The Blackhawks' Stanley Cup Marathon
By Trey Elder May 29, 2025
In the NHL playoffs it is common practice for teams to “shorten” their bench. The increased stakes of the postseason can make coaches reluctant to deploy their weaker players as often as they normally would, instead opting to give extra ice time to their best and most trustworthy skaters. This is especially true for defensemen. In the postseason, when the games matter the most and every shift could potentially impact the outcome, coaches tend to rely more heavily on their top two defense pairs. From the 2008-2009 to the 2023-2024 regular season, the average percentage of the total ice time for a team’s defense core that was given to its top-four defensemen was 66.6%, meaning that in any given game, the best two-thirds of the defensemen played exactly two-thirds of the minutes. In the playoffs, this number shoots up to 73.5%, exemplifying the heavier workload shouldered by top four defensemen in the postseason. But does this strategy lead to winning?
On average, yes it does. Over the past sixteen years Stanley Cup winning teams have averaged 72.8% of their team’s minutes going to their top four defensemen, slightly below the playoff average but considerably above the regular season average. However, the data shows that having a more balanced D-core can help when it comes to winning championships. Since 2009, only 17% of playoff teams had a top-four defensemen ice time share of less than 70%, indicating reliable players on all three pairs. However, among Stanley Cup champions, this rate becomes 38%, with the most recent example being the 2023 Vegas Golden Knights, whose top four played only 67.38% of the available minutes. Some cup winners spread the minutes around even more like the 2009 Pittsburgh Penguins at 65.95% or put their faith in their top guys like the 2012 Los Angeles Kings at 75.21%. But there is one Stanley Cup champion that pushed the envelope to a degree not only unseen by any other cup winner, but by almost any other team of the era. In 2015 the Chicago Blackhawks faced both injuries and poor play from their depth D-men, which forced head coach Joel Quenneville to implement a bold strategy. During those playoffs, the Blackhawks played their top-four defensemen Duncan Keith, Brent Seabrook, Niklas Hjalmarsson, and Johnny Oduya in a staggering 83.8% of all available minutes. The Blackhawks essentially used two-thirds of their defense core to play four-fifths of their minutes. Their top four usage rate was the second highest rate out of all 264 playoff teams since 2009, behind only the 2010 Philadelphia Flyers, and a full 1.75 standard deviations above the 2018 Washington Capitals at 76.94% (50th-highest rate), the next-closest team to win the cup.
What made this run even more spectacular was the individual performance of Duncan Keith, who during these playoffs cemented his legacy as one of greatest defensemen of the 21st century. During the 2015 postseason Keith played a gargantuan 24.1% of the Blackhawks’ minutes. There have only been six players in the last sixteen years to play a greater share of their defense’s minutes in a postseason, listed below:
| Postseason | Team | Player | Defense Core Ice Time Share | Games Played | Team Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | EDM | Darnell Nurse | 26.48% | 4 | Lost 4-0 in Round 1 |
| 2024 | WSH | John Carlson | 26.17% | 4 | Lost 4-0 in Round 1 |
| 2009 | MTL | Roman Hamrlik | 25.63% | 4 | Lost 4-0 in Round 1 |
| 2013 | MIN | Ryan Suter | 25.44% | 5 | Lost 4-1 in Round 1 |
| 2014 | LAK | Drew Doughty | 25.32% | 5 | Lost 4-1 in Round 1 |
| 2014 | DAL | Alex Goligoski | 24.35% | 6 | Lost 4-2 in Round 1 |
| 2015 | CHI | Duncan Keith | 24.10% | 23 | Won the Stanley Cup |
They won a combined total of four games and all lost in round one. Keith won the Stanley Cup. Of the 1,121 NHL players that have skated in at least one playoff game since 2009, Keith trails only Drew Doughty in 2014 in total ice time and leads all skaters in 5on5 ice time in a single postseason, despite only playing in 23 games compared to Doughty’s 26. The reason why Keith’s icetime is so high despite having fewer games is that the Blackhawks went to overtime five times in these playoffs, with two of those ending in double overtime and two requiring a third, tacking on an additional 151 minutes of game action to an already physically draining workload. In reality, Keith played 25 and a half games worth of hockey in the span of 23 games, making his astoundingly high usage rate even more impressive.
Total Even Strength Minutes Played, Single Playoff
Naturally, the extra game time didn’t just make Keith’s job harder. If we were to rank the players who recorded the most shifts per game amongst players who skated in more than one series in a playoff run, the top three in the last sixteen years are from the 2015 Blackhawks: Keith with 37.8 shifts per game, Brent Seabrook with 37.2 and Niklas Hjalmarsson with 37.1. And how did Chicago’s top four respond to such an arduous workload?
Keith registered 3 goals and 18 assists for 21 points, at the time the most by a playoff defenseman in ten years, led all players in the postseason with a plus/minus of +16 and won the Conn Smythe Trophy for playoff MVP. He is the last player to win the award and also score the cup-clinching goal, this beauty from game 6 of the Stanley Cup Final:
Brent Seabrook added 7 goals and 4 assists, Hjalmarsson contributed 1 goal and 5 assists, and Oduya also had 5 assists, giving them 44 total points. The other five Chicago defensemen who played during those playoffs combined for one assist. It wasn’t as if the Blackhawks were deploying their top-four this much for the fun of it - they really had no better options. On the defensive side, even with their sheltered minutes, the quintet of Michael Rozsival, Kimmo Timonen, Kyle Cumiskey, Trevor van Riemsdyk and David Rundblad were allowing 2.17 goals per 60 minutes at even strength while Keith, Seabrook, Hjalmarsson and Oduya only gave up 2.03 per 60, despite playing nearly four and a half times as many minutes throughout the postseason. Their ability to consistently produce both offensively and defensively while bearing a greater responsibility than almost any team in the past sixteen years is why they were able to win the Stanley Cup.
But perhaps what made this playoff run most special is the fact that it marked the end of a dynasty. This was Chicago's third Stanley Cup title in five years, something that hadn’t been accomplished since the 1980s Edmonton Oilers and hasn’t been replicated since. The Blackhawks made the playoffs the next two seasons but failed to advance, and to this day they have not won a playoff round since that cup win. Keith, Seabrook, Hjalmarsson, and Oduya all felt the effects of such a physically demanding run, as none of them were ever quite the same player afterwards. Their play slowly declined in the following seasons, likely a physical consequence of multiple deep playoff runs in the previous half-decade, capped off by their grueling magnum opus in 2015. Given the increased skill level of the league today compared to a decade ago, winning the Stanley Cup using almost exclusively four defensemen is something that might never be pulled off again, which makes the Blackhawks’ 2015 Stanley Cup win all the more extraordinary.