“You bring a shovel, and you bring some pucks. That’s all you need”: On Ethan Edwards, a Two-Way Defenseman
From the frozen ponds of Alberta to the Michigan blue line, Ethan Edwards remains a two-way defenseman at heart. His unique toolkit and mindset suggest limitless potential for UM’s third Devil.
With not quite two minutes to play in the second period the Saturday before last, Wisconsin’s Jack Horbach raced through neutral ice, sensing the chance for at least a partial breakaway. Only one Michigan skater had a chance at impeding Horbach’s path to Erik Portillo, and even he had ground to make up.Unfortunately for Horbach, that defender was Ethan Edwards.
The Albertan sophomore takes a few powerful strides to intercept Horbach’s route to the net, moving with urgency but without even a hint of rushing. After a stick check to knock the puck loose, Edwards plants Horbach on his backside, where the Badger will slide harmlessly into the end boards. There is something almost gentle about the check.
Dylan Duke and Jackson Hallum lead the ensuing Wolverine rush back up ice, regaining the offensive zone. Edwards sets up shop along the point. With his first touch, he takes a moment to survey his options, then dusts the puck off and sends a no-look pass back to Hallum.
Hallum returns the puck, prompting Edwards to trade passes with Eric Ciccolini. Off the senior’s return feed, Edwards one times a slap shot past Jared Moe. Edwards drifts into neutral ice to celebrate alone for a moment, before accepting his teammates’ congratulatory hugs.
The thirty-ish-second sequence is Ethan Edwards in miniature: It begins with speed and physicality in his own zone and ends with poise at the point, a rifled shot, and a celebration more tranquil than jubilant.
To Edwards, this sort of transition from defense to offense comes naturally. “You can’t play offense without getting the puck out of your own zone,” the sophomore explains after last Tuesday’s practice. “It’s kind of cliché, but you’ve got to learn how to keep it simple in the D zone and keep it effective in order to have the opportunity to play offense.”
The nineteen-year-old is one of three New Jersey Devils roaming the Wolverine blue line, and he is perhaps the least hyped as a prospect of the three. In talking to him, one gets the sense he doesn’t mind.
Luke Hughes went fourth overall to New Jersey in the 2021 Draft. His established NHL brothers, transcendent skating, and volume goal scoring make him one of the best hockey players not currently playing in the NHL.
Seamus Casey slipped to forty-six in the 2022 Draft, and before the second round even began, enlightened draftniks believed he’d fallen too far already. The freshman’s crisp edges and slick stickhandling—manifesting in an athlete who felt no qualms at ending a day of travel home from a disappointing WJC by playing out of position against an all-star team—make him one of the most exciting players in college hockey.
Edwards, the 120th pick in the 2020 Draft, well Edwards has lots of the same tools as Hughes and Casey, but he deploys them in service of different ends.
“Ethan’s super hard, kills a lot of plays, a freak athlete—I think he can do a backflip standing still,” says his head coach Brandon Naurato. “He’s an elite skater but way more powerful. Where Seamus is puck on a string—not that he’s finesse or soft—he’s hard in his own right, but he doesn’t need to go up with a guy my size and go shoulder-to-shoulder.”
There are times at which his physicality and skating can mask his offensive flair, but again you get the sense that Edwards might prefer it that way. It’s not that he can’t stickhandle like Casey or score like Hughes, but rather that he knows the crux of his contributions to team success lie elsewhere.
“Trying to simplify is a big thing for me, trying to focus on defending hard and being physical and not so much jumping up into the play every time,” Edwards explained when asked to describe his own game. “My profile’s definitely a two-way defenseman that defends hard but also likes to jump into the rush and play in all situations: penalty kill, power play. But yeah, two-way defenseman for sure.”
As Naurato frames it, “He’s focused more on defense, not because he can’t be a great offensive player, but because that’s how he can play hockey for the next fifteen years.”
For Ethan Edwards, the journey to the Michigan blue line began in Grande Prairie, Alberta, a city of about 60,000 four hours north of Edmonton. The Edwards clan would move from Grande Prairie to St. Albert (a suburb thirty-minutes northwest of downtown Edmonton) in a bid to balance parental careers and youth hockey aspirations for their two sons.
“We moved [to St. Albert because] my dad works way up north and my brother was playing junior hockey way up north, so it was kind of a middle ground between Grand Prairie and Fort McMurray is what it’s called. My mom owns two dog food stores in St. Albert now, so she’s a busy woman,” Edwards explains.
While his father Lee was busy in the oil fields and his mother Tara was managing her dog food stores, Ethan and his brother Brett (now a national champion forward for the Denver Pioneers) were out skating on Alberta’s myriad frozen ponds.
“Maybe a hockey player from somewhere where the ponds don’t freeze can’t get on the ice whenever they want, but me, I’ve never had an issue,” Edwards observes. “You bring a shovel, and you bring some pucks. That’s all you need.”
For Edwards, playing on the pond was less about fine tuning his release or perfecting his skating stride and more about enjoying a space where hockey was nothing but pleasurable:
“I wouldn’t say [the pond] is necessarily where you work on your game, but it’s definitely a spot where you can enjoy the game. Even if hockey can be stressful at times, you go to the outdoor rink to have fun and you always do have fun. So I think it’s not a break from the game, but it’s a break from the stressful part of the game.”
He describes time spent on the pond as “some of the best memories I have growing up.” When asked for the coldest temperature he can recall braving for some shinny, Edwards plays it cool, saying “I’m talking Celsius here, but yeah, you try to go out when it’s only minus ten or so.”
Watching the sophomore play, you see a defenseman with the speed, skill, and strength to appear in complete command of each shift he takes, but that poise didn’t come without effort or struggle.
“I think experience is really important in this league,” he notes. “I had a little bit of a learning curve last year, and even coming back from injury this year [having missed the first two series of the year with a high ankle sprain], I had to get back to my game.”
If you ask Naurato, Edwards’ pairing with then-senior captain Nick Blankenburg midway through last season was a major inflection point in his growth: “Ethan went through all the growing pains of every freshman last year, and then he got paired with Nick Blankenburg and had a great second half.”
In Blankenburg, Edwards found a captain, D partner, and teammate whose lofty expectations drove him toward self-perfection.
“Blanks was a great captain and D partner,” Edwards reflects. “He was just a guy that showed up to the rink every day and expected not only himself but his D partner to be good, so he was definitely someone you don’t want to let down. I worked every day to hold that high standard that we had last year and continue to have this year. That was something that he was really good at—just getting the best out of everyone. And then, on-ice, he’s a tremendous player obviously, so it was kind of just a treat to be alongside him last year.”
The Albertan sees the progress from his freshman to sophomore campaigns as the product of simultaneous increases in role and confidence. When asked for his biggest growth area over the last year, he responds “It’s probably just confidence, overall. As I’ve been here, my role has grown, and playing more comes along with more confidence…Just taking advantage of my opportunities like last year when guys went to World Juniors and the Olympics, I stepped up my game, and I think the coaches noticed that, and it definitely helped.”
After a year playing for the USHL’s Sioux City Musketeers and now in the midst of his sophomore season in Ann Arbor, Edwards feels more at home in the U.S., even if it’s a thirty-three hour drive from Grande Prairie: “It’s my third year in the States so I’m pretty used to it nowadays…I still don’t really get Farenheit, but for the most part, I might say the odd word here and there that the guys look at me funny, but other than that, it’s been good.”
Of course, Edwards’ growth from year one to year two has not been restricted to the ice. The sophomore is also emerging as a leader for the youngest team in Division 1 men’s hockey this season.
“He’s nineteen-years-old, but he’s in the leadership group and learning to lead off the ice and on, and I think he’s done a great job with that,” Naurato says. “We’ve had a lot going on, out of our control. I don’t think there’s a way to prep for that stuff. You just hope you have good people and good people, and [Edwards has] done a great job.”
When Edwards skates, his stride is unique. Short but powerful, upright, almost assertive. When he speaks, he chooses his words carefully. Not guarded, but deliberate in his candor and reflection. It is as if, whether on the ice or in conversation, the sophomore considers all his options and finds the one that works best.
Naurato points out that Edwards’ toolkit wants for nothing: “He can use his skating to break pressure, he can use his skating to defend, he’s super hard, he can rip a puck.”
Beyond his natural on-ice talent, Naurato sees a quick study in the sophomore: “He’s a guy now that whenever we spend time with him on video, or even on the power play the other day, we walked through multiple progressions of passing deception, shooting, one-timer shot. He literally hit almost every progression that we worked on. He’s a guy that you talk to him, and he wants to add that into his game—like he genuinely takes on the information.”
When you add together the physical talent, desire for self-improvement, and tendencies toward leadership, it becomes difficult not to see unbounded potential in the nineteen-year-old.
“Ethan Edwards might be the best of all of [the future Devils playing for the Wolverines],” says Naurato. “I’m making stuff up, but you don’t know today how it’s all gonna translate to the next level, but I think they all have a great chance because of what they’re about.”
As his youth suggests, the Albertan sophomore is far from a finished product, on the ice or off it, but his unique array of talents make one thing clear: Ethan Edwards’ ceiling is nowhere in sight.
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