When building a Stanley Cup winner, does size matter?

When the Blues beat up the Bruins to hoist the Stanley Cup in June, one popular narrative that arose was that bigger is now better when it comes to building a contender. “Big boy hockey is back.” “Heavy hockey wins.” After all, 11 of the 12 Blues forwards were 6-feet or taller, and nine of them weighed at least 200 pounds. Their blue line averaged an Ivan Drago-like 6-foot-3, 210 pounds.

When San Jose coach Pete DeBoer remarked that the “two hardest, heaviest teams” were in the Cup final, it seemed like a sign that something was shifting in the league. But not so fast, says the general manager who is getting sized for his Cup ring. “I believe the game is trending towards speed, skill and puck movement,” Blues GM Doug Armstrong said. “Where we stand true is trying to have size on the back end. Size is difficult to play against. I say it’s like going through a car wash. There’s arms and legs all over the place.”

That’s likely music to the ears of Lightning fans. You see, their President’s Trophy-winning team — which was stunningly swept in the first round by Columbus in April — actually got smaller up front this summer. With the trades of power forwards J.T. Miller (to Vancouver) and Adam Erne (to Detroit), the Lightning now have zero forwards who are over 200 pounds — in fact, they average 5-11, 184, or two inches and 24 pounds fewer than St. Louis. The Tampa Bay blue line, however, averages 6-foot-3, 217 pounds. Yes, that’s bigger than the Blues. For context, The Athletic’s James Mirtle does an annual league measurable piece, and last season the average NHL player was 6-feet, 1.2 inches, and there were just 25 skaters 6-foot-5 or taller. The average weight was 199.3 pounds. It wasn’t that long ago that teams made their arms race a footrace, trying to keep up with the speedy and relentless Penguins who won back-to-back Cups in 2016 and ’17. Those Pittsburgh teams had forwards that averaged 5-foot-11, 191 pounds in 2017 and just 6-foot, 194 pounds the previous year.

Brayden Schenn of the Blues checks the Bruins’ Joakim Nordstrom into the glass during Game 6 of the Stanley Cup final earlier this summer. (Brian Babineau / NHLI via Getty Images) You don’t see Penguins GM Jim Rutherford reinventing the wheel in trying to return his club to glory. “It doesn’t change,” Rutherford told The Athletic. “There’s more than one way to win a Cup — that’s what (the Blues winning) shows. Teams will build their team around their best players. I don’t think you’re necessarily going to see a big shift (in size). … Not long ago, Pittsburgh and Washington won the Cup in a certain way. Now a heavier team won it. You can do it a few different ways.” That’s exactly what we found in an analysis of Stanley Cup winners over the last decade.

I went back 10 years, poring over the rosters of the Cup-winning teams and conference finalists, sizing up their rosters. Using HockeyReference, I collected the average height and weight of each team’s forward group and blue line, how many forwards were taller than 6-feet or weighed more than 200 pounds. Then, with a major stick tap to The Athletic colleague Shayna Goldman, we put together charts showing the changes over the years and how each “big” team fared. Based on different metrics, how did each team use its size (or lack thereof)? What you’ll find is what Rutherford suggested: There’s more than one way to hoist hockey’s holy grail, so many nuances and intangibles and luck that are impossible to evaluate with a tape measure. So when Lightning GM Julien BriseBois vowed not to “blow up” his roster this summer, there was a good explanation for why he hasn’t chased the bigger fish (size-wise). “There are advantages to being a heavy guy,” BriseBois said. “They have advantages that other players that are smaller don’t have. But our identity is based on pace. If you’re a big guy and can’t play with pace, you can’t play for us. Really, that’s what it comes down to. “So why go after those guys?”    

This is not to say that size isn’t important in hockey. Because it is. Or it can be. Anyone who watched the bruising Blues forecheck, their trees on defense or Patrick Maroon’s play in front of the net in the final could tell that. Similarly, in Tampa Bay, everyone saw how much havoc 6-foot-3 forward Josh Anderson wreaked on the Lightning with his ferocious forecheck during the Blue Jackets’ first-round sweep. “I don’t think they’ve really played against a team all year that’s frustrated them as much as we are right now,” Anderson told The Athletic’s Aaron Portzline during the series. “We’re just playing solid D and being really patient in the neutral zone. A lot of their skilled players are having trouble in the neutral zone, and it looks like they have to dump pucks in more than they’re used to. “My job right now is really just to get in on the forecheck and bang as many bodies as I can. I’m going out there and doing my job. If that’s not getting on the scoresheet, well, we’ve got other guys who can put the puck in the back of the net.” So when did the “bigger is better” notion start? It was in the early 2010s, when the Bruins (2011) and Kings (2012, 2014) rode that formula to Cups before the Blackhawks (2013, 2015) unseated them with their blend of speed and size. The Cup finalists in both 2011 and 2012 had average forward sizes of 6-foot-1 and 200-plus (Bruins and Canucks in 2011, Devils and Kings in 2012). Even the 2011 Lightning, who reached Game 7 of the Eastern Conference final, averaged 6-foot-1, 201 pounds up front, and nine of their 12 forwards were 6-feet or taller.

“(The 2013 and 2015 Chicago teams) had some size — not a ton — but they had a lot of skill,” said Hall of Fame coach Scotty Bowman, a long-time senior advisor with the Blackhawks. “Skill guys are going to put up points and they’re going to get paid — it’s a simple equation. The Kings were pretty strong: They were effective and they had big guys. But it then caught up with them later for their lack of speed. They had a couple guys who couldn’t do it anymore, and it went right down the tube.” The Blackhawks were on the ropes against the Lightning in the 2015 final, as Tampa Bay took a 2-1 series lead before losing in six games. Injuries to goalie Ben Bishop (groin) and Tyler Johnson (broken wrist) hurt a young Lightning squad that was similar to Chicago’s in size. In the end, it was the Hawks’ experience that proved to be the difference, several Lightning players have said. “Normally you get a pretty good feel for how a series is going to go after a couple games,” said former Blackhawks forward Patrick Sharp, now an NBCSN analyst. “You feel if you’re a better team than the opponent, (you know) how it’s going to go. But in 2015, it was a toss-up. I thought they were so fast. They were just on you in so many different ways. They knew where the puck was going before it got there. It wasn’t player speed; more like everyone was on the same page and knew how to play. That’s what made them a fast team.” Sharp noted that that Blackhawks team played with an edge, with veterans like Duncan Keith and Brent Seabrook leading the way. But there was an underlying competitiveness, a desperation that overcame any size deficiency, and it was exemplified by the team’s biggest star, 5-foot-10 winger Patrick Kane. “Being heavy doesn’t necessarily mean throwing a big body, checking and fighting and being a physical, instigating presence,” Sharp said. “Being heavy is protecting the puck down low, sacrificing to score goals. People won’t look at those (Blackhawks) teams and think ‘heavy,’ but a guy like Kane — who doesn’t get described as a heavy player — there’s not a player in the league that I’d take (over him) in a big moment. “I think Tampa has guys like that, too, that are tough to play against. Guys like (Yanni) Gourde. They’re on you the whole time.”  

The Lightning went back to the Eastern Conference final the next year, in 2016, but they were outlasted in seven games by the Penguins, a buzzsaw that rolled all four lines at high speed. Johnson said those Pittsburgh teams helped move the game toward being played at a faster pace, one the former All-Star is still trying to catch up to. “I’ve constantly had to work on skating since day one,” Johnson said. “Especially in today’s game, it’s the most important thing. It’s a really big difference from when I was first in the league to now. Now everyone can skate. There used to be a lot of guys in the league that, quite frankly, had a lot of skill, but couldn’t really skate. Now those guys are out of the league or maybe not on the better teams. Because you definitely need that speed, that skating. It opens everything up for you.” Rutherford said he noticed a “bit of a shift” in the sport with a higher priority being placed on speed. “I think, for the most part, you have good, smaller players playing in our league,” Rutherford said. “With the way the game is played and the rules are, I think you see more of a shift towards that speed.” The Capitals certainly had that element in their run to the Cup in 2018, beating the Lightning in seven games in the conference final. But Washington had a strong mix, with their forwards averaging 6-foot-1 1/2, 207 pounds, their defensemen 6-1, 206. As much as speed was a factor, so was the physical play of captain Alex Ovechkin and Tom Wilson. The expansion Vegas Golden Knights were built pretty similarly, with their forwards at 6-foot, 197 pounds, their blueliners at 6-2, 203. “You get tempted when you have a good team to get more skill, more skill,” Bowman said. “But it’s more of a balance of the lineup that counts. The toughest commodity to get is a good defenseman that’s physical and that can move the puck. I think St. Louis was always a pretty good team, but this team this year with (defensemen Colton) Parayko, Jay Bouwmeester, Alex Pietrangelo — their defense played really good, fast, hard.” Former NHL center Mike Rupp, at 6-foot-5, 243 pounds, scored the Cup-clinching goal for the Devils in 2003. He played for five more teams in his career, including the Penguins from 2009-11, and has paid close attention to how the game has evolved since he retired in 2014. Being merely a fast team isn’t good enough anymore. “I always thought that most people probably associate Pittsburgh (winning) the Cups (with) the game switching to a faster game,” Rupp said. “The game has always been faster, but that was the first team of an extreme mode. The big difference is that everyone has adjusted to that. “What I’ve always thought is that it was a matter of time (before the importance of size catches up). If speed kills, what does size and speed do? I think you’re starting to see that this year. You have to have speed, but when you add some size, that makes all the difference in the world. It makes a lot of the top-end talent always have to adjust their game. … “In a perfect world, you find a guy 6-2, 6-3 that can skate like Connor McDavid and have the skill of Nikita Kucherov. That doesn’t happen; not many guys can do that. It’s about playing on the interior, physically getting to certain points is how you can still generate chances.”
Capitals winger Tom Wilson checks Golden Knights defenseman Colin Miller during Game 2 of the 2018 Stanley Cup final. (Stephen R. Sylvanie / USA Today)

It was mid-January in freezing cold Syracuse, N.Y., and I was watching the Lightning’s AHL affiliate, the Crunch, with BriseBois in his booth at War Memorial Arena. It being his first year as Tampa Bay GM, we had a wide-ranging talk about philosophies on team-building. The conversation turned to size. The Lightning were in the midst of their record-tying season, matching the 62-win, 1995 Red Wings as the most successful regular-season team of all time. And they were doing it with a ton of forwards who were under 6-feet (Brayden Point, Gourde and Johnson, to name a few). I mentioned that Toronto Maple Leafs coach Mike Babcock once pointed out that you don’t have to be big to play “heavy.” BriseBois nodded. “Yanni Gourde, pound for pound, is arguably the strongest guy in our organization,” BriseBois said. “And he’s a little guy.” So it wasn’t surprising to see the Lightning not make any sizable — pardon the pun — changes this summer. They brought in a heavy-playing defenseman in Luke Schenn, of course, but he’ll be a bottom-pairing, depth guy. They kicked the tires on Maroon, a free agent and a Jon Cooper favorite, but the price proved too costly. There are three forward spots available in camp, but those will likely go to prospects like Carter Verhaeghe (6-1, 187), Danick Martel (5-8, 162), Mitchell Stephens (6-foot, 191), Alex Volkov (6-1, 192) or Alex Barre-Boulet (5-10, 170). Verhaeghe and Barre-Boulet tied for the AHL lead in goals last season, but none of these guys will blow the door down with their size. That shouldn’t matter, Rutherford said, when describing how he builds his team. “Strength down the middle — your centers, your goalie, your coaching — and then things have to fall in the right place. You have to get the right breaks at the right time,” Rutherford said. “A lot of different things have to happen, whether you have a heavy team or a speed, skill team. You can say St. Louis was a heavy team, but they had extremely good coaching, extremely good goaltending and skill on that team. “Your best players have to be your best players, your goaltender has to be good and your coach has to be on his game. And you have to have the determination to win the really tough games.” Rutherford said the Lightning were one of the top teams in the league last year — “and will be again this year. They just hit a series at the wrong time where Columbus was playing really well.” The Lightning are still the Vegas favorites to win the Stanley Cup, even over the defending-champion Blues. “The guys have just got to go figure it out and learn from it,” Rupp said. “When you look at it, would you rather have a team that’s playing really well going into the playoffs and don’t have the star power where you just almost hope that everything falls your way? Or would you rather be a team like Tampa built like the Globetrotters where they’ve got to find it where they’re playing well all at the same time? It’s not close to me — you want Tampa. Figuring those things out is a lot easier than fabricating your roster. You can’t just pluck someone from the Black Aces that’s a superstar. They’ve got that part figured out. “Now it’s the part, the uncomfortable one, we don’t know the answer to. How to take the next step?” Without having to take a step up in weight class.