How Canucks defence has improved since acquiring Ethan Bear

The Vancouver Canucks haven’t had too many bright spots on defence this season. Over the course of the full season, the Canucks are, per Natural Stat Trick through Tuesday’s games, 23rd in the NHL in shot attempts against, 20th in scoring chances against and 26th in goals against.

The scoring chance against numbers and expected goal numbers might even undersell just how bad the Canucks have been on defence, as the team allows too many cross-seam passes and odd-man rushes against and simply ask far too much of their goaltender.

However, there has been a notable bright spot for the Canucks on the back end. On October 28, the Canucks acquired 25-year-old defenceman Ethan Bear from Carolina. He made his debut on November 1 and has given the Canucks an element in their own end that they were lacking.

An important, yet underappreciated part of hockey is a team’s ability to forecheck. Like the offensive line in football, a forecheck sets the tone for the game. Getting in on the forecheck and forcing the opponent into bad breakouts or even making turnovers while retrieving dump-ins is a surefire way to keep the pressure up on the defensive team. If you can force your opponent into missing a pass, you might lead them into turning the puck over or forcing them to shoot the puck out into the neutral zone, giving the offensive team another chance to attack via re-entry. Games are often won and lost simply based on which team is able to enter the offensive zone the most times.

In the first month of the season, this was a huge problem for Vancouver. The Canucks had an entry differential of minus-10 per 60 minutes of play, meaning that for every hour of five-on-five action, the opposing team entered the zone 10 more times, either by carrying, passing or dumping the puck in. This has knock-on effects, since playing in the defensive zone means your star players are spending more time working to get the puck back than they are setting up scoring chances at the other end of the ice.

A big reason for this was the Canucks’ breakout. The team’s breakout is still poor, but it was too often overwhelmed by opposition forechecking. Canucks opponents recovered 54 percent of their dump-in attempts in October. (Since I only track the Canucks and the Leafs, I don’t have a very good handle on what the league average is. For comparison, though, the Canucks have recovered 51 percent of their shoot-ins this season, and I’d grade their forecheck as being above average.)

Ethan Bear has been the Canucks’ best defenceman at preventing the opposition from recovering pucks, and it isn’t particularly close. His intelligence and his strength, despite his size (Bear is listed at 5-foot-11 and 197 lbs, while the average NHL defenceman is about 6-2 and 205), has allowed him to gain position on opponents and win battles in the corner, freeing up pucks for his defensive partner.

First, we’ll show some of his work from a game against Los Angeles two weeks ago. On this play, despite initially losing positioning on Adrian Kempe (No. 9 in white for Los Angeles), Bear (wearing No. 74 in blue) uses his body to get in the way and free up the puck for Conor Garland (No. 8), allowing Garland to send the play the other way.

Later on in the game, Bear recognizes that Nils Aman (88) is covering his man in the middle of the ice, freeing up Bear to provide support on the dump-in. This looks like a very routine play, but there’s a lot of value in a defenceman being able to make a simple play look simple since a lot of times they’ll miss the pass and wind up hitting a shin pad, allowing the opposition a chance to get back at the puck. Bear is right on the mark, however, with a neat bank pass for Curtis Lazar (20). Bear also immediately gets into position for a zone exit and gets into the open space, giving Lazar an easy passing option. Not only do the Canucks exit the zone, but they exit the zone quickly, and up the middle, almost assuring that the next 20 seconds at least will be played in the Kings’ end, which is important in the third period while nursing a lead.

Then, in the game before American Thanksgiving, we see how Bear uses his body positioning on not only one, but two Colorado Avalanche forecheckers, freeing up the puck for Bo Horvat (53) who passes it to a wide-open Quinn Hughes (43) and ending the Avalanche threat off the forecheck on this entry.

Now, I’m a few games behind on my tracking of Canucks games, but from what I’ve seen, this is a trend that will hold, since Bear has been very good at angling opponents away from pucks and getting the first touch. When Bear is the first defenceman to have a play on the puck following an opposition dump-in, the opponent will recover the puck 47 percent of the time, leading the Canucks.

Moreover, when Bear also completes 63 percent of his passes on first touch, also leading Canucks defencemen:

(On the other side of the coin, we see that Tyler Myers has really struggled, both in terms of allowing opponents to recover shoot-ins and in making bad passes following retrievals, with a low pass completion rate.)

What’s interesting as well is that Ekman-Larsson has been the second-best Canuck defenceman in terms of opposition recovery percentage, and I think much of that is due to playing with Bear. In the month of October, Ekman-Larsson frequently turned the puck over on retrievals or was simply beaten to pucks more frequently than any other Canuck, and opponents recovered 55 percent of pucks when Ekman-Larsson was the first Canuck defenceman chasing after it.

Now that he’s regularly partnered with Bear, we can see that Ekman-Larsson has been stabilized a little bit. Ekman-Larsson and Bear lead all regular Canucks D pairings in both Corsi for percentage and scoring chance for percentage, 49 percent for each, via Natural Stat Trick. When Ekman-Larsson plays with Myers, his most-common partner in the month of October, the Canucks earned just 46 percent of the scoring chances, although to be fair, that pairing faced matchups that were well beyond their capabilities as players.

Now, why does this all matter? Because the Canucks have been, by my own tracking, roughly one scoring chance against per hour of 5v5 hockey better defensively in the month of November since Bear’s arrival than they were in October. One thing I do in my game tracking is break down the situation in which each shot or scoring chance was taken: off the rush, off the cycle, off an offensive zone faceoff or off the forecheck. I’ve defined a shot off the forecheck as a shot that was taken immediately (within two seconds) following a defensive zone turnover, or six seconds within a dump-in attempt by the attacking team.

The Canucks have allowed 23 percent fewer scoring chances off the forecheck since Bear’s arrival than they did before, even as their scoring chances allowed in other situations have remained nearly identical both before and after Bear’s arrival. That’s roughly one scoring chance per hour, and scoring chances tend to convert around 10 percent of the time, meaning, over the course of the season, a chance like this extrapolated over a full season would make the Canucks about eight goals better, a not insignificant number when the margins to make the playoffs are razor thin.

Canucks scoring chances allowed, by situation

Before Bear’s arrival After Bear’s arrival Change

Forecheck

4.1

3.2

-23%

Rush

9.0

8.8

-1%

Faceoff

1.2

1.2

0%

Cycle

6.6

6.9

4%

Bear has been the best Canuck in this regard, but it’s also not fair to the rest of the team to declare Bear the sole reason for this turnaround. At the team level, the Canucks have gotten much better at retrievals in general, with every Canuck improving at least a little bit in November. After allowing the opposition to recover 54 percent of shoot-ins in October, the Canucks defence allowed a recovery just 50 percent of the time in November to date. They’ve also been able to enter the offensive zone more often thanks to stronger breakouts following puck retrievals, improving from minus-10 in October to minus-6 since. They still have a way to go.

Bear’s not a perfect defenceman, nor are the Canucks a strong defensive team with his addition. However, Bear’s entry into the lineup appears to have had a hand in alleviating a key defensive weakness for the club, and the more Bear plays, the more he looks like a legitimate top-four option on the right side that the Canucks have been searching for.

All data in this post is tracked manually, unless otherwise specified.

(Photo: Bruce Bennett / Getty Images)