An afterthought at the start of the season, what with the log jam on Detroit’s blue line full of defensemen eligible for waivers, Nick Jensen emerged as a promising young defenseman for Detroit. While many thought that he would be the Tomas Jurco on defense, barely getting the ice time considering that he would have Ouellet and Sproul ahead of him on the depth chart, Jensen became arguably Detroit’s best defenseman this season, although he’s probably more likely to be a top 4 defense on a more rounded team.

(Stats courtesy of NHL.com)

With this just being his rookie season, Jensen doesn’t exactly have a large sample to work with. However, his first year was anything but a disappointment. He had what would be a 21 point season over 82 games, which is very good production for a rookie. Also, his 0.97 5v5 P60 ranked 42nd among defensemen with at least 700 minutes, tied with Andrej Sekera and Jake Gardiner, and ahead of guys like Ryan Ellis, John Carlson, and Oliver Ekman-Larsson, so perhaps with more ice time, Jensen can emerge as more of an offensive threat.

(Stats courtesy of Corsica.hockey)

While Jensen’s 50.57% CF% might not jump off the page as impressive, it looks better when you consider that this coming from a rookie playing a somewhat prominent role on a bad team. He ranks fourth on the team in CF%, CF60, and CA60, so he excelled in possession despite the fact that the rest of the team was well below average.

(Stats courtesy of Corsica.hockey)

Unlike his CF%, Jensen’s GF% isn’t as pretty, although he probably isn’t too much to blame for them. He had the seventh worst GF% on the team, but he also had the sixth lowest PDO at 97.91, so you can look to a lot of that as bad luck. He also had the second worst on-ice save percentage on the team at 89.69%, so he wasn’t getting much help from the goalies when he was on the ice. Basically, Howard, Mrazek, and Coreau played like Jonas Gustavsson with Jensen on the ice.

I think a couple factors will play into deciding what happens to Jensen next season. The first factor is if Detroit trades for a top two defenseman in the offseason, and the second is depending on how smart Blashill is. If the Wings get a defenseman, I’d imagine that Jensen will see top four minutes, as the depth chart will be a bit better. If they don’t, it wouldn’t surprise me if Detroit plays him on the top pair with Mike Green (that’s what I would do). However, knowing Blash, he’ll put Danny DeKeyser there instead (after all, he had him as USA’s top pair ahead of Trouba and Hanifin).

So, realistically, Jensen’s probably going to get top four minutes next season, and probably take a couple steps forward in his development. The biggest factor for his improvement might be if the team gets better, as he’ll have better offensive options, as well as better defensive linemates.

The key to Jensen’s excellent season might have been the low expectations he was given. Not that he’s bad, but no one expected much from him, and he had a great season by team standards, and has a chance to be Detroit’s best defenseman, especially if they keep this mediocre defense core for the future. He certainly wasn’t perfect, but he was far from disappointing anyone, and in the end, he had a season to be proud of.