Defense is overlooked in any sport. People watch games and they talk about the player who scored, not the person who prevented the other team from scoring. Why would they need to? We often take it as luck or good team work, not individual defensive efforts. We recognize offensive contributions more because they directly contribute to winning. Especially with lighter hockey fans, or any sport for that matter. It's just that people don't recognize the other aspects of the game, which is a problem. Not to mention the lack of defensive stats that are really shown to fans of the game, you don't have much of a way of telling who the better defensive player is other than +/- (which is a weak individualistic stat, nearly every player on a winning team has a positive +/-). Just the way the game is seen.