A couple months ago, we talked about teams that have a “forest” when it comes to integrating players into their system. The good teams can plug-and-play guys into their lineup without much of a problem and in the case of Florida, adding a higher dollar player like Seth Jones and placing him into a role he’s more suited for. This is what the rebuilding teams strive for and it can feel impossible when you’re in the trenches of it.
Accumulating draft picks & prospects for older players is the easy part, seeing who sticks in the NHL is a different story. There’s the added task of trying to balance rookies & veterans into your lineup while figuring out how much leeway to give the younger players. Mistakes are how you learn, but you’re still trying to win games and that level of pressure can lead to stunted development or younger players approaching the game from a “I don’t want to get benched” perspective.
It reminds me of when I was at an Icehogs game against Tucson a few years ago. I wanted to keep an eye on Victor Soderstrom because he was the Coyotes top prospect at the time & I like getting a birds-eye view of what a defenseman does when I’m at a game in person. He touched the puck maybe 10 total times in all three zones, didn’t carry it once and wasn’t really trying to be involved in the offensive zone, staying at the blue line while puck battles were going on down low. My takeaway from watching him was “he didn’t do much but he wasn’t really given a chance to do anything.”
There wasn’t much of a chance for him to be an impact player, although my view of the game is probably different than what the coaches saw. If he was a middle-pair guy it would be one thing, but this is a player you spent a high pick on who was only 20-years-old at the time. It just felt like there wasn’t much he could do to impact the game. This might have been an off-night, but I’ve also seen this happen at the NHL level, going back to when the Hurricanes were trying to break in 4 or 5 young defensemen into the lineup. Some guys like Jaccob Slavin immediately got the hang of it while others had to be kept on training wheels to the point where it wasn’t helping the team or the player.
One team in the trenches right now is the Anaheim Ducks. They’ve been in a rebuild for a very long time and it’s been a trial by fire with integrating some of the younger players into their lineup. They’ve already moved on from a couple players they spent high first round picks on and have been a possession sinkhole for the better part of the past decade, making it a very tough environment for rookies unless they’re game-breakers. This is especially true for defensemen, who are sometimes at the mercy of the forwards in front of them when it comes to driving play. However, this hasn’t been the case for second-year player Jackson LaCombe.
Fans across the league started to take notice of him last year with a 14-goal season and he’s pretty easy to notice when you watch the Ducks. He’s a tall guy who covers a lot of ground on the ice, flying all over the offensive zone and getting upwards of 30-puck touches a night. He’s one of those defenseman that likes to have the play go through him and that can go either way on a rebuilding roster. The Ducks weren’t an easy team to play for while Cronin was there either, both from a roster and coaching/system standpoint so that probably made LaCombe’s success last year really standout. It’s interesting because he wasn’t their top defensive prospect but they did like him enough to have him completely bypass the AHL out of college as a 22-year-old and it was rare for him to not be in the lineup. So there was always a level of an “it factor” with him.
I always compared him to Slavin even though they have different playing styles, although they share the same workhorse-like mentality, because sometimes the players you stick aren’t the ones you expect when you draft them. What makes LaCombe’s playing style so “system proof,” though? Even without looking at his stats, you can tell he is one of the few players on the Ducks keeping his head above water while some of the veterans and arguably more talented players struggled. It’s also tough for a defenseman to dictate the results when you’re constantly skating uphill without a play-driving or high-scoring line to work behind. The Ducks have a semblance of this with Troy Terry as a quick-strike scorer, Mason McTavish emerging as a top-six center and Leo Carlsson/Cutter Gauther as their budding stars of the future. As of now, there’s more stress on the defensemen to drive play and LaCombe was the main one up to the task. Some of the stats relative to the rest of the Ducks defense show how great he played in a tough environment.
LaCombe posted a 17.8 Expected Goals Above Replacement through Evolving Wild’s model. The next closest regular Ducks defenseman was Olen Zellweger with 0.1. By pure Goals Above Replacement, LaCombe posted a 8.4 with Zellweger being the next closest again at 3.1. By raw Expected Goals things aren’t as pretty with LaCombe posting a 49.7%, but that was still the highest rating on the Ducks with Zellweger behind him at 47%. He was also one of three Ducks defensemen who outscored their opposition at five-on-five. As a team, the Ducks owned only 48% of the goals and 45% of the Expected Goals (via Natural Stat Trick), so it’s easy to see why LaCombe’s play really caught people’s attention last season.
In terms of what makes him “system proof,” this wasn’t always the case but there were signs of it in his rookie year.
Going back to my piece on The Microstat Compass with defensemen from a few years ago, those who excel at retrievals or carrying the puck early are usually going to carve out some niche for themselves at the NHL level. They’re the two most repeatable skills for a defensemen & there is some correlation with driving offense with both of them (the retrievals side is an article for another day). You don’t have to be great at everything, but you want to show signs. LaCombe wasn’t a workhorse with retrievals, but he wasn’t getting knocked off the puck, did well with getting it out, showed some skills with carrying the puck and limiting chances against. He also showed some decent chance creation from an offensive standpoint. So there was enough to make you believe he was going to be a good player since he was posting decent-to-good results at 19-20 minutes a night & isn’t undersized to the point where you’re afraid to test him against tough competition. Last year is where thing took off.
What a glow up. I didn’t watch him in college so I’m not sure if the signs of LaCombe becoming this player were always there or if this was something that came out of nowhere. It’s the type of progression you might expect from someone taken higher like Pavel Mintyukov (although he is younger) rather than a second-rounder who didn’t have a lot of point production until a couple years after you drafted him. Some of the A3Z stats do give us a look into why LaCombe controls his results more rather than him being at the mercy of the players around him.
The biggest thing is that he touches the puck a lot & he’s very efficient with it. There aren’t a lot of turnovers or bad plays with the puck and that is with a pretty massive workload on retrievals. This illustrates it well.
Most of the Ducks possessions from their own zone started with LaCombe and he was the best at advancing the play while also not turning it over or botching the exit. There’s a certain level of control you have on your results when you can do this even if the team around you struggles to push the play forward. I watched LaCombe closely in Anaheim’s game against Toronto last year, where the Ducks lost 3-2 but it was a competitive game & LaCombe was a standout with five scoring chance contributions along with a goal & an assist.
There are two sides to this clip where you see LaCombe have a direct influence on what happens. The first side of this clip is pretty routine stuff with LaCombe tying up Domi in front of the net while the Leafs try to get the puck there & then he gets a puck to the net for McTavish to get a deflection chance. Once the Ducks lose possession is where he makes something happen out of nothing on an extended shift. He takes a good route to the loose puck & ties the play up along the boards for a second while Gauthier (61) comes to support him. He then makes a bank play off the boards from an awkward position while the Leafs defenseman pinched which gives Robby Fabbri a chance off the rush. This is where a defenseman can be a game-breaker even if he’s not carrying the puck up the ice like a Cale Makar. He saw the Leafs playing aggressive on him & one of his own guys having a chance to for a rush the other way.
Feeding the transition game is how you get the most out of a roster that’s still finding its way and LaCombe had a couple more examples of doing this, particularly though reloads.
I really love this sequence because the first attempt didn’t work, but LaCombe got another chance to feed the rush from the neutral zone & was right on the money with it. Attacking from the red line is something a lot of teams want to do but it’s tough to pull it off consistently with forwards who are standing still or looking for a tip play rather than a touch pass. It takes two to tango here and LaCombe always shows a lot of poise with trying to start rushes from a dead stop like this. It’s one of those qualities you look for in a potential game-breaker because catching a team off-guard like this can have a pretty big impact.
Then there’s the small plays in the doldrums of the game.
While the higher-impact plays are nice, subtle things like this have an cumulative impact over the course of the season. Simply taking hits, getting the puck to the next layer and keeping it away from your own zone helps set other things up & you can see that when the Ducks get the puck into the offensive zone. LaCombe is very active with getting involved in the play here & forces a turnover that leads to a decent one-timer chance with a screen. This is what being complementary to the forwards looks like in action.
This is where I wonder how much of this he showed in junior hockey or college. Every prospect is talented & probably has a handful of shifts like this on their draft tape, so it’s always tough to project who is going to carry this over to the next level. It’s espeically tough on a team like Anaheim where you’re basically starting from scratch with four or five other proespects competing for your spot. The Chicago Blackhawks are going through the same process right now and found their hidden gem in Alex Vlasic. Getting at least two or three more players to the same level is the next step.
This is where I wonder what more can be done from the scouting or player development side. Is it just a matter of playing them and letting them figure it out or is there something they showed in college or juniors that would give you the hint? The Ducks helped LaCombe with how much they played him in his rookie season & moved on from a couple other players so he could become their top-pair guy this year while he continued to improve. Not every team can do that and most teams wont. The Ducks themselves had issues getting Mintyukhov and Zellweger into the lineup every night last year when they were juggling so many defensemen on the roster. Just something to think about as we head into training camp & the roster battles start to happen.