The shift in defense has largely had to do with teams realizing that it's actually a bad thing when your D are racking up a ton of hits and shot blocks. You prefer defense that can pass the puck out of the zone and wingers that can get into position to receive those passes quickly. This has really been the case since 2006, but it has become more clear that teams actually understand this and aren't just lucking into it since about 2012-2015. It's taken the collective hockey-watching populous until the past few years to understand this, and I still pull my hair out every time Dano starts bagging on a guy for trying to make a pass instead of lobbing the puck out to center for the other team to collect and attack again.
This is a shift similar to what we've seen in soccer (not to contribute to that debate) with the way Pep Guardiola influenced tactics over the past decade. Your best scoring opportunities come from transition moments, while possession is almost more of a defensive metric. In hockey, it's similar, as you're much more likely to score catching an odd-man rush than you are from chaining together passes and possession in the offensive zone, but you're also more likely to give up scoring chances going the other way. If you have the puck, it's impossible for the other team to score. This is much more difficult to do in hockey than soccer, where the smaller playing surface makes the game faster, the blueline de-incentivizes passing back to maintain possession, and scoring in general is much more of a random event. But the best teams in the modern game are the ones that capitalize when they get chances in transition and out-possess the opponent in order to limit their chances of scoring.
You need a defense capable of doing two different types of things to do this. One is the ability to pass the puck out of the zone with control in order to generate transition opportunities and to maintain puck possession (Severson), the other is to deny the opponent clean zone entries and disrupt their possession (Seigenthaler). It's also an easy trap to fall into to overlook how much of this is dependent on the forwards as well. What makes Seigenthaler so good is how often he is able to do the 2nd part in a way that leads to him or his partner doing the 1st part. Making a big hit in your own zone rarely does this unless the opponent was already outnumbered, but utilizing good positioning and your stick to run the opponent out of options and force them to make a low-% pass sure does. Sure you still need someone to block shots and make life difficult when you're on the PK, but you generally prefer that person is someone that can contribute in the more possession-oriented ways that lead to wins at even strength.
If Okhotiuk is going to make it as an NHLer, it will be in the role of the disruptor. The reason I am on the fence about if he can do that is simply because there are fewer of those spots available and I'm not quite sure his puck skills will allow him to contribute enough to the possession at even strength. This is really more of a sample size issue than anything else. Most of his 5v5 rates were not terribly favorable in the NHL last year, but that was with minimal playing time which makes it difficult to account for usage, linemates, and general bad luck. You really need at least 10-15 games of a player depending on ice-time before you can make any judgements based on data without being disingenuous. I just question if he'll get that chance here given the players ahead of him on the depth chart.
Coleman's defensive impact before he became a scorer was more developed and high-end than what Zetterlund is right now. Not that Zetterlund is bad in that regard, but I would call him more average. Hopefully he gets enough playing time this year to help determine if that cna be a strength of his moving forward.
