Are Bigger Defensemen better at defending in the Playoffs?

I have previously written about how teams with bigger defensemen have seen more success in the playoffs (here and here) but I haven’t posted anything about how they do this and specifically what statistics bigger defensemen impact. I plan to take a look at some of that in this post.

Everything in this post is looking at 5v5 data from 2015-16 through Monday, May 26, 2025, and specifically 5v5 data in which there are exactly two defensemen defending on the ice so those rare instances where there may be one or three defensemen on the ice are not included. I then took the average height and weight of those two defensemen and split based on tall and short, heavy and light using the following criteria:

• Tall defense pairs have an average height of 6’1″ or taller
• Short defense pairs have an average height under 6’1″
• Heavy defense pairs have an average weight of 200lbs or heavier
• Light defense pairs have an average weight of under 200lbs

For reference, here are the percentage of shots against based on the size of the defending defense pair.

	Regular Season		Playoffs
	Tall	Short	Tall	Short
Heavy	64.4%	6.6%	70.8%	7.1%
Light	13.8%	15.1%	9.9%	12.2%

Most defense pairs, by my definition, are tall and heavy, so I am really trying to focus on defense pairs that are clearly on the smaller side.

I am going to look at three different metrics, shooting percentage (Sh%), percentage of shots taken from the home plate (HP%) and percentage of shots from rebounds (Reb%, defined as a shot taken within 3 seconds of a previous shot being taken).

The home plate region is defined as the shaded region in this image:

Shooting percentage at 5v5 in each zone within the shaded region are above 10% while every non-shaded region has a shooting percentage below 10%. Shots from the home plate region are the shots most likely to result in goals so reducing shots from this area is important.

	Regular Season Sh%		Playoffs Sh%		Playoffs-Regular
	Tall	Short	Tall	Short	Tall	Short
Heavy	8.12%	8.17%	7.57%	8.42%	-0.55%	0.26%
Light	8.31%	8.16%	7.25%	8.00%	-1.06%	-0.16%

The above table shows that in the regular season there is very little variation in shooting percentage regardless of the size of the defending defensemen. Tall, short, heavy, light, they are are in the 8.12% to 8.31% range. However, during the playoffs there is a sizeable difference. Shooting percentages dropped more than 1% when facing Tall-Light defense pairs in the playoffs compared to the regular season. It also dropped about half a percent against Tall-Heavy defensemen, dropped slightly against short-light defensemen and rose a quarter percent against short heavy defensemen.

Now let’s take a look at home plate percentage.

	Regular Season HP%		Playoffs HP%		Playoffs-Regular
	Tall	Short	Tall	Short	Tall	Short
Heavy	35.4%	35.7%	34.2%	35.5%	-1.2%	-0.3%
Light	35.7%	35.7%	33.6%	35.0%	-2.1%	-0.6%

Again, in the regular season there is very little variation in percentage of shots coming from the home plate region, regardless of the size of the defending defense pair. However, while every size of defense pairs saw improvement in the playoffs, the Tall-Light defense pairs were the best at reducing home plate shots, followed by Tall-Heavy defense pairs, Short-Light defense pairs and finally Short-Heavy defense pairs.

Now for Rebound percentage.

	Regular Season Reb%		Playoffs Reb%		Playoffs-Regular
	Tall	Short	Tall	Short	Tall	Short
Heavy	4.9%	4.9%	4.8%	4.1%	-0.2%	-0.8%
Light	5.1%	5.0%	4.5%	5.4%	-0.6%	0.4%

While there is some variation during the regular season (Heavier defense pairs are slightly better than Lighter defense pairs) the change is variation is more dramatic in the playoffs. In terms of rebound percentage, Short-Heavy defense pairs saw the biggest improvement from regular season to playoffs, followed by Tall-Light and Tall-Heavy defense pairs. The Short-Light defense pair group saw an increase in the percentage of rebound shots against.

Here is a summary table of the change from regular season to playoffs.

	Tall-Heavy	Tall-Light	Short-Heavy	Short-Light
Shooting %	-0.55%	-1.06%	0.26%	-0.16%
HomePlate %	-1.2%	-2.1%	-0.3%	-0.6%
Rebound %	-0.2%	-0.6%	-0.8%	0.4%
Average	-0.6%	-1.2%	-0.3%	-0.1%

It appears that the optimal defense pairing are Tall-Light defense pairs. It is possible that tall-light defensemen have the optimal combination of reach and agility/quickness. Short/Heavy defensemen are good at preventing rebounds, I suspect because their bulkiness allows them to play the physical game immediately in front of the goal, but their shorter stature allows them to use their stick easier in traffic. Overall though, taller defensemen are better than shorter defensemen.

In summary, the average size of defense pairs does not seem to have an impact during the regular season, all defense pairs defend equally well in the defensive zone. However, when it comes to the playoffs, taller defense pairs perform better than shorter defense pairs and while Tall-Light defense pairs perform better than Tall-Heavy defense pairs, Short-Heavier defense pairs perform better than Short-Light defense pairs. Why are the playoffs different than the regular season at all? I can only presume that there is a stronger focus on defensive play from players in the playoffs when winning is everything.

I will point out that I have only looked at the shot against profile here, not the shot rate or the offensive contribution of the defense pairs so there is more work that can be done, but the important takeaway here is that the size of defense pairs does impact defensive results and the types of shots given up, and is likely a key reason why in my previous articles I found that teams with bigger defensemen generally perform better int he playoffs.