It's not so simple to figure out who the best defensive defenceman is in the NHL, but stat analysis does allow us to figure out who the most trusted D-men are in the league.

The trouble with the NHL's stats - both the official ones on the league website and the unofficial ones much discussed by fans on blogs - is that there are good numbers to fairly and accurately rate the offensive contributions of individual NHL players, but nothing nearly as good to rate their defensive play.

By looking at contributions players make to the attack - their shots on net, goals scored and assists - we can get a pretty good sense if they're a great, good, average or bad player.

The only thing the official goal and assists stats don't cover well is a for-ward like Tomas Holmstrom who screens the goalie a lot on scoring plays, but doesn't pick up assists because he often doesn't touch the puck on scoring plays, and that de-fenceman who consistently initiates the offensive thrust with a sweet pass in his own zone, but doesn't get credit because three or four other players touch the puck before it ends up in the net.

At the defensive end, all the avail-able leaguewide starts are less precise in capturing the defensive ability of a given player. The best the defensive numbers do is to provide some circumstantial evidence. They don't tell us if a player made a mistake in the sequence that led to a shot, scoring chance or goal against. They do, however, tell us if a player was on the ice for shots, scoring chances or goals against.

Was he actually at fault? We don't know. But he was there. That's the extent of our knowledge and we're left to guess at the rest.

While we have only this circumstantial evidence of debatable quality to guide us in rating the defensive play of individual players, we nonetheless can find out one important thing from the existing stats: how much does his own coach trust a player on defence?

For example, from watching Edmonton Oilers games this year, fans know that Ladislav Smid has taken a big step up in terms of his defensive play. He's reading the play, blocking shots, covering his man, and making quick, accurate outlet passes better than ever before.

As a result, Oilers coach Tom Ren-ney trusts Smid. Renney demonstrates this by putting Smid on the ice a lot and in the most challenging situations. If Renney needs a penalty killed off, or some opposing attacker shut down, out goes Smid. If there's a faceoff in the Oilers' zone and the Oilers need to get that puck out of their own end, out goes Smid.

The good news is there are both official and advanced stats that measure all these things, namely NHL time on ice numbers and quality of competition and zone starts numbers from Gabe Desjardins' excellent Behind the Net site.

In Smid's case, he gets more short-handed ice time than any other Oilers D-man, 3: 45 per game. He's second to Tom Gilbert in even-strength time, 17: 22 per game, with Gilbert at 17: 35 per game. When it comes to percentage of faceoffs that Smid is sent out for in the Oilers' defensive zone, only Andy Sutton has been sent out for a higher percentage.

Finally, when it comes to quality of competition - as measured by Desjardins - Smid has faced the toughest opposing forwards, the ones most likely to do their job on the attack by generating shots at net.

By applying these four stats to other players, we can see which NHL D-men are most trusted by their coaches. Of course, just because a coach trusts a defenceman doesn't mean the player is necessarily get-ting his job done.

That said, NHL coaches are experts in hockey. Their reputation and their livelihood is dependent on them get-ting the right players out on the ice at the right moment. Their incentive to make the right decision is immense. That doesn't mean they will always trust in the right players, but no one has more riding on that decision than these coaches do. If they trust in a D-man, it's most likely for good reason, so if a player such as Josh Gorges, Nikita Nikitin, Dan Girardi, Duncan Keith or Dion Pha-neuf shows up in a few of these four "trust" categories, it's likely because he's a fine defensive player.

At the very least, the coach is convinced the player is better than the other choices on the team, which is certainly the case with Smid here in Edmonton.

dstaples@edmontonjournal.com