How Hockey ChangedMinutes
Only 14 NHL Defencemen Still Score Like Ken Daneyko
A stay-at-home defenceman stays back to defend and leaves the scoring to others. We counted every regular who scored at less than a quarter of a regular forward’s scoring pace, as Daneyko did for eleven seasons. From the 1940s to 2008, about one regular defenceman in six scored that little. Since 2008-09 it has been about one in eleven. The ones left aren’t penalty-kill specialists. Mostly they just play fewer minutes.
By Edgehalla ResearchPublished 12 min read
One minute was left in Game 7 of the 2003 Stanley Cup Final when Pat Burns sent Ken Daneyko out for the last shift. New Jersey led Anaheim 3-0. Daneyko had not played a game in the series. After Game 6, he recalls, Burns pulled him aside at the team hotel: “You’re in tomorrow tonight, and don’t tell anybody.”
“I hadn’t played in two weeks,” Daneyko remembered in a Devils oral history. “I just didn’t want to screw it up either.” He had scored 36 goals in 1,283 regular-season games.
For decades most NHL teams carried a defenceman who barely scored, as he did. In 2025-26, 19 of 32 teams had none.
On this page
For 65 seasons, one defenceman in six barely scored
In July 2014, Washington signed Brooks Orpik to a free-agent contract. The OilersNation writer Lowetide watched the reaction from the networks and the traditional media, and decided the stay-at-home defenceman was finished. He quoted Mike Johnson: “there may be no group of players that are more overvalued than defensive defensemen.” Then he wrote, “And with that, I think it’s probably over.”
We counted the type in every NHL season. From 1942-43 to 2007-08, about one regular defenceman in six scored at less than a quarter of the forwards’ rate. That is about one a team each season, on average. From 2008-09 it fell to about one in eleven, a little more than one for every two teams, and it has not come back. That is a bit more than half the old rate. In 2025-26 there were 14 among 199 regular defencemen in a 32-team league. That is fewer than one for every two teams. It is not zero.
The average team carried about one of these players a season before 2008. Since then it has carried about 0.6, and in 2025-26 fewer than half of one. Here are the counts.
| Seasons | Regular D seasons | Stay-at-home | Share | Per team, per season |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1942-43 to 2007-08 | 6,303 | 1,064 | 16.9% | 1.0 |
| 2008-09 to 2025-26 | 3,541 | 326 | 9.2% | 0.59 |
| 2025-26 | 199 | 14 | 7.0% | 0.44 |
Teams kept about half as many low-scoring defencemen after 2008
Scoring under 25% (strict) or 35% (loose) of the regular-forward points rate, NHL regular season
Show data
| Season | Strict (under 25%) | Loose (under 35%) |
|---|---|---|
| 1942-43 | 25% | 40% |
| 1943-44 | 17% | 22% |
| 1944-45 | 29% | 38% |
| 1945-46 | 10% | 48% |
| 1946-47 | 8% | 32% |
| 1947-48 | 4% | 22% |
| 1948-49 | 17% | 52% |
| 1949-50 | 22% | 50% |
| 1950-51 | 19% | 39% |
| 1951-52 | 32% | 48% |
| 1952-53 | 11% | 39% |
| 1953-54 | 12% | 27% |
| 1954-55 | 11% | 15% |
| 1955-56 | 17% | 33% |
| 1956-57 | 14% | 45% |
| 1957-58 | 24% | 48% |
| 1958-59 | 23% | 48% |
| 1959-60 | 17% | 38% |
| 1960-61 | 30% | 52% |
| 1961-62 | 20% | 27% |
| 1962-63 | 16% | 34% |
| 1963-64 | 13% | 32% |
| 1964-65 | 9% | 31% |
| 1965-66 | 17% | 29% |
| 1966-67 | 15% | 30% |
| 1967-68 | 16% | 34% |
| 1968-69 | 13% | 29% |
| 1969-70 | 17% | 32% |
| 1970-71 | 17% | 33% |
| 1971-72 | 15% | 32% |
| 1972-73 | 18% | 34% |
| 1973-74 | 12% | 28% |
| 1974-75 | 14% | 30% |
| 1975-76 | 24% | 40% |
| 1976-77 | 10% | 26% |
| 1977-78 | 12% | 26% |
| 1978-79 | 15% | 25% |
| 1979-80 | 12% | 28% |
| 1980-81 | 15% | 32% |
| 1981-82 | 16% | 35% |
| 1982-83 | 17% | 33% |
| 1983-84 | 14% | 27% |
| 1984-85 | 18% | 29% |
| 1985-86 | 21% | 33% |
| 1986-87 | 19% | 34% |
| 1987-88 | 19% | 28% |
| 1988-89 | 16% | 33% |
| 1989-90 | 16% | 34% |
| 1990-91 | 16% | 28% |
| 1991-92 | 15% | 33% |
| 1992-93 | 18% | 31% |
| 1993-94 | 18% | 33% |
| 1994-95 | 18% | 33% |
| 1995-96 | 23% | 39% |
| 1996-97 | 14% | 29% |
| 1997-98 | 16% | 30% |
| 1998-99 | 18% | 35% |
| 1999-00 | 15% | 36% |
| 2000-01 | 20% | 36% |
| 2001-02 | 18% | 34% |
| 2002-03 | 22% | 35% |
| 2003-04 | 22% | 31% |
| 2004-05 | – | – |
| 2005-06 | 16% | 29% |
| 2006-07 | 14% | 30% |
| 2007-08 | 16% | 30% |
| 2008-09 | 11% | 27% |
| 2009-10 | 10% | 24% |
| 2010-11 | 12% | 26% |
| 2011-12 | 12% | 21% |
| 2012-13 | 10% | 26% |
| 2013-14 | 7% | 18% |
| 2014-15 | 7% | 20% |
| 2015-16 | 10% | 22% |
| 2016-17 | 6% | 18% |
| 2017-18 | 9% | 20% |
| 2018-19 | 9% | 20% |
| 2019-20 | 7% | 22% |
| 2020-21 | 14% | 25% |
| 2021-22 | 8% | 21% |
| 2022-23 | 11% | 24% |
| 2023-24 | 8% | 21% |
| 2024-25 | 9% | 23% |
| 2025-26 | 7% | 21% |
- 2005-06: New rules: two-line pass, tag-up
- 2008-09: 2008-09
Points are the only clue that goes back a century
How do you find a stay-at-home defenceman in 1950? Old records don’t track blocked shots, hits or ice time. They do track points, for every player in every season. So points are all we have, and a defenceman who scores very little is our best sign that he was there to defend. That means when this story calls a defenceman “stay-at-home”, it means he scored very little. Scott Stevens, on the same Devils blue line as Daneyko, scored 29 points in 1999-2000, so he never counts here, however well he defended.
Take 2025-26. The league’s regular forwards scored at a pace of about 45 points over 82 games. A quarter of that is about 11. A regular defenceman, one who played at least half his team’s games, who scored slower than that counts here as stay-at-home. Every season gets its own line, drawn from its own forwards, because scoring rises and falls across eras. In 1999-2000, his Cup season, Daneyko scored at about 15% of the forwards’ pace, well under the line. From here on, that pace is “the forward rate”.
Every way we drew the line shows the same drop
A line drawn in the wrong place can invent a trend, so we drew it three more ways. A looser line counts anyone under 35% of the forward rate. Another counts only even-strength points, the ones scored with both teams at full strength, so a power-play assist doesn’t lift anyone over. A stricter games rule counts only defencemen who played three quarters of their team’s games instead of half. Under all four, every decade from the 1940s to the 2000s had more low scorers than the 2010s or the 2020s. With the three-quarters games rule, the count falls by about half, from about 12% of regulars in the 2000s to about 6% in the 2020s.
One rule tells a different story: a flat line of 10 points over 82 games. It looks like the obvious rule, and it misleads. It puts the 2020s (7.1% of regulars) level with the 1980s (7.5%), and says the 2000s had twice as many (15.2%). League scoring does that. Regular forwards scored about 59 points per 82 games in 1985-86, about 38 in 2003-04 and about 45 in 2025-26. In a season like 2003-04, when everyone scored less, a defenceman could fall under 10 points without changing how he played. Measure each one against his own season’s forwards and the drop after 2008 shows up every time.
Under every rule measured against the forwards, the 2010s and 2020s have the fewest low scorers
Share of regular defencemen who are stay-at-home, by decade, all seasons in each decade combined
The strict rule gives 16.5% in the 2000s and 9.3% in the 2020s; even-strength points only, 11.3% and 4.3%. A fixed 10 points per 82 games gives 7.5% in the 1980s and 15.2% in the 2000s, because it tracks league scoring.
- Strict (under 25%)
- Loose (under 35%)
- Even strength only
- Fixed: under 10 per 82
Arbour, Daneyko and Richardson made careers of it
With that rule, the type shows up as real people with long careers, long before Daneyko. Al Arbour was “a solid but unspectacular stay-at-home defenseman,” Sean McIndoe wrote in Grantland, and in McIndoe’s telling “the last NHL player to play the game while wearing glasses.” In Detroit, Stan Fischler wrote, Jack Adams once took a dislike to Arbour’s play, blamed it on his glasses, and shouted, “You blind-eyed, CinemaScope, radar, S.O.B.” Arbour became “Radar.” He scored 12 goals in 626 games, and McIndoe notes he won four Stanley Cups as a player with three teams. He was the first captain of the expansion St. Louis Blues in 1967. In 1969-70, his last full season, he played 68 games for St. Louis with no goals and 3 points. By our rule, eight of his ten regular seasons were stay-at-home.
Daneyko played his whole career for New Jersey. He had eleven such seasons in seventeen, including six straight from 1991-92 to 1996-97. Only one defenceman has more stay-at-home seasons. In 1999-2000 he played 78 games with no goals and 6 points, on a blue line with Scott Stevens (29 points), Scott Niedermayer (38) and Brian Rafalski (32). The Devils won the Cup. That June he also won the Masterton Trophy, the award for perseverance and sportsmanship. “After overcoming a bout with alcoholism, Daneyko made it all the way back to the top of the mountain,” Michael Gwizdala wrote in The Hockey Writers. The next season Daneyko played 77 games and again scored no goals, with 4 points.
The record belongs to Luke Richardson: twelve stay-at-home seasons in 19, from 1987-88 to 2007-08, for Toronto, Edmonton, Philadelphia, Columbus and Ottawa. He played 1,417 games and scored 35 goals. His lowest season was 1997-98 in Philadelphia: 5 points in 81 games. His last stay-at-home season was 2007-08, with Ottawa (9 points in 76 games). It was the last season before the share fell. Jason Strudwick was stay-at-home in ten of his eleven regular seasons, the last in 2010-11 with Edmonton (2 points in 43 games).
The longest unbroken run is older than all of them. Art Wiebe was stay-at-home eight seasons straight for Chicago, from 1934-35 to 1941-42, before the 1942-43 start of our main count. He scored 14 goals in 412 games.
A low-scoring season was often followed by another
These were not one bad year each. The chart below splits the league’s history into five stretches. In each one, we followed every stay-at-home defenceman who was still a regular the next season. Take the stretch from 1992-93 to 2009-10, which runs up to the drop and two seasons past it. About half of those players were stay-at-home again the next year. Among all regular defencemen, only about one in six or seven was. Since 2010-11 both numbers are lower. About one stay-at-home defenceman in three repeated. Among all regulars, fewer than one in ten did. That last stretch rests on 154 cases, against 335 in the one before. In both stretches, a defenceman who scores this little one year is three to four times as likely as other regulars to do it again.
A low scorer one season was far more likely than other regulars to be one the next
Regular defencemen in back-to-back seasons, strict rule
Stay-at-home defencemen repeated at 46.9% in 1992-2010 against 15.4% of all regulars, and at 31.8% against 7.9% since 2010.
- Stay-at-home again
- All regulars
Orpik, the player whose contract set off the 2014 obituary, shows how strict the line is. He fits it only twice. One of them was 2017-18, when he played 81 games for Washington with no goals and 10 points. On May 30, 2018, in Game 2 of the Final at Vegas, Washington led 2-1 in the second period when Orpik scored to make it 3-1. It was “his first goal since February 26, 2016, a goal-less drought of 220 consecutive games,” Adam Gretz wrote for NBC Sports. Vegas scored later in that period to make it 3-2, and nobody scored after that. So Washington won 3-2, and Orpik’s goal turned out to be the winner, as Gretz noted. Washington went on to win its first Stanley Cup.
The bottom of the scoring list moved up after 2008
The drop came soon after a high point. In raw numbers, in a bigger league, the type peaked in 2002-03 and 2003-04, with 43 stay-at-home defencemen in each season. As a share of all regular defencemen, the peak came earlier: in 1975-76, 26 of 109 (23.9%) were stay-at-home, the highest since expansion. In 2002-03, Columbus had three: Jamie Allison, Scott Lachance and Jean-Luc Grand-Pierre. So did Los Angeles, with Aaron Miller, Brad Norton and Mattias Norstrom.
Then came the 2004-05 lockout, and new rules for 2005-06. The list at Scouting the Refs includes “Center red line eliminated for two-line passes” and “‘Tag-up’ off-side rule reinstituted.” In plain terms, a pass from behind your own blue line to past centre became legal, and attackers caught offside could clear it by skating back out of the zone. The count fell from 43 in 2003-04 to 30 in 2005-06, crept back to 32 in 2007-08, then fell to 22 in 2008-09 and 20 in 2009-10. The timing lines up with the new rules, but the second drop came a few seasons later, and season totals cannot say whether the rules caused either one.
Line up every regular defenceman by how fast he scored, compared with that season’s forwards. The defenceman in the middle of the list barely moved: he scored at about 51% of the forward rate in the 2000s and about 54% in the 2020s. The low end moved more. Take the lowest-scoring tenth of regular defencemen. In the 2000s those players scored at under about 20% of the forward rate. In the 2020s the lowest tenth reached up to about 26%, just above our 25% stay-at-home line. In the chart, the lowest-tenth line climbs from around 19% in the early 2000s to the mid-20s after 2008. The middle line moves only a few points.
The lowest-scoring defencemen started scoring more; the typical one barely changed
Regular defencemen’s scoring rate as a share of the forward rate: the middle defenceman, and the top of the lowest-scoring quarter and lowest-scoring tenth
Show data
| Season | Middle defenceman | Top of the lowest quarter | Top of the lowest tenth |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1942-43 | 40% | 27% | 16% |
| 1943-44 | 53% | 41% | 21% |
| 1944-45 | 40% | 23% | 21% |
| 1945-46 | 46% | 29% | 25% |
| 1946-47 | 42% | 34% | 27% |
| 1947-48 | 48% | 40% | 29% |
| 1948-49 | 34% | 27% | 15% |
| 1949-50 | 37% | 25% | 20% |
| 1950-51 | 40% | 27% | 24% |
| 1951-52 | 35% | 22% | 19% |
| 1952-53 | 45% | 32% | 28% |
| 1953-54 | 53% | 33% | 24% |
| 1954-55 | 48% | 42% | 28% |
| 1955-56 | 50% | 30% | 21% |
| 1956-57 | 38% | 28% | 23% |
| 1957-58 | 39% | 25% | 15% |
| 1958-59 | 39% | 27% | 14% |
| 1959-60 | 46% | 33% | 17% |
| 1960-61 | 34% | 20% | 15% |
| 1961-62 | 44% | 33% | 20% |
| 1962-63 | 44% | 30% | 23% |
| 1963-64 | 48% | 32% | 14% |
| 1964-65 | 46% | 34% | 26% |
| 1965-66 | 46% | 31% | 21% |
| 1966-67 | 49% | 34% | 20% |
| 1967-68 | 47% | 31% | 21% |
| 1968-69 | 46% | 32% | 21% |
| 1969-70 | 48% | 30% | 20% |
| 1970-71 | 49% | 31% | 23% |
| 1971-72 | 46% | 31% | 22% |
| 1972-73 | 43% | 29% | 20% |
| 1973-74 | 48% | 34% | 24% |
| 1974-75 | 46% | 33% | 22% |
| 1975-76 | 41% | 26% | 19% |
| 1976-77 | 50% | 34% | 25% |
| 1977-78 | 49% | 35% | 22% |
| 1978-79 | 57% | 35% | 24% |
| 1979-80 | 48% | 33% | 22% |
| 1980-81 | 50% | 31% | 23% |
| 1981-82 | 47% | 31% | 22% |
| 1982-83 | 47% | 29% | 20% |
| 1983-84 | 53% | 34% | 23% |
| 1984-85 | 52% | 32% | 21% |
| 1985-86 | 49% | 30% | 15% |
| 1986-87 | 50% | 30% | 22% |
| 1987-88 | 57% | 33% | 19% |
| 1988-89 | 45% | 32% | 17% |
| 1989-90 | 46% | 29% | 21% |
| 1990-91 | 50% | 33% | 20% |
| 1991-92 | 51% | 31% | 21% |
| 1992-93 | 48% | 29% | 21% |
| 1993-94 | 52% | 30% | 20% |
| 1994-95 | 53% | 30% | 17% |
| 1995-96 | 44% | 27% | 16% |
| 1996-97 | 51% | 31% | 21% |
| 1997-98 | 50% | 31% | 20% |
| 1998-99 | 45% | 28% | 19% |
| 1999-00 | 49% | 30% | 20% |
| 2000-01 | 49% | 28% | 19% |
| 2001-02 | 49% | 29% | 20% |
| 2002-03 | 47% | 27% | 16% |
| 2003-04 | 53% | 30% | 19% |
| 2004-05 | – | – | – |
| 2005-06 | 51% | 32% | 20% |
| 2006-07 | 55% | 32% | 22% |
| 2007-08 | 52% | 32% | 21% |
| 2008-09 | 54% | 33% | 24% |
| 2009-10 | 54% | 35% | 25% |
| 2010-11 | 50% | 35% | 23% |
| 2011-12 | 56% | 38% | 23% |
| 2012-13 | 52% | 35% | 25% |
| 2013-14 | 56% | 40% | 27% |
| 2014-15 | 58% | 38% | 27% |
| 2015-16 | 56% | 37% | 26% |
| 2016-17 | 55% | 39% | 29% |
| 2017-18 | 55% | 38% | 26% |
| 2018-19 | 56% | 39% | 26% |
| 2019-20 | 56% | 37% | 27% |
| 2020-21 | 54% | 35% | 22% |
| 2021-22 | 56% | 39% | 29% |
| 2022-23 | 51% | 35% | 24% |
| 2023-24 | 56% | 37% | 28% |
| 2024-25 | 54% | 37% | 27% |
| 2025-26 | 55% | 38% | 28% |
- Reference: Strict cut (25%)
Even the zero-point season disappeared. The last regular defenceman to go a season without a point in an 82-game schedule was Matthew Spiller, who played 51 games for Phoenix in 2003-04. The last in any season was Hal Gill, with Nashville in the 48-game 2012-13 (32 games). Nobody has done it since.
The survivors don’t live on the penalty kill
So teams kept fewer of them. The ones they did keep, we expected, would be there to kill penalties. Shorthanded ice time is published from 1997-98, and it says otherwise. Call a defenceman a heavy penalty killer if he killed at least as many shorthanded minutes a game as the middle regular defenceman that season (half of regulars killed more, half less). Since 1997-98, about two stay-at-home defencemen in five were heavy penalty killers. Among other regular defencemen it was about half. The gap held before and after 2010: about 39% against 52% from 1997-98 to 2009-10, and about 37% against 51% since.
Could luck make a gap that big? It rests on 662 stay-at-home seasons against 4,782 by other regulars. The other regulars were heavy penalty killers about 13 more times in every 100. We tested it by handing out the stay-at-home label at random within each season, like drawing names from a hat, 2,000 times. The biggest gap a random draw ever made was about 7, and nineteen draws in twenty made about 4 or less. So the real gap is too big to be luck. We also redrew the players themselves from a hat, over and over. Nine times in ten the gap came out between about 9 and 17 in every 100.
Stay-at-home defencemen kill penalties less often than other regulars
Share who are heavy penalty killers: stay-at-home (strict) vs other regular defencemen, from 1997-98
Show data
| Season | Stay-at-home | Other regular D |
|---|---|---|
| 1997-98 | 30% | 54% |
| 1998-99 | 46% | 51% |
| 1999-00 | 54% | 49% |
| 2000-01 | 37% | 54% |
| 2001-02 | 35% | 54% |
| 2002-03 | 33% | 55% |
| 2003-04 | 42% | 53% |
| 2004-05 | – | – |
| 2005-06 | 40% | 52% |
| 2006-07 | 39% | 52% |
| 2007-08 | 41% | 52% |
| 2008-09 | 41% | 51% |
| 2009-10 | 40% | 51% |
| 2010-11 | 46% | 51% |
| 2011-12 | 33% | 52% |
| 2012-13 | 45% | 51% |
| 2013-14 | 43% | 51% |
| 2014-15 | 46% | 50% |
| 2015-16 | 37% | 52% |
| 2016-17 | 36% | 51% |
| 2017-18 | 33% | 52% |
| 2018-19 | 41% | 51% |
| 2019-20 | 36% | 51% |
| 2020-21 | 39% | 52% |
| 2021-22 | 33% | 51% |
| 2022-23 | 36% | 52% |
| 2023-24 | 38% | 51% |
| 2024-25 | 6% | 54% |
| 2025-26 | 50% | 50% |
Split the seasons into odd years (1997-98, 1999-2000 and so on) and even years, and each half shows the same gap. So does the looser 35% line. The table has every split.
| Seasons | Stay-at-home seasons | Heavy PK: stay-at-home | Heavy PK: other regulars | Looser 35% line: low scorers vs others |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1997-98 to 2009-10 | 378 | 39.4% | 52.2% | 45.7% vs 52.1% |
| 2010-11 to 2025-26 | 284 | 37.3% | 51.4% | 44.6% vs 51.6% |
| odd start years | 348 | 39.1% | 51.6% | 46.1% vs 51.5% |
| even start years | 314 | 37.9% | 51.8% | 44.2% vs 52.2% |
| 1997-98 to 2025-26 | 662 | 38.5% | 51.7% | 45.2% vs 51.8% |
What they mostly lack is ice time
In 2025-26 the stay-at-home group played 16.3 minutes a game, and other regulars 20.1. In every season since 1997-98 they have played about 3 to 6 fewer minutes a game.
They kill penalties only a little more than their share of the minutes would suggest. From 1997-98 to 2009-10 they played about 12% of all the minutes regular defencemen played, and about 14% of the regular defencemen’s penalty-kill minutes. Since 2010-11, with fewer of them around, it is about 6% of the minutes and 7% of the penalty kill. In both stretches that comes to about one extra penalty-kill minute for every six or seven their playing time alone would give them. That small tilt stayed the same after 2010, even as these players got rarer. They trail on penalty-kill minutes simply because they play less of everything. Their power-play time has never been above 0.44 minutes a game.
Two of the fourteen from 2025-26 show the range. Arber Xhekaj of Montreal played 11.42 minutes a game, and only 0.31 of them shorthanded, the least of the fourteen. Vincent Desharnais of San Jose killed 3.23 minutes a game, the most. Since 1997-98, about two stay-at-home seasons in five came with heavy penalty-kill minutes like Desharnais’s; the rest came with lighter loads, toward Xhekaj’s end. In 2025-26 alone, though, seven of the fourteen were heavy penalty killers, about the same share as other regulars. One season of fourteen players is too few to read either way.
Fourteen were left in 2025-26
That leaves today’s survivors. In 2025-26 regular forwards averaged 44.8 points per 82 games, so the stay-at-home line was about 11.2. These fourteen regular defencemen were under it. Xhekaj was the lowest scorer among them: 4 points in 65 games, with 116 penalty minutes. He then added a goal and an assist in 11 playoff games during the Canadiens’ run to the Eastern final, LNH.com reported (our translation). The middle regular defenceman that season killed penalties for 1.62 minutes a game. Some of the fourteen were well above that. Others played under 15 minutes a game with little shorthanded time.
Toronto had two, Simon Benoit and Brandon Carlo, and so did Detroit, with Jacob Bernard-Docker and Albert Johansson. Benoit has now had five straight stay-at-home seasons, 2021-22 to 2025-26. Before him, the last defencemen with a run that long were Eric Cairns, five straight from 2000-01 to 2005-06, and Nolan Pratt, seven straight from 1999-2000 to 2006-07.
The 19 teams without one in 2025-26 are not a one-year blip. From 1942-43 to 2007-08, a team went a whole season without one about one time in four (283 of 1,028 team seasons). From 1997-98 to 2007-08 it was only about one time in five (61 of 291). Since 2008-09 it has been about half the time (271 of 554).
| Player | Team | Games | Points | Points per 82 games | Minutes a game | Penalty-kill minutes a game |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Arber Xhekaj | MTL | 65 | 4 | 5.0 | 11.4 | 0.31 |
| Declan Carlile | TBL | 42 | 3 | 5.9 | 14.8 | 1.12 |
Continues below
| Player | Team | Games | Points | Points per 82 games | Minutes a game | Penalty-kill minutes a game |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jacob Bernard-Docker | DET | 63 | 5 | 6.5 | 14.8 | 1.42 |
| Simon Benoit | TOR | 73 | 6 | 6.7 | 17.3 | 1.89 |
| Nikolas Matinpalo | OTT | 50 | 5 | 8.2 | 15.6 | 1.54 |
| Joel Hanley | CGY | 68 | 7 | 8.4 | 14.7 | 0.95 |
| Cody Ceci | LAK | 82 | 9 | 9.0 | 17.6 | 1.97 |
| Ryan Lindgren | SEA | 76 | 9 | 9.7 | 18.3 | 2.53 |
| Connor Clifton | PIT | 50 | 6 | 9.8 | 16.8 | 2.06 |
| Nick Seeler | PHI | 80 | 10 | 10.3 | 17.7 | 1.98 |
| Brandon Carlo | TOR | 55 | 7 | 10.4 | 19.4 | 2.86 |
| Vincent Desharnais | SJS | 53 | 7 | 10.8 | 18.2 | 3.23 |
| Albert Johansson | DET | 82 | 11 | 11.0 | 15.9 | 1.35 |
| Jeff Petry | FLA, MIN | 67 | 9 | 11.0 | 14.8 | 0.74 |
Low scorers are not the only thing that changed on NHL blue lines. In 1960-61, right-handed shots played fewer than one in five of the games defencemen played. In 2025-26 they played about 44%. That story is the lefty defence corps is vanishing.
The 2025 “revival” signings score too much to count
The label still gets used. On July 30, 2025, Jacob Punturi wrote in Sports Illustrated that “the old school stay-at-home defenders are back with a vengeance in the NHL.” He pointed to three new contracts: Dylan Samberg in Winnipeg, Nicolas Hague in Nashville and Kevin Bahl in Calgary. In 2025-26 all three scored above even our looser 35% line. Samberg was at about 39% of the forward rate, Bahl 43% and Hague 44%. They may well be defence-first players. By points, though, each scored at more than twice the rate of Daneyko’s Cup year, so none of them counts here.
| Player | Team | Season | Games | Points | % of forward rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dylan Samberg | WPG | 2025-26 | 66 | 14 | 38.8% |
| Kevin Bahl | CGY | 2025-26 | 76 | 18 | 43.3% |
| Nicolas Hague | NSH | 2025-26 | 62 | 15 | 44.3% |
| Ken Daneyko | NJD | 1999-00 | 78 | 6 | 15.4% |
Points can’t grade defence, or say why the drop came
A few more limits. Blocked shots and hits would help, but the league has recorded them only since 2005-06, and they depend on the official scorer in each arena, so they can’t cover a century. Our line moves with each season’s forwards on purpose, so a low-scoring era doesn’t pad the count the way a flat 10-point line does. The numbers are small: only 11 to 43 stay-at-home defencemen a season since 1997-98, and 1 to 10 a season when the league had six teams (1942-43 to 1966-67). Single seasons swing, so trust the totals over decades and longer stretches.
Career counts depend on the games rule. If a player dresses for fewer than half his team’s games, that season doesn’t count, and it breaks his run. The Game 7 details come from an oral history published almost 20 years later. The NHL’s defence ice-time totals match our own game-by-game database for every season since 2017-18; the largest difference is 51 seconds over a whole season.
Daneyko finished the job without a stick
Back at the Meadowlands on June 9, 2003, the last minute did not go cleanly. “Dano was skating around with no stick for like 35 seconds, just scrambling out there,” Colin White remembered. Martin Brodeur kept his shutout. After Stevens and Niedermayer, Daneyko was the third Devil to take the Cup.
By this story’s rule, Daneyko’s own last regular season doesn’t count. In 2002-03 he scored 9 points in 69 games, about 27% of the forward rate, just over the line. Nine points were enough to take the man in our headline off the list. Burns still wanted him out there for the last minute.
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Show the work
- Tests written down
- Not in advance (exploratory)
- Results computed
Every regular-season skater row from the NHL stats API, 1917-18 to 2025-26 (no 2004-05). Regular defencemen played half of the season’s team games or more. Stay-at-home = points per game under 25% of the pooled regular-forward rate; checked with a 35% cut, even-strength points only, a 75%-of-games rule and a fixed 10 points per 82. Penalty-kill use from published shorthanded ice time, 1997-98 on, relative to each season’s median defenceman. Careers: a player’s stay-at-home seasons are counted over every season he was a regular, 1917-18 on; a run is consecutive regular seasons that are all stay-at-home (a short season or a higher-scoring one breaks it; the 2004-05 lockout is skipped). Career games, goals and points are regular-season totals over all seasons. Team-seasons: a team has a stay-at-home defenceman if one played any games for it that season, so a traded player counts for each of his teams (Jeff Petry counts for Florida and Minnesota in 2025-26); team lists come from single-team skater rows and match the team totals in every season. Penalty-kill luck check: the stay-at-home label was shuffled at random among each season’s regular defencemen 2,000 times (seeded), and players were resampled with replacement 2,000 times for a 90% range.
Continues below
The career, run, named-season, team-season and benchmark figures were added for the 2026-10-27 rewrite and do not change any earlier figure. Definitions. Regular defenceman: listed at defence and played at least half of the season’s team games (41 of 82; scaled for short seasons). Forward rate: the points per game of all regular forwards that season, pooled (all their points divided by all their games). Stay-at-home (strict): points per game under 25% of that rate; in 2025-26 the forward rate was 44.8 points per 82 games, so the cut was 11.2. Loose version: under 35%. Penalty-kill use (1997-98 on): shorthanded ice time per game; “heavy” means at or above the median regular defenceman that season, which adjusts for penalties getting rarer. Repeat-rate stretches: the five stretches in the persistence chart (1917-18 to 1945-46, 1946-47 to 1966-67, 1967-68 to 1991-92, 1992-93 to 2009-10, 2010-11 to 2024-25) are the build script’s era split. 1992-93 is simply where the stretch before 2010 begins in that split; it is not tied to when ice-time records begin (1997-98), and it takes in 2008-09 and 2009-10, the first two seasons after the drop. Exact rates: 46.9% against 15.4% (1992-93 to 2009-10, 335 cases) and 31.8% against 7.9% (2010-11 to 2024-25, 154 cases).
Continues below
Ice-time ratio: a stay-at-home group’s share of all regular-defence shorthanded time divided by its share of all regular-defence ice time (1.14 in 1997-98 to 2009-10, 1.16 since 2010-11). The minutes gap per game has been 3.4 to 5.7 in every season since 1997-98.
| Test | Result | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| The stay-at-home defenceman is vanishing | 16.9% of regular D 1942-2008, 9.2% since (326 of 3,541) | Holds: about half as common, not gone |
| The decline is an artefact of the cut | Strict, loose, even-strength and 75%-of-games rules all fall after the 2000s; a fixed points cut swings with league scoring instead | Rejected |
| The survivors are penalty-kill specialists | 38.5% heavy PK vs 51.7% for other D; same in odd and even seasons | Does not hold |
| The penalty-kill gap is luck | Gap 13.2 points (n 662 vs 4,782); shuffled labels: 95% under 4.0, max 7.4 in 2,000; player bootstrap 90% range 9.2 to 17.2; periods 1997-98 to 2009-10 12.8 (shuffle max 10.3); 2010-11 to 2025-26 14.1 (shuffle max 11.1) | Rejected |
More tests below
| Test | Result | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| Teams stopped carrying a stay-at-home defenceman | Team-seasons with none: 21.0% in 1997-98 to 2007-08 (61 of 291), 48.9% since 2008-09 (271 of 554); 19 of 32 in 2025-26 | Holds |
| Defence’s share of points is still rising | 22.5% to 26.0% every season since 1978-79 | Does not hold |
| The 2025 “revival” signings fit the old type | 2025-26: Dylan Samberg 38.8%, Kevin Bahl 43.3%, Nicolas Hague 44.3% of the forward rate; Daneyko 1999-2000 15.4% | Not by scoring (says nothing about defence) |
Frequently asked questions
Are stay-at-home defencemen disappearing in the NHL?
They are rarer. About one regular defenceman in six (16.9%) scored at under a quarter of the forward rate from 1942-43 to 2007-08. Since 2008-09 it is 9.2%, about one in eleven, or a little more than one per two teams. In 2025-26 there were 14, and 19 of 32 teams had none.
Which NHL defenceman had the most stay-at-home seasons?
Luke Richardson, with 12 seasons under a quarter of the forward scoring rate (1987-88 to 2007-08). Ken Daneyko had 11, all for New Jersey, and Jason Strudwick 10 of his 11 regular seasons. The longest run is Art Wiebe’s 8 straight for Chicago (1934-35 to 1941-42), before the 1942-43 start of our main series.
Are stay-at-home defencemen making a comeback?
Not by scoring. Sports Illustrated called the July 2025 contracts for Dylan Samberg, Nicolas Hague and Kevin Bahl a revival of the stay-at-home defender. In 2025-26 all three scored at 39% to 44% of the forward rate, above even our loose 35% cut. Our rule measures scoring, not defensive quality.
What share of NHL points do defencemen score?
About a quarter: 25.3% in 2025-26. It rose from about 15% in the 1930s and has been between 22.5% and 26.0% since 1978-79.
Are low-scoring defencemen mainly penalty killers?
No. Since 1997-98, 38.5% of them killed at least as many shorthanded minutes a game as the middle regular defenceman, against 51.7% of other regulars. They play about four fewer minutes a game, with slightly more of it shorthanded.
What counts as a stay-at-home defenceman here?
A defenceman who played at least half of his team’s games and scored at under 25% of the points-per-game rate of that season’s regular forwards. In 2025-26 that was about 11 points per 82 games. A looser 35% cut and an even-strength-only version show the same decline.
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The NHL Shift Got Shorter, Then Grew Back
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Stuck After an Icing, NHL Defences Give Up 15% More Expected Goals
- Verdict: Data story
The NHL Bench Grew From Eight Skaters a Night to 18 in Jumps
- Verdict: Data story
NHL Forwards Playing Under 10 Minutes a Night Fell From 43 to 16 Since 1998-99
Sources and method
- NHL stats (NHL.com), every season since 1917-18
- NHL stats API: skater summaries (points by position) and skater time on ice
- NHL API reference (community documentation of the stats endpoints)
- Scouting the Refs: NHL historical rule changes
- NewJerseyDevils.com, compiled by Amanda Stein: Oral History of the 2003 Cup (Feb. 26, 2023)
- NHL.com, Mike G. Morreale: New Jersey Devils honor Ken Daneyko for 40-year career (healthy scratch, Game 7, 1,283 games)
- Wikipedia: 2003 Stanley Cup Final (Game 7 scoring summary)
- The Hockey Writers, Michael Gwizdala: New Jersey Devils top 10 June moments (Daneyko’s Masterton)
- Hockey-Reference: Bill Masterton Memorial Trophy winners (Daneyko, 1999-00)
- Grantland, Sean McIndoe: Al Arbour, 1932-2015
- NHL.com (Islanders), Stan Fischler: Maven’s Memories, Al Arbour’s road to the Islanders
- OilersNation, Lowetide: The end of the stay-at-homes (July 24, 2014)
- NBC Sports, Adam Gretz: Brooks Orpik scored one of the unlikeliest game-winning goals in Cup Final history (May 31, 2018)
- Wikipedia: 2018 Stanley Cup Final (Game 2 date, Washington’s first Cup)
- Sports Illustrated (On SI), Jacob Punturi: Western Conference reviving stay-at-home defensemen (July 30, 2025)
- LNH.com: Xhekaj et les Canadiens s’entendent pour un an (2025-26 season and playoffs)
Research and analysis, not betting advice. Past results do not guarantee future returns; bet only what you can afford to lose.