Jeff Jackson looks for what he calls “competitive character” in players he recruits to Notre Dame, and more than a decade after he recruited Anders Lee, he still says the Islanders winger exemplifies that.
Lee stands a large 6-foot-3. He takes up space when he walks into a room and, more importantly, when he’s on the ice. But the size, while it helps, is not what makes him such a weapon for the Islanders in the crease, where the bulk of his goals — 25 this season, 11 in the month of March headed into Thursday’s game — are scored.
That, instead, is about equal parts brains and brawn, the sort of competitive intangibles that Jackson saw when he recruited Lee to Notre Dame years ago.
“The first key is to not have any fear,” Jackson told The Post. “Because it’s an area where you’re gonna get cross-checked, you’re gonna get slashed in the back of the ankles. It’s a high-traffic area and not every player is willing to stand in that area or get in that area.”
The Islanders-Rangers rivalry, which renews at Madison Square Garden on Friday night, features two of the league’s best forwards at getting into the dirty areas and scoring. Opposite Lee, Chris Kreider’s 46 goals are third in the league and his 24 power-play goals — most scored from his station in front of the goaltender — lead the NHL.
Like his counterpart, Kreider is 6-3, and like Lee, it comes down to more than sheer size.
“You don’t have to be 6-foot-2 and 220 pounds to go in front of the net,” Rangers coach Gerard Gallant said. “Anybody — [5-9, 184-pound] Brendan Gallagher [in] Montreal, a guy that I coached before — it just takes a lot of character to go there.”
At a younger age, Kreider scored most of his goals off the rush, taking advantage of skating and skill that outweighed his counterparts in high school. It wasn’t until he got to Boston College when he started to station himself in front of the net.
Much of anyone’s success there comes down to hockey sense as much as anything physical. A slight change in positioning can be all the difference between being in the right spot for a rebound and a chance going to waste. Knowing where the goaltender’s eyes are — and being able to get in front of them — creates goals, too.
“Shoulder checking to see where the goalie’s line of sight is and also the other part of it, especially with a guy like Anders, it helps to have good hands,” Jackson said. “It helps to have good skills at the net front as far as your puck skills. For getting pucks, lifting pucks or redirecting pucks. It’s not just rebounds, it’s tips, it’s deflections. And sometimes pucks even go in off your body.
“First of all you gotta be there, then secondly you gotta be able to manipulate your position to be able to establish, not just where the puck is but where it might be in the next [moment], after the pass. So it’s about reestablishing your position as the puck moves on the outside of the ice.”
In college, Lee would watch cutups of Tomas Holmstrom, a four-time Stanley Cup winner with the Red Wings, paying attention mostly to how he’d constantly reestablish position, checking where the goaltender’s eyes were and getting in his line of sight.
Doing that maximized his chances of getting rebounds and tipping pucks, both skills at which Lee excels now.
“He understands time and space,” Islanders coach Barry Trotz said. “He understands a little bit of the geometry of where he is, how he’s gotta get pucks up. Getting the timing of, ‘You’re next to me, how do I separate?’ ”
Kreider’s hand-eye coordination — and thus his ability to tip pucks — has always been there. Bill Blackwell, his coach at Masconomet (Mass.) Regional High School, recalls hearing about his prowess at lacrosse and baseball at a younger age. His positioning, too, is excellent.
“All the time, you watch, whenever the puck goes to the side, you always want to take the goalie’s eyes away,” Blackwell said. “And that’s what he does a great job of. He just always follows the puck, he’s always at the top part of the crease and he’s always following wherever the puck’s going.”
Trotz, when asked about Lee recently, pointed to a goal he scored against — who else — the Rangers. Toward the end of a power play a couple weeks ago, Lee found the right moment to get from the crease to the low slot without a defender following him, scoring a one-timer from Mathew Barzal.
“He had to time it, if you go there right away, they got you covered,” Trotz said. “He had to almost have that instinct, ‘I’m gonna push off, I just need a couple feet and time and so the puck’s there.’
“He’s sort of developed his own style that works for him on the interior. He’s hard to move. With goalies being so good, obviously his net presence is invaluable.”