Blackhawks defensemen need to go on the offensive

Back in the Czech Republic, Jan Rutta was something of a cheater. Oh, he wasn’t breaking any rules or anything, but he regularly abandoned the safety of his post at the point and pinched deep into the offensive zone to support forwards on the cycle, to get off higher-percentage shots, to create more offense.

He did it because he knew he could get away with it.

“In Czech, if I pinched and the forwards got the puck behind me, I usually could just skate back and catch them,” Rutta said. “But here, everyone’s faster. You’ve just got to read the plays a little bit faster, and sometimes you just have to leave your forwards and get back.”

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This is the dilemma that has faced the Blackhawks defensemen throughout the first 13 games of the season. As a unit, they simply don’t have the speed to keep up with opposing forwards. Other than Duncan Keith and perhaps Gustav Forsling, the defensemen are better at delivering big hits and blasting big shots than they are at winning foot races.

As a result, the defensemen haven’t been jumping in the rush or diving deep into the offensive zone nearly as much as in recent seasons. Instead of activating the offense, they’ve been playing it safe — hanging back near the blue line, and often retreating to the neutral zone early to get ahead of an anticipated rush.

“I still think that’s something we can add to our team game,” coach Joel Quenneville said. “We’re so much more dangerous off the rush, or more active in the zone [when] the ‘D’ get active. . . . To get offense in our game, it can’t come from just the forwards, because everyone checks five guys low. We need to [chip in] there to get a little more offense from the back end.”

In the first three games of the season, when the Hawks offense was really clicking, defensemen accounted for three goals and 10 assists. In the 10 games since, they’ve posted no goals and have just 15 assists. Not coincidentally, the Hawks’ goals-per-game in that span has dropped from 6.0 to 2.3.

The unfortunate hallmark of the offense in those 10 games has been one-and-done possessions. There’s been little cycling, little sustained offense, few rebounds corralled, few repeated shots on goal. A more active defense, with all five players engaging the five opposing players, could remedy that.

But Jonathan Toews said it’s a two-way street.

“Sometimes it’s even having forwards higher in the zone, so that [defensemen] can pinch down the wall [without] giving up too many odd-man rushes back the other way,” Toews said.

“A lot of that comes from our forecheck. . . . We’ve been one-and-done, so it seems like it’s been too easy for teams to break out against us.”

Connor Murphy — like Brent Seabrook and Cody Franson, in particular — isn’t the most fleet-of-foot defenseman. But he said speed isn’t so much the issue as timing. If the defensemen move the puck quickly up to the forwards with immediate hard passes, as Quenneville’s system demands, then the defensemen can join that second wave after the forwards fly through the neutral zone.

Then it’s all about picking your spots to pinch. It’s a risk/reward decision, and if the Hawks want to be rewarded more often, they’re going to have to start taking more risks.

“It’s something that puts a team on their heels,” Murphy said. “If you think that way, that there might be a guy behind you and that you’re going to get beat going the other way, it’s going to happen. But if you have an aggressive mindset that you’re going to be the one beating guys up the ice and getting chances, then that’ll happen and you’ll have more offensive-zone time. And that’s what we need.”

Follow me on Twitter @MarkLazerus.

Email: mlazerus@suntimes.com