The 2016/17 season for Niklas Kronwall began with low expectations as he was banged up early and missed most of training camp as well as the first several games of the season. This was only a shell of the complete player who was once one of the most feared hitters in the NHL and was coined with the term for devastating hits as “Kronwalled” which can be defined as:

Unfortunately, there were few if any people being Kronwalled in this season by the Red Wings defender as the 36 year old lost a step or two and was more focused on trying to play a responsible game defensively for his team. Let’s breakdown his performance!

When viewing Kronwall’s HERO chart it will completely justify the opinion that he is hardly an NHL caliber defensemen besides the fact that he receives consistent minutes on a nightly basis. Kronwall generates minimal shots for his team and even less points which is unfortunate to say after so many years that he was Detroit’s leading offensive contributor from the blue line. Defensively, Kronwall can keep up with the bottom pair defensemen around the NHL but it is hard to say if he is taking on tough assignments regularly or if his shot prevention stats are due to playing against a weaker competition. The only area for improvement on his chart that I would say at this point in his career he has a chance to improve on would be increasing his shots generated. This is based solely on the eye test of watching him constantly looking to make the fancy set up when what Detroit was seriously lacking were effective shots coming from the point. Hopefully this was a confidence issue with his health problems and next year Kronwall will come into camp in a bit better shape to build a more impactful presence in the offensive zone.

Kronwall’s best years are obviously behind him already but this year was a pretty big step backwards in terms of offensive production as he posted his lowest PPG rate of his career at 0.22. It is still a mystery how he was able to post any power-play points at all this year when he clearly should not be on the ice ever with the man advantage but his numbers were significantly lower than we have seen from Kronwall for many years since back when he was a youngster and Nick Lidstrom was our power-play quarterback. As I have stated before, it is really unreasonable to expect to see any type of improvement at this stage of his career so the best we can expect from Kronwall if he decides to play out his remaining years on his contract will be an improvement to several other younger defensemen on the team because of his leadership and on-ice coaching ability.

Kronwall actually rated third best on the team defense in terms of CF% with a 49.06 this season. This was a very young group on defense with several players having to step up into a role that they are likely not suited for so I believe this is more in relation to Kronwall playing against mostly weaker competition and some other players who struggled, like Dekeyser and Green, had their numbers suffer due to playing top pair minutes even though they really are not top pair defensemen.

GF/60

As expected based on the previous HERO chart, Kronwall’s GF/60 rating was the lowest of all regular defensemen for the Red Wings although if you view his GA/60 stat he was actually quite effective in goal prevention so the results are that most of Kronwall’s games, he played a low event hockey style which is exactly what you would expect out of an experienced veteran focused on keeping the puck out of his own net. Health will continually be the biggest question mark for Kronwall if there is any chance for improvement in the late years of his career but if you can get consistently low GA/60 from him at this point I believe the Red Wings would take that as a win.

The 2017/18 season for Kronwall will likely look very similar to what we saw this year from the veteran defensemen. If this is the case, it really does not help the Red Wings due to the current state of the franchise, they need to be bringing in younger players to gain NHL experience while the team is not in a Win-Now mode. I understand Kronwall can play an effective part of these players development with on ice coaching and situational advice but it is difficult to ignore the fact that he is blocking a 6th roster spot for a younger player. Without getting too much into the reasons not to have Kronwall playing, the reality is he likely will be and what he can bring will hopefully be a more healthy version of what we saw this season who can play solid 3rd pair minutes and in a best case scenario increase his offensive production with more shots generated while he is on the ice. The most effective way for Kronwall to help his team is making other players around him better so that will be something to watch as he plays out the remaining years of his contract.

This season has to be rated a poor season for Kronwall as his numbers fell of across the board and when watching him play you could see a clearly slower and weaker version of the player who used to take on all the toughest match-ups only a few years ago. Kronwall battled health issues all season but there is no guarantee that they will ever go away so there is a very likely scenario that Kronwall’s play this year is the best he has left in the tank and that rates to a very poor NHL defensemen who is 36 years old.