Building Blue: Jackson Dorrington's Confidence and Physical Play Increases During Sophomore Year at Northeastern

After playing in 35 games for Northeastern during his freshman season, Jackson Dorrington is building his game in his sophomore year as he leans on his strengths while gaining confidence in the other areas of his game.

The 19-year-old left-shot defenceman was selected in the sixth round of the 2022 NHL Entry Draft and uses his 6’2” frame to be one of the more physical players in NCAA hockey.

Dorrington is playing in Northeastern’s top-four and has spent a good part of the season on the top pairing. His freshman year gave him a chance to learn the systems and structure from his coach and he feels much more comfortable in his second year of college hockey.

“I'm taking more of a responsibility role,” said Dorrington. “When I'm at my best, I'm trying to be the hardest guy to play against. If I bring that every night, I know that my coaches can trust me in all the defensive situations. This year, I've started to bring some more offense to my game and that's helped me out because I can get out in those offensive situations as well. It's been awesome getting the minutes I have this year. It's been great for my confidence and development, and I feel like I’m ready to just keep going.”

Dorrington wasn’t happy with how he played during the 2022-23 season. As an 18-year-old, Dorrington was often on the bottom pairing and rarely saw north of 18 minutes of ice time. His own dissatisfaction was what motivated him throughout the summer. Dorrington made sure to work out and skate with older guys and more veteran NCAA players.

The 19-year-old is looking to play more of a leadership role as he continues his NCAA career. Dorrington is picking up a lot of tips from the veterans while also trying to be a player that can be relied upon when the game gets physical or needs to tighten up defensively.

Since his growth spurt in his early teen years, Dorrington knew that playing physically was going to be something he enjoyed about the game of hockey.

“Defending with physicality is such a big piece of my game. When you have that and you can start to dominate some guys physically, it's a huge confidence boost,” said Dorrington. "This season, I’ve found that confidence can lead into other parts of your game so just having that confidence from the physicality aspect, maybe I'll make another play with the puck and feel confident enough to hold it an extra second.”

On top of the physicality that Dorrington shows well with at the NCAA level, we are beginning to see more offence from the defenceman. Dorrington went without a goal in his freshman season and has already scored three goals through 18 games in year two.

Though Dorrington has never been a big ‘stats guy’, he does admit that having a zero in the goal column for a full season gave him some added motivation in the offseason to work on his shot.

Dorrington is working on becoming a two-way defenceman who is ready for the jump to pro hockey when the opportunity comes. There’s plenty of support at Northeastern, and we’ve seen a boatload of professional hockey players come from the Huskies over the years.

“We have everything here to get you better,” said Dorrington. “Every coach wants to get us better whether it's extra skill sessions or extra video sessions. It really showed me that I made the right decision. The culture around the guys is great, everyone's up early in the morning and we are at the rink, doing extra work before we all go there as a team. It truly brings the best out of everyone here.” 

Another impressive improvement we’ve seen from last season is his low penalty minutes. Dorrington only has three minor penalties this season and says he learned how to be physical but do it in a clean way, and is constantly learning about what type of physicality he can do or get away with around the crease.  

The Huskies will participate in the Beanpot Tournament in early February. It’s a gathering of the best teams in the Hockey East Division, and Northeastern always steps up to the occasion. Dorrington is looking to put on a show at the Beanpot and be able to showcase how he can physically dominate in a big game.  

Dorrington has worked with Mike Komisarek from Canucks player development since joining the Canucks’ organization and Komisarek noted some of the parts of Dorrington’s game when he was in Vancouver this past week. 

“When he’s on the ice, guys know he’s there because he loves to put a lick on players,” said Komisarek. “He’s just a mean player down low, and in or around the net. He’s great on the penalty kill, and he’s come a long way with his skating and his puck-moving ability. We’ve seen the added responsibility and the trust that he’s got from the coaching staff. I love the competitiveness, the fire and how he’s engaged in every shift – he never takes shifts off. He’s just a hard guy to play against.” 

This past summer, Dorrington was able to participate in his second Canucks development camp and was invited to the United States World Junior Summer Showcase team and enjoyed the challenge of practicing and playing against the players that went on to win the gold medal at the most recent World Junior Championships. 

Dorrington will continue to develop his game and eat up minutes this season as he builds his own game in his sophomore year. Northeastern is providing a great location for Dorrington to continue developing and will only get more ice time and responsibility as he continues his college career.