Should hockey defensemen use longer sticks, a la lacrosse? What NHLers say (original) (raw)

Jon Cooper is the longest-tenured coach in the NHL. He led the Tampa Bay Lightning to Stanley Cups in 2020 and 2021.

Before coaching, Cooper made his biggest athletic impact as a lacrosse player at Hofstra University.

Cooper scored 74 goals and 25 assists during his four-year NCAA career. He might have scored more had he not played against opponents wielding long sticks, which defensemen are permitted to use in lacrosse.

“It’s a huge advantage for a defender,” Cooper says. “The separation it creates, plus the ability to knock the (ball) out of your stick because of the length of it.”

Cooper, then, is well-qualified to answer whether the lacrosse principle could apply to hockey. That is, whether defensemen should use the longest stick possible to maximize goal prevention.

Could he sell such a concept to defensemen like Victor Hedman and Erik Cernak?

“It’s hard to say,” Cooper says. “Because part of playing with a long stick, it’s how you control the puck with it as well as defend with it. That’s kind of two different things to do.”

It’s easier for Hedman, in other words, to be a puck-pushing offensive presence with a shorter stick. He can stickhandle, pass and shoot with more control and dexterity than with a longer stick.

But there is something to be said for a 6-foot-7 defenseman like Hedman who can do those things plus defend with a maximum-sized stick.

“I believe in that,” Florida Panthers coach Paul Maurice says. “I believe in playing with the longest stick possible.”

Victor Hedman’s height added to his stick length gives him impressive defensive coverage. (Scott Audette / NHLI via Getty Images)

Length matters

Rule 10.1 says an NHL player’s stick cannot exceed 63 inches from the heel to the end of the shaft. The 63-inch threshold is not often met. Boston Bruins defenseman Brandon Carlo, who is 6-foot-5, likes a 62.5-inch Bauer. Teammate Derek Forbort, who is 6-foot-4, uses a 62.75-inch CCM.

Players 6-foot-6 and taller can file for an exemption to play with a 65-inch stick. According to the NHL, none of the 16 defensemen of that height (prominent examples include Hedman, Tyler Myers, Owen Power, Colton Parayko and Dougie Hamilton) has requested the additional inches.

The fact that zero exemption applications have been filed underscores how defensemen do not necessarily prefer maximum-length sticks. An offensive defenseman like the 6-foot-6 Hamilton, for example, wants his Bauers optimized for handling the puck.

“It’s easier to control,” Cooper says, “when you have a shorter stick when you have the puck.”

Defensemen in lacrosse, in contrast, are tasked primarily with offensive deterrence. Consider that Patrick Morrison, a fifth-year defenseman at Boston University, has one career goal in 42 games. In 2023, the 6-foot-3, 200-pounder from Franklin, Mass., recorded four shots on net.

Morrison, then, feels perfectly natural using a pole, as it’s called in lacrosse, to do his job. Morrison’s STX stick measures 72 inches, the maximum length permissible for a defenseman, from the butt end to the head. If he were asked to play with a 42-inch stick, the standard length of an attackman’s tool, Morrison would be lost.

“It would definitely be a lot harder,” Morrison says. “Just the separation. You don’t have as much leeway to make some plays. Think about trying to play an attackman with a lot shorter of a stick. Then I’d always be right on the guy.”

Morrison switched to defense at Franklin High School. It took some time for him to adjust to the 30-inch difference in sticks.

“It definitely takes a little bit of time just to get used to it, feel it out,” Morrison recalls. “After some practice, you just get used to it. Now, if I’m holding a short stick, it feels so small and light.”

Morrison uses a pole with three priorities in mind:

• Creating space. By using his stick on an opponent’s hands, Morrison can keep an attackman on the outside.

• Retrieving ground balls. Morrison’s 30 extra inches give him an advantage over an attackman during 50-50 battles.

• Taking away passing lanes. “You can either read the pass or try to pick it,” Morrison says. “The ball moves so fast.”

Canada’s Graeme Hossack shows the advantage of a long stick in defending Team USA’s Matt Rambo. (Sean M. Haffey / Getty Images)

All of these principles could apply to hockey. A defenseman could use a stick-on-puck maneuver to keep an onrushing wing to the perimeter. A longer stick could allow a defenseman to beat a forward to a loose puck. With tight net-front coverage being in high demand, a long-stick defenseman, especially one with a generous wingspan, could impact slot-line seam passes.

“We can get (Aaron) Ekblad’s stick out and push a guy who takes everybody for a skate,” Maurice says of his 6-foot-4 defenseman, “and still be in really good shape with that because of his length.”

Consider the Stanley Cup case of the 2023 Vegas Golden Knights. They rolled out Nicolas Hague (6-foot-6), Brayden McNabb (6-4), Alex Pietrangelo (6-3), Shea Theodore (6-2) and Alec Martinez (6-1). Their collective length affected how well they defended in the playoffs.

“My dad was into that 50 years ago,” Maurice says. “Play with as long a stick as you can. It makes complete sense.”

The two-way nature of the defense position in hockey, however, complicates the situation.

When shorter is better

At 6-foot-9, Zdeno Chara was eligible for a stick exemption. He exercised it. Chara’s 65-inch stick, combined with his reach, made him one of the best shutdown defensemen of his generation.

At times, it came with a drawback, though. Once attackers breached Chara’s radar-sweeping perimeter, the big man sometimes struggled to win close-quarters pucks. The length of his stick would discourage him from handling pucks in the proverbial phone booth.

“It was hard to get by him,” Cooper says. “But once you got in tight, it was harder for him.”

Matt Grzelcyk, Chara’s former teammate, is at the opposite end. There are only four defensemen currently on NHL rosters (Jared Spurgeon, Torey Krug, Jacob Bryson, Nick Blankenburg) shorter than the 5-foot-10 Grzelcyk.

Bruins teammates Matt Grzelcyk and Brandon Carlo are on opposite ends of the NHL’s height spectrum. (Bob DeChiara / USA Today)

To compensate, the 29-year-old started his NHL career with a stick that, with the blade on the ice, came up to his forehead. Grzelcyk liked to disguise the length of his stick until the last second, when he would shoot it out to poke away pucks.

But after surgery on his right shoulder following the 2021-22 season, Grzelcyk cut down his Warrior stick to 59 inches. It comes up to his nose when he places the blade on the ice. He does not need to lift his shoulder as high now.

Not only that, Grzelcyk feels more comfortable handling the puck in offensive situations.

“When I walk the blue line, now it’s more in tight and more in the shooting position,” Grzelcyk says. “Before, my thought process was as long as possible — as long as I can keep stickhandling. But I think it was at a certain point where it was too long. If I got a pass in my feet, because my hands were so high, I had to take an extra stickhandle. Now it feels more comfortable.”

Grzelcyk’s responsibilities include rushing the puck up the ice, being a shooting threat from the blue line and pinching down the walls in the offensive zone. All of this calls for precise puck touches. Better control over a shorter stick encourages playmaking. This is the balance that all two-way defensemen have to strike.

“The qualifier is binary. It’s either a yes or a no,” Maurice says. “You can either use a (long) stick or you can’t. So use a long stick if you can. But don’t use a long stick if you can’t.”

(Top photos: Bruce Kluckhohn, Christopher Mast and Minas Panagiotakis / Getty Images)

Fluto Shinzawa is a senior writer for The Athletic covering the Boston Bruins. He has covered the team since 2006, formerly as a staff writer for The Boston Globe. Follow Fluto on Twitter @flutoshinzawa