Deep dive on Calen Addison 1st pro season

1st NHL game and strong AHL start

Yesterday, Minnesota Wild's top defensive prospect made his NHL debut. Paired with veteran defenseman Ryan Suter, Addison played 19:41 minutes and had a strong first NHL showing. As we can see, his underlying numbers (from Natural Stattrick) were positive in most metrics:

Here are some of his best offensive and defensive plays of the night:

Additionally, I watched his three AHL games this season, tracking some numbers and cutting some clips to get a clear picture of his upside.

Numbers

Microstats

Like I did in my deep dive on Mike Koster's game, I always like to track three microstats when I watch some defenseman's clips. Three games is a small sample size so it's not necessarily a predictor of future success, but the goal was to see how he played strictly in these three games, to get an idea on some aspects of his game he needs to work on, and to remove some eye bias when watching the clips.

Defensive zone puck retrievals

Defensive zone pressure breakout puck touches below the circles. As we can see in the numbers (77% of exits), breakout retrieval is the best part of Addison's game. His high number of successful exit assists shows that Addison is more than often the first defenseman who retrieves puck on his pairing and is making great decisions with it, thanks to his skating and desire to make plays on breakouts.

Zone entry against

Despite showing some positive skills when defending the rush, we'll see in the development plan section how he can improve this part of his game.

OZ Touches

Another strength of Addison's game is offensive zone play, with the ability to create quality scoring chances and an impressive 93% of successful puck touches in his three AHL games this season.

Macrostats

Small sample size, but Addison did a great job driving results at 5-on-5 in his three AHL games this season. To add some context, the corsi% is average but Texas is a team that attempts many shots, using a lot of point shots in the offensive zone. The 63% SCF% is pretty impressive.

Video room

Strengths of his game

1-Pressure breakout puck retrievals

This video presents 2:16 minutes of good breakouts from only three of Addison's games and I could have included many more breakout sequences. As you can see in this clip, he has pretty much every quality you want from defenseman on retrievals:

-Great habits: Picture of the ice before pivoting, multiple shoulder checks, going fast to pucks, eyes up, limited numbers of unnecessary stickhandles

-Patience: The poise under pressure to beat F1 and attract F2, confidence to make plays

-Deception

-Good use of the net as a shield when needed

-Small area skills: The ability to maneuver and change direction in tight space, making passes under the FC'er stick, being able to make plays on your backhand

-High-end skating to beat F1 and create separation

-Good decision making: Problem-solving abilities, using open space, when to make a quick play when to control the puck area and wait for your support (1:42), etc

2- Offensive zone play

Likewise to his breakout abilities, Addison has many offensive zone skills you want from a defenseman:

-Eyes up

-Confidence, patience, skills, and skating to maneuver on the blueline to find better passing lanes and to create quality offense

-D activation, off the puck movement, using open space

-Shooting threat (when it's the right occasion): Addison owns a quick wrist shot who gets through and a powerful slap shot he likes to use in appropriate situations

3- Power play QB

Given everything I've mentioned in the first two points, it's no surprise that Calen Addison is a strong PP QB. Even if as of now the Iowa Wild has struggled (11.8%) on the PP, I'm confident Addison will be a huge part of the solution to improve this number.

Development plan: Three areas of focus to work on

1-Rush against details

There's a positive base in Addison's abilities to defend the rush. His backward skating stance is fine. He sits/pinches on his winger when needed. He defends skating forward in certain situations (he does it perfectly at 1:30 in the breakouts' video). He just needs to do it more consistently. It's not a weakness of his game, but as a smaller defenseman, defending the rush aggressively and by skating forward need to become a strength of his game so he has less in zone defending to do. Here are a few other details he needs to focus on improving in his NZ defense:

-Less backward crossovers to stay in a stable defensive posture

-Stickwork: We'll see in this video how 1. His stick is not always in the most dangerous passing lane and 2. His stick lift in the air when he pivots so it gives the offensive player more space to maneuver and to make a play.

2- Defensive zone details

Overall, I've been pretty impressed with his defensive zone play. Obviously, it's not perfect as a 20 years old offensive defenseman playing a lot of minutes in the AHL (averaging 20+), but you can many positives when watching his game: Head on a swivel to identify threats, he's constantly communicating to sort out situations, he closes space quickly when needed, his compete level is good and he leverages his strength decently in battles.

As we can see in this video, he needs to improve some netfront defending and stickwork details.

0:06: He's in a good position, tying his check and not double screening the goalie. Solid job overall, but I'd like to see him tie up his check stick's with a lift-under: His check won't be able to tip a shot and Addison will have the advantage to recover the puck if there's a rebound

0:15: He's a bit late to tie his check, he's double screening the goalie and he doesn't take Kings' #19 stick

0:22: With a better stick positioning, he would have been able to block that royal road pass

3- Offensively: 1st touch

As we saw in many previous clips, Addison's offensive package is high-end. The detail he needs to work on in certain situations is his 1st touch:

-Receiving the puck across his body directly in his hip pocket (no stickhandle)

-Receiving passes in motions: Inside crossovers, pivots, etc.

Here are a few things to notice in the video:

0:14: Addison is about the receives a low-to-high pass in the offensive zone. He doesn't shoulder checks before receiving the puck and catches the pass in a standstill position. He now has to rim the puck back in the OZ and Wild lose possession of it. By doing a shoulder check & receiving the pass in a crossover movement, he could have walked the line quickly, give the puck back to his forward on the wall and activates with a D-dive (best scenario), or quickly walking the line and shooting for a stick or placing the puck in a better release point so Iowa could have recovered the puck more easily

0:24: Addison receives his partner pass in a standstill position. He's not in a position to make a play, so he rims it back to his D partner. Wild lose the puck and are back on defense. By taking a better route and receiving the 1st pass in a pivot, he could easily have beaten F1 with his great skating and/or would have been able to make a quick play to #17 for an easy exit.

0:39: Addison receives the D2D pass in the OZ by skating towards his D partner. If he receives the pass in an open pivot towards the board, he's in a better position to make a play by receiving the puck across his body in his hip pocket.

Having his feet outside the blueline would also have helped him in the two offensive zone sequence described by giving him more time & space to maneuver against Textas' pretty aggressive defensive wingers.

Conclusion

I'm a believer in Addison's game. He's got a complete offensive package and his defensive game is constantly improving. There's some fine-tuning to do, but I don't see huge weaknesses in his game. The Wild organization is doing a good job giving him lots of 5-on-5 minutes at the AHL level with PP1 and some PK as well. Being paired with a veteran like Suter in his 1st NHL game is a great opportunity for his development as well. It will be interesting to follow his development. The Wild have many talented young players coming up and Addison looks to be a defenseman with potential play driving abilities at 5-on-5 and top PP unit QB duties.

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