Braden Schneider: Weight Transfer to Front Foot
Every time I watch the New York Rangers, there’s details and shutdown play that always comes to notice when watching Rangers blueliner Braden Schneider. Schneider, now in his 4th year in NY, has continued to show a bit more progress in even strength defense and offense. There’s still more polishing to be done there as a transitional and offensive-minded defenseman, but Schneider certainly provides a ton of value in PK situations for the Rangers as well.
What I notice most about Schneider is how he uses his weight on his feet and how he uses his stick. When it comes to his weight transfers, they’re subtle, but more effectively timed since Schneider does a great job finding ways to open lanes for himself by transferring his weight in a timely way.
On his goal last night against Minnesota, Schneider did a great job of leveraging his front foot and transferring all his weight there to load up his front leg. In an uncomfortable situation where Schneider was forced to his backhand coming down the high slot in overtime, Schneider was forced to stay on his backhand with Minnesota’s pressing D coverage in the slot.
Schneider did a great job here reading open ice coming off the bench, where NYR’s initial diagonal entry play combining Panarin and Miller starts on the outside of the offensive zone. With Schneider coming off the bench with speed, Panarin noticed his speed right away and fed the puck instantly to a speedy Schneider coming down the middle.
Schneider initially wanted to shoot, but MIN’s high F presses that immediately to negate that from happening, forcing Schneider to move his toes to the opposite direction and load his front leg to protect the puck effectively.
By loading the front leg, this does multiple things:
Schneider needed that downforce to first maneuver through the pressure, protect the puck, and then shoot the puck off his backhand using that front leg. Schneider did a really great job of doing that here. There’s certainly a lot of potential down the road for the young defenseman, who is only 23 already in his 4th season with NYR, and there’s certainly upside we could see Schneider evolve into more of a premier two-way defender on the Ranger blue line long-term.