Move over, Rod Langway: Canes’ Jaccob Slavin is NHL’s No. 1 Shutdown Defenseman

Part VIII in a Series

The Norris Trophy was established in 1953 to recognize the top defenseman in the NHL “who demonstrates throughout the season the greatest all-around ability in the position.” Yet, with rare exception, the award over the past decade has gone almost exclusively to the defenseman who has piled up the most points that season – or at least been in the top two or three.

And Cale Makar is the exception, much like seven-time winner Nick Lidstrom, who truly excels at both ends of the rink.

Part of the reason the defensive component of the Norris has been overlooked in recent years is because it is difficult to quantify. We can see defensive positioning and posture with our eyes, but we’ve had a harder time properly quantifying it because a lot of it is influenced by overall team success or failure, including goaltending.

That’s gotten easier in the last couple years with the emergence of fancy stats.

And to that end, we’ve been advocating for a true “defensive defenseman” trophy for years. Call it the Rod Langway Award, named after the Secretary of Defense, the only shutdown blueliner to be honored in the hallowed Hockey Hall of Fame. But that’s a campaign for another day.

The truth is, if there was a Langway Award, Carolina Hurricanes stalwart Jaccob Slavin probably would have won a couple by now.

It’s no surprise then that Slavin shined through in our Archetype Rankings as the No. 1 Shutdown Defenseman in the NHL. Slavin is such a presence in his own end that he honestly deserved consideration to fall into the Franchise Player category, since each player can only be slotted into one archetype classification bucket. Only three defensemen made the cut: Makar, Roman Josi and Victor Hedman – all Norris winners.

The goal of the exercise was to eliminate consideration of puck-moving ability and point production, to purely focus on defensive zone play. We defined the Shutdown Defenseman as: “Utilizing a combination of reach, awareness and skating ability, shutdown defensemen are stout on zone entries, limit time and space for opposition and effectively limit scoring chances and extra chances.”

With that definition serving as our guiding light, and the help of five anonymous NHL front office executives, here are Daily Faceoff’s Top 20 projected Shutdown Defensemen for the 2022-23 season, with their league-wide rank from last season in these categories:

Rank	Player	Pos	Age	Team	Total Denials	Carry Denial	DZ Deflect Turnover	DZ Pass Int	Iso xGA
1	Jaccob Slavin	LD	28	CAR	6	9	3	12	-13.3%
2	Aaron Ekblad	RD	26	FLA	12	1	91	57	-12.6%
3	Charlie McAvoy	RD	24	BOS	9	8	96	43	-12.2%
4	Jonas Brodin	LD	29	MIN	37	22	18	18	-11.6%
5	Travis Sanheim	LD	26	PHI	3	18	23	28	-6.2%
6	Colton Parayko	RD	29	STL	4	30	16	22	-4.4%
7	Alex Pietrangelo	RD	32	VGK	17	36	27	8	+2.4%
8	MacKenzie Weegar	RD	28	CGY	7	5	20	10	-1.4%
9	Damon Severson	RD	28	NJD	5	2	17	3	+0.8%
10	Devon Toews	LD	28	COL	86	97	14	14	-3.7%
11	Darnell Nurse	LD	27	EDM	32	21	32	127	-6.5%
12	Brandon Carlo	RD	28	BOS	54	53	31	20	-5.1%
13	Josh Morrissey	LD	27	WPG	20	23	24	100	-5.3%
14	Ryan Graves	LD	27	NJD	29	26	21	34	-4.5%
15	Noah Hanifin	LD	25	CGY	12	2	19	106	-3.2%
16	Jonas Sieganthaler	LD	25	NJD	52	16	6	74	-15.1%
17	TJ Brodie	LD	32	TOR	17	17	39	52	-8.8%
18	Mattias Samuelsson	LD	22	BUF	23	10	12	37	-5.2%
19	Vladislav Gavrikov	LD	26	CBJ	34	83	2	65	+1.7%
20	Adam Larsson	RD	29	SEA	10	19	29	77	-0.5%

Data powered by Stathletes

LEGEND
Total Denials: NHL rank among defensemen in 2021-22 in total zone entry denials per game at the blue line.
Carry Denial: NHL rank among defensemen in 2021-22 in denying zone entries by forwards who were attempting to carry the puck into the zone.
DZ Deflect Turnover: NHL rank among defensemen in 2021-22 in turnovers created in the defensive zone by deflecting pucks using their stick.
DZ Pass Intercept: NHL rank among defensemen in 2021-22 in passes intercepted in the defensive zone.
Iso xGA: Percentage relative to the rest of the NHL in 2021-22 in isolated expected goals against while that defenseman is on the ice. e.g. There is a 15.1% reduction in expected goals compared to the league average while Jonas Siegenthaler is on the ice. (Stat courtesy of HockeyViz.com).

Under Consideration (in alphabetical order): Rasmus Andersson, Erik Cernak, Ben Chiarot, Brian Dumoulin, Mattias Ekholm, Gustav Forsling, Filip Hronek, John Marino, Ryan McDonagh, Tyler Myers, Andrew Peeke, Brady Skjei, Nikita Zadorov, Artem Zub.

It’s interesting working through the exercise to see how your perception of a player might change. We probably think of Aaron Ekblad as a point-producing machine, but he leverages his skating ability, physical nature and hockey IQ to deny more carry-in attempts at the blueline than any player in the NHL. His stick may not be as elite as Slavin’s, but Ekblad’s equally adept at keeping expected goals out of the net.

We were also intrigued by the team-by-team make-up of the list. The New Jersey Devils have the market cornered on shutdown guys, with three making the list in Severson, Siegenthaler and Graves. The Flames made it a priority to add a second in Weegar, and they also had Rasmus Andersson and Nikita Zadorov receive consideration.