gfhockeyrules wrote:Fargo South - Hooey, Burdick, (Narveson now a Forward)
GFC - Cieklinski, Ray
Grafton - Hills
Bismarck - Romanick
I'll add:
Red River - Bryce Anderson
South - Danny Luecke, Matt Wagner
West Fargo - Derek Sand
In my eyes I see a defenseman for how they play defensively, and as it seems that you go down the list of the top teams looking for defense with the top points (You missed Bryce Anderson of RR btw, or maybe didn't intend to include him?). This is a way to classify an offensiveman much more than a defenseman. I think Central Hockey Fan would agree (He said he was at the South/RR game)
During that game I saw that the more aggressive the defense the more often they gave up odd man rushes in the back end of a rush. Hooey/Burdick of South and Bryce Anderson of RR seemed to join the rush a lot more without worrying about giving up an odd man rush. This created a lot of opportunities (for both ends) that ended up with a 2 or even 3 on 1 rush in the other direction. Players like these get a lot of points, but they can also cost their team too if they're not careful. Burdick and Hooey both have defensive defensemen behind them (In Wagner and Luecke respectively) that break up the rushes a majority of the time, but it's dangerous. Anderson on the other hand (although he seems more careful) doesn't have the defensive player with the experience to cover for him like the previous pairings. This costs Red River a lot on the defensive side of the rush, and South definitely capitalized on it.
However, this is all an observation from a single game, but it was pretty interesting to watch all the odd man rushes in the game that could have easily been prevented. On this note, I believe it's more important that you're looking at a defenseman for more than just his points, or you're sending the kids the wrong message of what a defenseman's job really is; which is to play defense.
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On a side note, I was looking through the statistics of the players to make sure I'm getting this out correctly, but how does Hills have 38 PIM? It's a good thing to be an aggressive defenseman in order to keep players worried about you, but taking a lot of penalties like that can really hurt a team in the long run. Grafton as a whole seems to be getting in a lot of penalty trouble so far this season, and could be one of the things plaguing them. (This is far deeper than just Hills)