischler also writes that Lemaire and Larry Robinson did not invent the system: Montreal had used a similar form under Scotty Bowman in the late 1970s. He quotes Tim Sullivan calling it a seldom-used 1-2-2 forecheck, and former Devil Ken Daneyko saying the name "trap" was a media creation.

According to Wikipedia, after the 2004-05 lockout the NHL had officials call obstruction such as hooking and holding strictly and removed the two-line pass rule, both of which made trapping less effective. Wikipedia also links the goaltender trapezoid to the same effort.

Power-play shapes

Jack Han's Hockey Tactics Newsletter (26 April 2023) argues that two formations, the 1-3-1 and the 2-3 "umbrella", have largely replaced the older 3-2 spread and the 2-1-2 box-plus-one in the NHL offensive zone, because of the space they create:

• Umbrella (2-3): two forwards near the net for screens, tips, rebounds and retrievals, and three players above the tops of the circles shooting from the outside. Han's criticisms are that it has no one in the high slot and needs unusually strong shooters up top.
• 1-3-1: Han cites the 2017 Nashville Predators, who used the umbrella at 5-on-4 on the way to the Stanley Cup Final and lost it to Pittsburgh, whose 1-3-1 power play he calls more efficient.

In a Canadian Press report by Joshua Clipperton (The Globe and Mail, 3 April 2024), NHL players described the shift. Mark Giordano spoke of power plays moving from two point men to the 1-3-1; Seth Jones noted that using one defence player instead of two has led to more short-handed goals; and Filip Forsberg compared power-play trends to fashion, with teams copying what works.

Penalty killing

In the same 2024 report, Tage Thompson said video now lets penalty killers tailor their approach to each opposing power play, and Sheldon Keefe called the back-and-forth between power plays and penalty kills a natural cycle. Giordano and Keefe also pointed to skilled forwards such as Connor McDavid, Mitch Marner and Auston Matthews killing penalties, which they said makes power plays more careful about risky passes.

Named penalty-kill shapes, such as the box and the diamond, and named defensive-zone systems, such as the strong-side overload and man-to-man coverage, appear in fan-site and coaching-site explainers that the research for this site could not confirm against a federation or league source. They are not described here.