Avalanche Film Room: Bowen Byram's case for making the Avalanche

When the Avalanche took Bowen Byram fourth overall at last month’s entry draft, it cemented Colorado’s future defense as one filled with stars. When Joe Sakic met the media shortly after, he was not shy about the organization’s intention to give Byram a long look in training camp this year.

With injuries to Erik Johnson and Ian Cole, it would stand to reason that spots are open along that blueline that otherwise may not have been. Cole’s absence until at least December means somebody is getting a lengthy look.

The confident Byram has talked openly about trying to make the Avs right away and get started on what could be a special NHL career. Even with the injuries, though, there is going to be serious competition from guys like Mark Barberio, Ryan Graves, Kevin Connauton, and the recently acquired Calle Rosen.

How can Byram surpass all those guys and win a job?

He’s the modern day prototype of a franchise-caliber defenseman, for one. What that really means is instead of size and toughness, Byram’s best attributes are his skating, puck-moving ability, and sky-high hockey IQ.

But don’t take my word for it. Let’s go to the tape to get a feel for just who Byram is on the ice.

Breakout machine

The modern day defenseman can no longer get by excelling purely in his own zone but rather has to be good with the puck on his stick. This is especially true when defensemen are retrieving dumped pucks and have to move it out of the zone quickly. Accomplish this and the opposing forecheck is nothing but a minor annoyance. Fail and suddenly you’re stuck defending in your own zone and without the puck.

When looking at Byram, we see several different examples below of his ability to break pucks out of the zone. For reference, he is always #44 in the clips.

This one is the cleanest examples we’ll see of him breaking the puck out on his own. He begins the clip by gathering the puck after a lengthy defensive sequence and immediately looks to move the puck out of the defensive zone.

Byram drops it to a teammate, moves up the wall, gets the puck back, and skates it into the other team’s zone. Once there, instead of dumping it and retreating to his spot on the blue line, he looks to create offense.

While it doesn’t result in anything, these are the types of situations you see over and over again when watching Byram’s film. When he gathers pucks in the defensive end, the possession is usually over. Between his great first pass and skating ability, the multiple avenues open to him in breaking out are regularly taken advantage of.

I’d strongly recommend when watching Byram that you keep “the best defense is a good offense” in mind because that’s kind of player he is.

Aggressive offensive mentality

Another thing we see with Byram is that he not only kickstarts clean zone exits, but he regularly joins rushes up the ice. His ability to quickly scan the ice and recognize an advantage allows him to stress opposing defenses to the max.

Below we have several examples of Byram joining the rush to create offense.

In the first clip, we see Byram highlight at the beginning. He moves the puck around the boards and a teammate helps get it out of the zone. Byram immediately kicks it into high gear and gets up the ice to give his teammate another passing option upon entering the zone.

Byram receives the puck and beats the goalie cleanly but rings the puck off the post.

Here we see Byram less involved in the play defensively but he still reads the numbers and gets himself up the ice to give another passing option to his teammate. Like the last clip, he’ll take the puck in stride and create offense with a little head fake that he loves employing.

Here is a little bit different. His team is on the power play, for one, and he’s also the guy way up the ice already receiving the puck at the start of the clip.

From here, Byram enters the zone, stops to try to create a passing lane, loses control of the puck when two defenders converge on him, and then blocks the clearing attempt.

When the puck hits Byram and settles back onto his blade, he skates to the middle of the ice, draws the defenders back to him, and finds a teammate who eventually scores, giving Byram a primary assist on the play.

Byram’s ability to create offense is downright special and he has hands that would make it easy to confuse him for a forward at times, as seen below.

The clip begins with Byram playing a little two-high action and his teammate gets the puck deep into the zone to create offense. Ultimately, the puck finds itself back up top where Byram is hanging out.

Once he gets it, he decides he’s a one-man army and dangles his way to the net, getting a great scoring chance on his backhand.

The offense is where a lot of young guys can step into the NHL and find success early on. Where they really struggle is the speed of the NHL game and processing what to do in their own zone.

With Byram, that combined with his strength (remember he’s still just a teenager) will be his biggest questions in the NHL. We do see some issues with the puck crop up when he does get pressured but they’re not very common.

Puck doinks

In both of these clips, there are safer plays to make but Byram’s confidence under pressure can occasionally lead to mistakes that send the other team on an odd-man rush. Neither chance ended up turning into anything in these situations but it’s an area he’ll have to clean up at the next level.

The clip above is one of the rare clips where you find Byram making a puck mistake in his own zone. He allows the pressure to get to him before he can make a sound decision with the puck and it ends up dangerously in front of his own net.

Luckily for Byram and the Giants, there were no opposing players lurking in the area but it’s one of Byram’s few defensive zone mistakes with the puck so it felt noteworthy.

Where Byram is going to excel defensively is in stopping high-danger chances from ever being created in the first place.

Smart guy defense

In today’s NHL, the rise of analytics have shown the most effective defense is forcing dump-ins and breaking up plays at the blueline so attacking teams never feel comfortable setting up their offense.

Transition offense is where the majority of even strength goals are scored today so it stands to reason you’d like to build a defense around defenders who defend well against transition. The hulking physical lumberjack defenseman days are mostly done in this era as the guys who play that way have to come with other more modern skills in order to stay relevant (see: Nikita Zadorov and his ability to skate pucks through the neutral zone).

In Byram, Colorado has a player who perfectly embodies what teams are looking for in defenders today. We see below multiple examples of his hockey IQ leading the way to good defense.

Here we see Byram on the PK. As the puck enters his own zone, he simply reads the play and comes across the ice to pick up the puck and clear it out of the zone. On the PK, that’s a solid 25 seconds killed between the attempted entry and the team retrieving the puck and trying again.

This is one of my favorite clips of Byram, who we see highlighted at the start of the clip. Byram defends the neutral zone by diagnosing the play, stepping up and catching a puck and sending it the other direction.

When the puck again comes back his direction, Byram calmly reads what’s going on, beats two opponents to the puck and clears it back the other direction. In just that span of 15 seconds, Byram ended two rushes up the ice from the opposition and the puck was never in a position to create dangerous offense because of it.

And here in a clip of the teams playing four on four, we see Byram and his excellent gap control at work. It looks initially like he might be beaten but his transition skating is so solid that he’s able to keep the attacking forward to the outside.

As they wrap around behind his net, Byram continues following on the forward’s hip out high in the zone when an attempted pick play on Byram ends in an interference penalty and puts his team on the power play.

It’s that smart player’s kind of defense that is going to give Byram a chance to stick with the Avalanche this season.

And here in the last clip, we have the reminder that young players are roller coasters and can oscillate between brilliance and disaster in the same shift.

Here we see Byram making a good play at center ice to cut the puck off and send it in deep. As the play develops, we see Byram read the play and get back defensively in time but when the puck comes his direction, we again tries to cut it down before allowing possession in his zone.

This time instead of a clean play with his stick, Byram whiffs on the play and gives up a two on one as a result. Byram’s risk-taking pays off brilliantly and produces stifling defense when it works but this is the downside of playing that well.

To stick in the NHL, Byram will have to pick his spots a little bit more but he clearly shows the ability to fit perfectly into Colorado’s transition offense and plays the kind of defense that is tailor-made for the modern NHL.

Byram ultimately may not have his rookie season this year but you can bet with this kind of game, it’s not far off.