2025 NLL Player Rankings: Defensive Player of the Year
While The Lax Mag’s National Lacrosse League Player Rankings typically orders the league’s Top 30 players from #1 to #30 since soon after the league’s opening weekend and right up to the end of the regular season, now that we’re in playoff mode, we’re shifting focus to our NLL year-end awards.
Specifically, who our rankings system (more on that here) says should win all of the NLL’s most important end-of-season honours (our award-winning history here).
Defensive Player of the Year
There may be no more difficult year-end individual award to win than the NLL’s Defensive Player of the Year honour. Since 2012, only six different defenders have been voted DPOTY. Last year, Vancouver’s Ryan Dilks garnered his second career top defenseman award, and should surely be in the running again this season.
While the league’s Transition Player of the Year was formed to recognize defenders that provided their team with an added edge on the offensive press, today many of those two-way types are still considered ordinary old defenders depending on how their team classifies them.
This year’s annual defensive analysis includes pure defensive powers, own-end leaders, offensive defensemen, and even those that excel in multiple defensive categories. Below are The Lax Mag’s Top 5 defenders from the 2025 regular season as determined by our Player Ranking formula, plus our pick for this year’s Defensive Player of the Year.
Brad Kri, Toronto Rock (Photo: Christian Bender)
5. Brad Kri
Age: 32
Team: Toronto Rock
Seasons: 11
From: Acton, ON
He likely won’t appear on many if any DPOTY ballots, but as has been the case for the last several seasons, Brad Kri was again one of the NLL’s top defensive defensemen this past regular season. Missing four games early in Toronto’s season due to his new full-time firefighting gig, Kri’s year-end totals won’t be high enough when award voters simply look at season-long stats, but fact check, his overall per-game production was higher than almost any defensive player in 2025. As we outline every year, to qualify for our Player Rankings, a player must play two-thirds of their team’s season, which Kri did by appearing in 14 games this year. Only Zach Currier (1.88), who we recently named 2025’s TPOTY, averaged more caused turnovers per game than Kri (1.79), who had more scoops nightly than any other name on today’s list. Oh, and get this… Kri was one of only five players to have loose ball, caused turnover and blocks averages high enough to finish in the Top 25 of each of those D stat lists. The only defenders to crack each of those three per-game categories are ranked #1 and #2 today.
Robert Hope, Colorado Mammoth (Photo: Heather Barry)
4. Robert Hope
Age: 33
Team: Colorado Mammoth
Seasons: 10
From: Peterborough, ON
Robert Hope was actually our highest ranked defender for a lot of the season, but slowly slipped as his individual defensive stats slimmed down:
Games 1-9
LB: 10.67
CT: 1.44
BLK: 1.56
Games 10-17
LB: 7.38 (-3.29)
CT: 0.38 (-1.07)
BLK: 0.63 (-0.93)
Those first nine games were worthy of serious DPOTY consideration, and Hope no doubt will find his way onto many year-end ballots (voters are asked to pick their Top 5 in order). The Mammoth’s standings success coincided with Hope’s strong early season play, while the same can be said of the team’s and player’s second half, Colorado going from Cup contenders to playoff pretenders (although a handful of significant offensive injuries hurt much more). With that said, Hope was still easily one of 2025’s top defensive kingpins, a high IQ vocal presence on the floor that also leads by example through an unmatched work ethic and unrelenting approach. If the NLL had an answer for the NHL’s Mark Messier Award (Top Leader), Hope would have bagged a handful over his decade in the NLL for sure.
Ryan Dilks, Vancouver Warriors (Photo: Christian Bender)
3. Ryan Dilks
Age: 34
Team: Vancouver Warriors
Seasons: 13
From: Hamilton, ON
Last year’s NLL Defensive Player of the Year (we had him ranked fourth), Ryan Dilks, who’ll turn 35 before the start of next season, is still spitting our stronger, more impactful defensive shifts than pretty much any wily vet or athletic young up-and-comer, now 13 seasons into his locked-in HOF career (if of course it still exists). Dilks was one of only four players this year with at least 100 LB (104), 30 CTO (31) and 10 BLK (12), and was a big reason why Vancouver gave up the second-fewest shots/game during the regular season. “He’s the best defenceman in the National Lacrosse League, in our opinion,” recently said Warriors Head Coach Curt Malawsky. “He won Defensive Player of the year last year for a reason, and he’s having another exceptional season.” Truth.
Mitch de Snoo, Toronto Rock/Philadelphia Wings (Photo: Christian Bender)
2. Mitch de Snoo
Age: 32
Team: Toronto Rock/Philadelphia Wings
Seasons: 9
From: Oshawa, ON
While Mitch de Snoo found himself on two teams severely struggling and ultimately not making the playoffs this year, individually, he still went off both defensively and in transition no matter who he was suiting up for. de Snoo is one of just a handful of players in the league that could easily win Defensive and Transition Player of the Year Awards in the same season (can’t happen though, teams are not allowed to submit the same player for two positional awards). His full 2025 stat line was arguably as impressive as his DPOTY season in 2022 too.
2022: 8 G, 12 A, 185 LB, 39 CTO, 18 BLK
2025: 9 10, 10A, 206 LB, 33 CTO, 21 BLK
He was one of only two defenders to appear on our weekly Top 30 from the opening edition to the coming soon final chapter. He is as physical a shutdown defender as there is today that has more offensive upside than any D labelled player, period.
Matt Hossack, Saskatchewan Rush (Photo: Victoria Adkins)
1. Matt Hossack
Age: 31
Team: Saskatchewan Rush
Seasons: 8
From: Port Perry, ON
Even during his first year in Panther City (after being exposed by Saskatchewan in PCLC’s Expansion Draft), Matt Hossack has made regular appearances in The Lax Mag’s weekly Top 30. Looking back into our Player Rankings archives, here’s where Hossack finished in our year-end DPOTY rundown: 11th in 2022, 10th in 2023, and 13th in 2024 during a season he spent three weeks on the IR. During his return season with the Rush (coincidently via the PCLC Dispersal Draft), Hossack had career-high numbers for loosies (129), caused turnovers (32) and blocks (26), and for those that want their DPOTY contender’s stats ordered extra crispy, he hit personal bests there too (4G, 17A). Only Hope and San Diego’s Kyle Rubisch (later dropped after an extended IR stay) ranked higher than Hossack on our weekly NLL TOP 30 during the regular season, but Hossack was TLM’s top-rated defender for more weeks than anyone else this year. Hossack helped the Rush top the league in fewest shots against, the team shaving off an also NLL-leading 3.83 shots per game (69 fewer over the full season). As mentioned earlier, Hossack, de Snoo and Kri were the only defenders whose LB, CTO and BLK per-game averages ranked them Top 25 across all three categories. During his pre-PCLC season in Saskatoon, all-timers like Rubisch, Dilks, Chris Corbeil and Jeff Cornwall were ahead of Hossack on the D depth charts. In 2025, Hossack has the wheel, and the Rush were more defensively dominant than they’ve been in a bit. Since 2012, there have only been six different defenders to be voted the NLL’s DPOTY. Should be seven shortly.