likelihood of going to a player on the opposing team. The defensemen for the attacking team are often back near the blue line and when a defending player gains possession of the puck, they usually start to back up into the neutral zone. This makes them the first players present in the area the puck is about to be dumped into by the defending player. Further, on lob types of dump outs, unless the defenseman is incredibly skilled at making that type of play while under heavy pressure, regaining possession of the puck is at best a toss up.

Even if the defending team needs to make a line change, dumping the puck out of the defensive zone is frequently not going to buy enough time to get thethe defensive zone resulted in an offensive zone entry attempt by the exiting team 28.73% of the time. Team A dumped the puck out of the defensive zone. Team A then had the next offensive zone entry attempt following the dump out about 29 out of every 100 times. 31.86% of these “successful” uncontrolled zone exits were the result of a forward on the exiting team forcing a turnover either in the neutral zone or in the offensive zone as the previously attacking team was regrouping to restart their offensive attack.

More simply put, of the 29 out of 100 of Team A’s dump outs that resulted in a zone entry attempt, 9 out of 100 were due to a player on Team A forcing a turnover in the