You've forgotten the era of the Left Wing lock, I see. And all the other trapping teams that won. Oh well.
trapping doesn't mean your main focus isn't to play puck possession focused game. it can actually support that. it can hinder the oppositions ability to carry the puck in and force them to dump it in instead. if you have mobile skaters who are smart and have pucks skills, they can retrieve it before other teams forwards get to them and have it quickly going the other direction either by skating out or quick outlet passes to other D or forwards.
there isn't a NHL team that doesn't use some sort of neutral zone trap these days.
if/as you're referring to prelockout bowman and devils teams, no i haven't forgotten. have you forgotten the rule changes that have made since then and how the game has changed? including that every cup winner since ´07 has been good to great puck possession team.
No, that's false. If a weakly talented team tried to run a more possessive system they would get routinely destroyed. That's why weakly talented teams run defensive systems. They suppress scoring chances, keep games closer, and allow more opportunity to be in games late.
possession focused teams can be low event teams (in terms of overall shots and scoring chances etc). carolina focused heavily on that last season and they didn't get destroyed. they were usually the better team on the ice. they just had crappy goaltending and lacked scoring talent.
Defensive in effect, offensive in nature.
not necessarily if their intention is to keep it low event hockey. few scoring chances and shots both for and against.
How many dmen taken late 1st end up being top 3 guys? One every other year, at most?
from 2003 to 2010 i count 8 guys who are top guys or more (taken between picks 15-30). one of them is maybe little generous. some drafts had 3, some had zero. one might still turn out one (pysyk).
so pretty much 1 per draft on avg.