Ranking the Top 5 Defenses in the NHL

The Columbus Blue Jackets crack the Top 5 for being one of the most defensive-minded teams in the NHL. A team depleted of stars on offense, they make up for it by locking down the best forwards in the game while still finding production from their blue-liners in the offensive zone.

Led by the best defensive pair in the NHL, Zach Werenski and Seth Jones, their backend totaled 39 goals and 134 total points on their campaign a year ago, and 71 of those came from their superstars on the top pair.

The Blue Jackets finished fifth in the NHL in goals-against during regulation, allowing just 2.09 during the 2019-20 season with an expected GA/60 of 2.08. Most of this is attributed to the fact that the team blocks roughly 28% of all opposing shot attempts on goal. Statistically, this defense makes for a top 3 squad, but as far as depth, they don’t compete with the Top 3 in order to ascend any higher than 4th on this list.

In the 2020-21 season, expect the Columbus Blue Jackets to further improve their defense and bost even better situational statistics on the year. While they lost Ryan Murray to the New Jersey Devils in Free Agency and Markus Nutivaara to the Florida Panthers, the Blue Jackets’ scheme revolves around defending their defensive zone and limiting turnovers and scoring opportunities.

With or without those aforementioned players, the message relayed to the players is all the same. They’ll score few goals on the season, but they’ll let up even fewer.

So long as their defense remains atop in the league, they’ll always remain a threat to teams in the postseason. They showed their ability to shut down high powered offenses such as the Tampa Bay Lightning during the 2020 Stanley Cup Playoffs, but they ran out of luck towards the end in a long and arduous series.

While there are a couple of teams that may slide in and out of this list, the Columbus Blue Jackets will be one of the only ones to remain a constant in the Top 5.