A decade ago, most NHL teams used two defencemen on the power play. For instance, when the 2010-11 Vancouver Canucks led the NHL in power play percentage, it was with both Alex Edler and Christian Ehrhoff on the first power play unit.
These days, however, it’s rare to see a team use more than one defenceman on the power play, with some teams even experimenting with five forwards on the power play. According to The Athletic, 86% of power play time featured four forwards and one defenceman last season. Teams typically only use two defencemen on the power play on some second units or at the end of a power play when they want to transition to even strength with two defencemen on the ice.
It’s easy to see why using four forwards on the power play has become the norm. First, forwards are typically the most offensively-gifted players on a team; second, the 1-3-1 formation features just one player at the point; third, it just works.
The Canucks’ league-leading 24.3% power play with two defencemen in 2010-11 would have ranked seventh in the NHL this past season. As the use of four forwards on the power play has become more common, the average power play percentage has grown from 17.31% in the 2011-12 season to 21.31% in 2022-23.
More forwards on the power play makes sense
Using four forwards on the power play isn’t a brand-new invention, of course. It’s not like teams were blind to the advantage of having an extra forward on the ice on the power play — they were just worried about the tradeoff of having just one defenceman in case of a shorthanded chance the other way.
But even back in the seventies and eighties, some teams would use four forwards by taking a forward with a booming slapshot and lining them up as a defenceman on the power play so they could hammer away from the point.
While it was relatively common for a team to swap in an extra forward for a defenceman on the power play, the opposite — using an extra defenceman — was a lot more rare. It seems obvious to say that NHL teams haven’t historically used more than two defencemen on the power play, especially with the more lead-footed defencemen of the seventies and eighties, who were more about enacting physical punishment on opposing forwards in front of the net than skating and scoring.
It wasn’t entirely unheard of, that is. The Montreal Canadiens in the seventies would sometimes use their Big Three on defence — Larry Robinson, Guy Lapointe, and Serge Savard — on the power play together. The three defencemen were simply so talented that putting them on the ice together at one time made sense.
Then there’s the Canucks of the seventies, who were not similarly blessed with three of the best defencemen in NHL history. And yet, during one game in the 1972-73 season, the Canucks used not just three defencemen on the power play, but five.
Dale Tallon, the defenceman-centre
It was October 19, 1972 in Buffalo, and the Canucks were facing their expansion cousins, the Buffalo Sabres. While both teams had stumbled in their first two seasons after entering the league together in 1970, the two teams were heading in opposite directions early in the 1972-73 season.
The Sabres, led by their 1970 first-overall pick, Gilbert Perreault, were at the top of the Eastern Conference to kick off the 1972-73 season and were en route to their first playoff berth in franchise history. Two seasons later, the Sabres would storm their way to the 1975 Stanley Cup Final, something the Canucks wouldn’t accomplish until 1982.
The Canucks missed out on Perreault thanks to the spin of a wheel and picked defenceman Dale Tallon with the second-overall pick as a consolation prize.
Only, Tallon wasn’t just a defenceman. In his draft year, Tallon played every position but goaltender for the Toronto Marlboros and some scouts felt that he could be a centre in the NHL. After they couldn’t get Perreault, the Canucks wanted Tallon to be their franchise centre, starting him at forward in his first training camp and preseason in 1970 before finally putting him back at defence for his rookie year.
Tallon put up 56 points in 78 games as a defenceman in the 1970-71 season, but that didn’t stop the Canucks coaches from repeatedly trying to put him back at centre in subsequent seasons. It’s something that was a constant aggravation for Tallon, who felt he was at his best on defence.
“The only reason I play centre is because I’m told to play there,” said Tallon after a January game in the 1972-73 season. After he was traded to the Chicago Black Hawks later in the season, he said, “I scored 56 points that first season when I went the whole way on defence. It was a good year. They let me play defence.”
So, when Canucks head coach Vic Stasiuk moved Dale Tallon up to centre during the third period of that game against the Sabres, it wasn’t an unusual sight. What was unusual were his linemates.
"Have the coaches gone crazy?"
The Canucks were down 5-0 and Stasiuk was frustrated that his smaller forwards couldn’t break through the Buffalo defence, saying, “Either our guys didn’t have enough meat or that Buffalo defence is awful tough.”
He might have had a point about the lack of “meat.” The Canucks’ four leading scorers in the 1972-73 season were Bobby Schmautz (5’9”), André Boudrias (5’8”), Rich Lemieux (5’8”), and Bobby Lalonde (5’5”), so they definitely lacked size up front.
So, when the Canucks got a power play early in the third period, Stasiuk, either looking to spark something or make a statement, put together a forward line that was all defencemen: Tallon at centre, Gregg Boddy at left wing, and Jim Hargreaves at right wing.
With Dennis Kearns and Jocelyn Guevremont at the points, the Canucks had five defencemen on the power play.
It gets even more absurd. Sabres head coach Joe Crozier, once the head coach of the Vancouver Canucks when they were in the WHL, had been using four defencemen on the penalty kill. So, during that third period Canucks power play, there were nine defencemen on the ice at once.
“One time I looked up and saw nine defencemen on the ice at the same time,” said Stasiuk after the game. “I said to myself, ‘What’s going on here? Have the coaches gone crazy?’”
My brother in Christ, you’re the coach.
Hargreaves and Boddy were defensive defencemen
Hargreaves and Boddy were unusual choices to move up to forward as neither were particularly gifted offensively. Kearns and Guevremont were far better offensive defenceman. Of course, offence wasn't the point — responding physically to the Sabres' defence was.
Tallon, Hargreaves, and Boddy stayed together as a forward line for the rest of the game. That only worked because the Canucks had dressed seven defencemen for the game, leaving four remaining defencemen — Kearns, Guevremont, Larry Bolonchuk, and Barry Wilkins — to form two defence pairings.
The line was praised as the Canucks’ best of the night and even combined for a goal, though it was called back, with the referee saying Hargreaves pushed Sabres goaltender Roger Crozier into the net with the puck. Given Hargreaves’ style of play, that sounds about right.
Hargreaves was the Canucks’ second draft pick in 1970 after Tallon, selected 16th overall in the second round. He played just 66 games in the NHL, all for the Canucks, and scored just one goal. He was a stay-at-home defensive defenceman with the nickname “Cement Head.”
Other than that one-period experiment, Hargreaves spent the rest of his career on defence.
Boddy was also a defensive defenceman, but he at least had some experience playing on the wing in the minors as a shutdown defensive forward. Boddy had bounced around the minors in the Los Angeles Kings and Montreal Canadiens’ systems before he was traded to the Canucks, where he worked his way to the NHL.
The 6’2” defenceman was surprisingly fleet of foot, which is part of the reason he was occasionally used on the wing, but had little offensive touch. Still, that game against the Sabres was far from the last time Boddy would play at forward.
Boddy was used more often as a checking line winger in subsequent seasons but still didn’t score much until the 1974-75 season, when he suddenly scored 11 goals — he had never scored more than three goals in a season at any level in his career.
Boddy played 273 games for the Canucks in his career, tallying 67 points. He then spent a year in the WHA before moving to Japan to play six seasons in the Japan Ice Hockey League to wrap up his career.
As for that one game against the Sabres, it ended as a 6-0 loss. Gilbert Perreault had a four-point night.
