The Red Wings Should Look To Reel In Jake Gardiner

The Detroit Red Wings need to add a left-handed defenceman this off-season.

If you look at the depth chart, there isn’t many left-handed defencemen who Jeff Blashill can rely on for the next few seasons.

First, let’s take a look at the veterans. Niklas Kronwall is 38 years old and he’s up for a new contract on July 1st. In addition, Jonathan Ericsson is 35 years old and he’ll be due for a new contract on July 1, 2020. Danny DeKeyser is 29 years old and will be a Red Wing until the 2022-2023 regular season. Unfortunately, their possession stats weren’t impressive in the 2018-2019 season. All three defensemen owned a Corsi-For percentage under 48.7%.

Aside from the veterans, the Red Wings do have some prospects who they can plug into their defensive unit. Dennis Cholowski and Joe Hicketts have spent time in the NHL throughout this past season. They are solid prospects, but they do have quite a bit of work to do as they still aren’t completely developed and ready for a full-time role at the NHL level.

So, at the end of the day, there is only one left-handed defenseman who is NHL ready. That defenseman is Danny DeKeyser. In the visual below (designed by Sean Tierney), you’ll see that while DeKeyser’s CF% wasn’t impressive, he was extremely effective at break-ups and possession zone exits. Aside from DeKeyser, Cholowski also proved to be effective at break-ups and possession zone exits, but it was evident throughout the season that Ken Holland and Blashill weren’t confident in Cholowski at the NHL-level. Holland sent him down to Grand Rapids for a bit.

In addition to the Red Wings defensemen being ineffective at break-ups and possession zone exits, they had challenges at generating scoring chances off of dumps. Per the visual below, the Red Wings were one of the worst teams in the league at creating shots off of dump-ins. If the Red Wings were able to add a defenseman who can be effective at controlling the flow in the offensive zone, they’d likely be more efficient at creating shots off of dump-ins.

With that being said, the Red Wings should be honing in on a left-handed defenseman who can be productive in the offensive zone.

After I spent some time on CapFriendly.com, I was able to identify the best defensive option for the Red Wings. That best option is Jake Gardiner of the Toronto Maple Leafs.

Gardiner likely won’t be re-signed as the Toronto Maple Leafs need to re-sign Mitch Marner to a contract extension. Marner will cost a decent amount of the Maple Leafs’ cap space. With that being said, it’ll be very challenging for Maple Leafs general manager Kyle Dubas to retain Gardiner as well as Marner.

If we look back on the past couple of seasons, Gardiner has received a decent amount of hate from Maple Leafs fans, but he is an effective two-way defenseman. He’s proved that he can be a solid puck-mover, that he can run a power-play unit and that he’s got a laser of a shot. From a defensive/possession perspective, he’s outstanding at break-ups and excellent at possession zone exits/possession zone entries.

Additionally, he’s been more efficient than several of the Red Wings left-handed defensemen including Ericsson, Cholowski and Kronwall.

As you can see from the visuals that CJ Turtoro created, Gardiner has been more productive at shot contributions, entries, exits and entry defense than Cholowski, Kronwall and Ericsson.

With that being said, if Holland can sign Gardiner at the right price, he’d be a valuable addition to the Detroit Red Wings organization.

Visuals from CJ Turtoro and Sean Tierney