http://www.puckprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=121

We need us some of these defenders. SDPs stands for "Shut-Down Player," and can be translated to football's "Shut-down Corner," guys who don't necessarily get all the stats (goals / assists / PIMs / interceptions / sacks / tackles), but are integral parts of the team because, specifically, they prevent the other guy from getting the stats. Think Nnamdi Asomugha or Sheldon Brown, football fans. NBA fans, think Tayshaun Prince or Iguodala's D. NHL fans, think the players below.

Put simply, all SDPs have three things in common: a low goals-against
average at even-strength, while killing penalties, and a low number of
penalties taken.

Player             Team        REG  ESGAA SHGAA PEN   SDP
Steve Montador     Boston      3.87  0.64  0.00   1  0.61
Stephane Yelle     Boston      2.55  0.91  0.00   1  0.87
Kevin Bieksa       Vancouver   3.36  0.49  2.25   3  1.08
Petteri Nokelainen Anaheim     2.61  0.00  4.49   1  1.19
David Krejci       Boston      3.06  1.52  0.00   0  1.22
Drew Miller        Anaheim     3.89  0.45  3.99   1  1.23
Jason Chimera      Columbus    2.93  1.33  0.00   1  1.28
Nicklas Backstrom  Washington  3.04  1.42  0.00   2  1.29
Ryan Getzlaf       Anaheim     4.86  1.33  0.00   6  1.38
Josh Gorges        Montreal    3.24  1.58  0.00   1  1.39
Michael Peca       Columbus    3.95  0.00  6.16   1  1.48
Marian Hossa       Detroit     3.13  1.74  0.00   1  1.48
Blake Wheeler      Boston      3.78  1.87  0.00   0  1.50
Niclas Wallin      Carolina    3.44  1.18  2.77   0  1.50
Rod Brind'Amour    Carolina    4.64  1.60  0.00   3  1.53
Matt Bradley       Washington  2.33  0.70  5.02   0  1.57
Tim Gleason        Carolina    3.57  1.64  0.00   4  1.58
Patrice Bergeron   Boston     16.46  1.56  0.00   3  1.62
Daniel Sedin       Vancouver   2.28  1.73  0.00   3  1.67
Daniel Cleary      Detroit     4.40  0.00  7.91   1  1.67

(Minimum of four games and at least one minute of penalty-killing per game)

REG: Regular-Season SDP, read it like a Goals Against Average
ESGAA: Even-strength Goals Against Average
SHGAA: Short-handed Goals Against Average
PEN: Minor penalties taken
SDP: Adjusting the ESGAA by adding 0.2 even-strength goals 
for each minor penalty, then averaging it with SHGAA in a 4-to-1 ratio.

Basically, the gist of the article is what we thought we saw. The Philadelphia Flyers played in 6 playoff games, thus qualifying for all the statistics in this piece, but not one qualified for the top 20 SDPs (shud-down players). Not even Timmonen.

What does this say?

Well, firstly, our defense was not good at all. We have Timmonen and Coburn and Richards and Carter, and they all seem like great defensive players, but the fact is even if they are they didn't perform as such in our series vs. the Pens. Even Columbus, which got absolutely creamed, featured a guy in the top 20. It actually featured 2 guys.

For all of our offensive prowess and our 2-way forwards, we couldn't get a single guy to be so good at defense that he shut the opponent down. Boston had 5 guys like that. Anaheim has 3 in the top 10. Both those teams have goalies that are suddenly dominating, and I'd hypothesize that it's not a random correlation. Is it the goalie that's responsible for the high level of SDPs for those teams? I don't know for sure, but NJ didn't have an SDP on the list, and they have the best goalie on this planet. Pittsburgh didn't, either. My guess is that the SDPs create the goalie to some degree, rather than vice versa. Probably it's somewhere in the middle (JSG didn't play well this year even with all those SDPs in front of him, ditto Manny Fernandez) but seeing as the teams with a lot of SDPs seem to consistently have good goaltending from one source or another, I think that the causative factor leans more towards the SDP side than the goalie side.

I'd guess we have a couple guys in the 20-40 range, so it's not like we're defensive slouches, but this playoffs we simpliy did not perform up to snuff defensively.

What does this mean going forward? We're fine with Biron. He ain't the problem. I bet if we got a couple of those elite SDPs (Nokelainen, Montador, Bieksa, Gorges all make our roster with ease), Biron or even Niitty go from guys who we talk about as "above average but can't carry us to the cup" to "Jonas Hiller outta-nowhere-dominant-WTF" 2.0.