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The neutral zone trap is an ice hockey defensive strategy by which a team seeks to prevent an opposing offense from proceeding unhindered through the neutral zone—the area on a hockey rink, pictured, bounded by blue lines—most often by forcing turnovers in that area; inasmuch as the trap seeks to obstruct play and minimize goal scoring, the strategy is often essayed by teams offensively inferior, but is occasionally employed by teams with leads seeking to consume time.
In its most common formulation, the trap features four players—two defensemen and two forwards—stationed in the neutral zone and one forward—often a center qua power forward—serving as a forechecker in the offensive zone, the end zone between a blue line and the wall of the rink anterior and peripheral to the goal toward which a team proceeds. The forechecking forward maintains a central position, such that opposing puckhandlers should be forced to pass to teammates on the periphery of the ice or themselves to handle the puck toward either sideboard.
Upon the puck's being diverted toward one wing, the two defensive forwards—positioned proximate to the red line, that which divides the width of the rink in two, contest the movement of the puck or the puckhandler, seeking to congest play and generally to frustrate offensive efforts; defensemen situated near the blue line serve, before the goaltender, to contest any passer or puckhandler who should seek to enter the defensive zone.
The trap was most prominently used by the New Jersey Devils during the 1994-95 season of the National Hockey League, in the culminating Stanley Cup Finals of the playoffs of which the Devils defeated the Detroit Red Wings in four straight games. The trap was criticized as creating a game less interesting for fans, given its deleterious effect on scoring, and discussion of means by which to minimize the slowing effects of the trap was undertaken by the League and the NHL Players Association in the context of the 2004-05 lockout; officials were ultimately ordered to enforce strictly proscriptions against obstruction, in order that offensive players should be permitted to move more freely.
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