Are small NHLers are thing of the past?
Team decisions illustrate trends rather than confirm reality
In the past week, two market-level trends attracted my attention:
Few undersized players were selected at the 2024 NHL Entry Draft
38% of drafted players were 6’3” or taller
1.3% of drafted players were 5’10” or shorter
No <5’10” player was selected in the top 100
Several undersized, restricted free agent defensemen were left unqualified by their NHL teams
Erik Brannstrom OTT
Calen Addison MIN
Jacob Bryson BUF
Nils Lundkvist DAL
Adam Boqvist CBJ (buyout)
etc.
Hockey insiders make the case that big players are now faster, more agile and more skillful, negating small players’ natural advantage. Teams covet Vegas’ rangy, heavy D corps and Florida’s relentless physicality. Small players are a thing of the past, they say.
However, I believe that we’re seeing an overcorrection in the marketplace.
Remember that Brannstrom, Addison, Bryson, Lundkvist and Boqvist were all drafted between 2017-18, during a time when NHL front offices valued on-ice impact, playmaking and projectable skillsets over raw size. The market overrated these players’ value then, and it undervalues their value now.
Bull market → bear market.
NHLers, regardless of style or physical makeup, will need to survive several of these unforeseeable market cycles in order to carve out a 10, 15 or 20-year career.
To maximize their odds for counter-cyclical success, Small players compensate by learning how to initiate contact, attacking the interior of the ice or, conversely, doubling down on their skill and IQ to avoid physical confrontations. Meanwhile, in anticipation of the next big shift in team preferences, larger players can make themselves irreplaceable by learning how to get off the wall, create deception and complete passes in-tight.
From a team-building perspective, undersized but positive net impact players will always be valuable to NHL teams, even if size matters in the postseason. Non-playoff teams can sign small-yet-productive NHLers on the open market and turn them into draft asset at the deadline. Contenders, meanwhile, can slot these low-cost players into depth roles during the regular season, as they accrue cap space for a late-season addition.
Once in a while, though, some of these unwanted UFAs vastly exceed expectations. Four years ago the fleet-but-light Gustav Forsling was a full-time AHLer in his third NHL organization. Meanwhile, Brandon Montour showed occasional offensive flashes but was one of many net-negative players on a bottom-feeding team. Both are now consensus top-pair defensemen, and Stanley Cup champs.
Will one of this year’s unqualified RFA Ds follow the same path? The possibility is real, especially considering several of these players had better junior and early-pro results than Forsling and Montour.