all the teams look the same...all the teams play the same way...all the teams play a variation of the neutral zone trap, which started about “25” years ago...hmmm, right around the time the New Jersey Devils beat a very heavy favorite Detroit team in the 1995 Final 4-0, using that very same type defensive “system..where the wingers (are they even called that anymore?) are actually told not to try and score but to be more defensive. All teams do now is just dump the puck into the others team zone...over and over and over..hoping they get the “bounce” that creates a scoring chance. No creativity...no skill. You actually had a FIRST YEAR EXPANSION TEAM make it to the Stanley Cup Final...that about explains everything about today’s “game”. Recently saw Mark Messier in a commercial trying to say the the NHL is “better than ever”...when you actually have to make a commercial pushing that, you got a problem. Gretzky, Messier etc would NEVER bad mouth the league. Anyway, the ghost of the 80’s and 90’s hangs over this league so bad...to go from seeing such astonishing players to what passes as hockey now is flat out just strange. And they did it to themselves....sad.
The Trap has been out of the game a good 15 years. You really quite simply don’t know what you’re talking about.
I'll go through a number of your points and set the record straight on them. (FULL DISCLOSURE: I've been a big fan of the New Jersey Devils over the years, so I know more about that particular team than your average hockey fan.)
1. The Devils didn't invent the neutral zone trap. It had been used in Europe for years before it was used extensively in the NHL. It was designed to help players defend more effectively on a larger ice surface. Before the 1990s, the Montreal Canadiens had adopted it and used it to perfection to help dominate the NHL back in the 1970s. This is why the Devils began to use it in the 1993-94 season after hiring two legendary former players from the Canadiens to their coaching staff -- head coach Jacques Lemaire and assistant coach Larry Robinson.
2. The neutral zone trap is not a DEFENSIVE system. It's a system aimed at both ends of the ice -- by "defending" in the opposing team's half of the ice and generating offensive chances off turnovers, counterattacks, and a fast transition game. When the Devils were playing effectively they were a solid -- and sometimes dominant -- offensive team. Let's go back and look at the period of time when they were perennial contenders, and focus on the seasons when they were most successful. I would say their best seasons (on the ice) were the following:
- 1993-94 (lost in epic Eastern Conference finals to eventual Stanley Cup champion New York Rangers)
- 1995 (Stanley Cup champions)
- 1999-2000 (Stanley Cup champions)
- 2000-01 (lost in Stanley Cup finals to Colorado Avalanche)
- 2002-03 (Stanley Cup champions)
I would dismiss the 2002-03 team out of hand because -- and I can say this with credibility as a Devils fan -- they were arguably the worst team to win a Stanley Cup since the 1967 expansion. For the others, I'd point out the following:
- The 1993-94 team was second in the NHL in goals scored (after Detroit). They also happened to be #2 in the NHL in fewest goals allowed, which should be an indication of just how solid that team was at both ends of the ice.
- They won the Stanley Cup in the shortened 1995 season with almost the same roster.
- The 1999-2000 team was also second in the NHL in goals scored (again, after Detroit).
- The 2000-01 team led the NHL in scoring.
So these incessant complaints you've heard over the years about the New Jersey Devils and the neutral zone trap are a complete myths. The Devils used the neutral zone trap consistently through those years, but they simply weren't successful in the playoffs when they weren't generating offense, as their poor track record in the years other than the ones I listed above would demonstrate. This myth about the team as a bunch of defensive-minded slugs seems to be tied to the fact that they never had any offensive superstars in those days (the team has never had a 50-goal scorer, has never had a player with a 100-point season, etc.). This goes to Point #3 below ...
3. The Devils dominated the NHL when they had a lot of depth. They had no superstars, but they rolled four forward lines and three defense pairs effectively. Before the Devils came along and turned the roster-building process upside down, it was common for teams to use 1-2 scoring lines, a third line that was used mostly as defensive specialists, and a fourth line that didn't get much playing time at all. The goons/enforcers were typically found on that fourth line, playing sparingly. The Devils turned their third and fourth lines into offensive weapons, which made it almost impossible to defend against them. Look at the 1995 team that beat Detroit in the Stanley Cup finals. They had 20 different players score goals in those playoffs. Their second-leading goal scorer was Randy McKay -- who played on their FOURTH line. That fourth line may have been the best ever in the NHL -- earning its own epic nickname ("the Crash Line") in NHL lore.
4. Does anyone really play "dump and chase" hockey anymore? Watch an NHL game today, and you'll see that teams typically only dump the puck in two scenarios: (A) when they want to change lines, and (B) when a player is caught in a disadvantageous position in the neutral zone and is likely to lose possession of the puck anyway. The whole game has moved to a "puck possession" approach, and as a result the NHL has finally adopted a mindset that the Soviet hockey system of the 1960s and 1970s had already figured out: When you need possession of the puck to score goals and keep the other team from generating scoring chances, dumping the puck is one of the dumbest things you can do because you're giving up possession of the puck without much resistance at all. In that light, dumping the puck as an offensive strategy is like an NFL team punting the ball in football on first or second down. This goes to the most revolutionary change in the NHL over the last 10-15 years:
5. NHL teams don't play defense anymore. That's sort of an odd statement to make, when you consider that goal scoring is still much lower today than it was in the 1970s and 1980s. What I mean, though, is that -- outside of unique circumstances like killing penalties or protecting a lead late in a game -- NHL teams no longer put players on the ice with the intention of having them to play defensively. Instead, they whole idea of "playing defense" in the NHL revolves around maintaining possession of the puck. So the preferred skill set of an NHL player is much different today than it was 25+ years ago. This relates to Point #6 below.
6. There is a much greater focus on speed and skill in hockey today than there was 25 years ago. The rule changes that were implemented after the 2004 lockout revolutionized the NHL game -- especially with the elimination of the center red line for the two-line pass rule. The average NHL player from 2002 through 2006 was more than 6'-1" tall and weighed about 206 pounds. Those figures have both been declining steadily since then; for the 2021-22 season, the average player was 6'-1" and weighed 190 pounds. The biggest change can be seen in NHL defensemen, where the slow, plodding "defensive defenseman" is slowly disappearing from the game. For defensemen, the most important attribute is his ability to win possession of the puck and move it quickly out of the defensive zone -- either by skating with it directly or by making a smart first pass out of the zone.
7. The immediate success of the Vegas Golden Knights in 2017-18 was an anomaly related to the circumstances of its entry into the NHL. The 2017 NHL expansion was carried out very differently than prior ones in two important respects: (A) The expansion draft was initially set up for TWO new teams to enter the league (Las Vegas and Seattle), and (B) It was the first expansion to take place in the salary cap era.
Item (A) was important because existing teams were able to protect fewer players in the expansion draft than we had seen in prior expansion drafts. And it became an even bigger deal when Seattle delayed their expansion plans, and the NHL decided to keep the expansion draft rules in place even though there would now be only one new team entering the league.
Item (B) was important because existing teams went into the expansion draft looking to off-load players with large contracts while keeping players who they couldn't include on their list of protected players. As a result, the Golden Knights had an opportunity to make deals that no expansion team had ever made before: by getting a player and/or draft pick from another team in exchange for a promise to pick a specific player from that team's roster. The Pittsburgh Penguins, for example, wanted to move goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury and his huge contract because they had a younger goalie in place and wanted to clear salary cap space for other players. So they made a remarkable deal with Vegas before the expansion draft: They gave Vegas a second-round draft pick in the upcoming NHL Entry Draft, and in exchange Vegas agreed to select Fleury in the expansion draft. Deals like this were a big reason why the Golden Knights were a Stanley Cup contender right away.