Quote:
Originally Posted by fotze2
It's just bizarre that now all the youth prospect defenders are becoming like this. Why was there this massive black hole between Bobby Orr and now. No one remembered Bobby Orr?
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A lot of it had to do with the 1990s expansion. Talent was diluted for a while, but what matters more, it was very unevenly distributed before the salary cap. If you were one of the small-market or expansion teams, you had little choice but to play a stifling trap system to compensate for your lack of scoring power. You might squeak out a 2-1 win against superior firepower, but if you played run and gun, you were much more likely to lose 5-3.
After Jacques Lemaire won the 1995 Stanley Cup for the New Jersey Devils, every weak team copied his trap system. If you're playing the trap, there's not much room for a high-flying offensive defenceman, and stay-at-home types were more likely to get NHL jobs – so minor-hockey coaches taught their defencemen to play that way.
Players like Paul Coffey, Ray Bourque, and Al MacInnis grew up wanting to be the next Bobby Orr. If they'd come along a generation later, with their offensive talent, they'd probably have been taught to play forward instead. With all the small markets wanting defence-first defencemen, the supply of offensive defencemen dried up for all the teams, big and small. Kids just weren't coached to do that anymore. It was a terrible shame, and I'm very glad the defence position is being opened up again.