Undersized? Want to be successful? Focus on wall play, stick positioning, body positioning, agility and hockey IQ.

True or false: the average weight of NHLers has increased since 1980.

False. Average weight has been on the decline since the NHL lockout in 2004-05. Thanks to rule changes for player safety and the sheer speed of the game, it became apparent that size wasn’t as big of a factor as originally thought and players were judged less on how much weight they could throw around.

Although height has increased slightly (yet still remained fairly consistent over the past 41 years), Emily Engel-Natzke, video coach for the AHL’s Hershey Bears, presents a convincing argument in her Virtual Hockey Summit talk that size doesn’t need to matter.

In outlining how undersized players are making an impact, Engel-Natzke, who joined the Bears as video coach in November 2020 after working at the University of Wisconsin where she served as the assistant director of operations/video coordinator, highlights five key areas that allow smaller players to be successful: wall play, stick positioning, body positioning, agility and hockey IQ.

The 32-minute presentation focuses on players from the last five-to-10 years and how these undersized players have used speed, agility, quickness and hockey sense in tight areas to find a lot of success against larger opponents.

Engel-Natzke uses video clips from four NHLers, all 5-foot-9 or under, to illustrate her point; the players are Cole Caufield of the Montreal Canadiens, Brad Marchand of the Boston Bruins, Torey Krug of the St. Louis Blues and Jared Spurgeon of the Minnesota Wild.