One of the more polarizing players among Red Wings fans, 28-year-old Danny DeKeyser has just finished his sixth season as a member of the Red Wings organization. How exactly did he perform under the pressure of being the fan-touted “shutdown” defenseman that Detroit desperately needed this season? Let me tell you, it’s not exactly pretty.

There is a lot more blue on the chart than expected, but that still does not show signs of a capable NHL defenseman. In the Offense category, his goals, vs. expected, and shooting % numbers are so great because DeKeyser simply did not attempt shots very much. With only 6 goals this season on 65 shots, of course his percentage is at a realistic 9.2%, but the Red Wings system does not allow many shots from the point when DeKeyser is on the ice.

DeKeyser’s most common partners were split between Nick Jensen and Mike Green, two defenseman that are very capable at rushing with the puck and creating scoring chances from the blueline. DeKeyser was there to basically be a backup in case of a counterattack.

More so to his defensive partners, DeKeyser’s shot assist numbers were horrid this season and it was because of who he was most commonly on the ice with. He was not doing any playmaking and I’m sure Blashill told him to simply never do that anyways. Mike Green and Nick Jensen play much more to that style, so one can’t really blame him for not creating the desired amount of offense.

Defensively, DeKeyser is better than what the eye can tell you. He does not create anything offensively, but he is able to prevent some pucks going into his own team’s net. His denied entry rate was by far the best among all Red Wings defenseman – the highest using this chart, was Nick Jensen with a 5. Just using the chart above, anyone can see that DeKeyser is much better defensively than offensively, he won’t be your no.1 defenseman, but a strong LHD on your second or third pairing.

This is one of the most boring boxscores I have ever seen.

What DeKeyser can do on the ice well will never show up on this sheet. If you like the plus/minus stat, he has shown an incredible improvement from last year. I would associate this with the 2017-18 season being his second-lowest season in terms of time-on-ice. In 2016-17, DeKeyser was averaging 21:57 a game – way too much for a defenseman with his set of skills. Now in the season that just finished, he went down to a reasonable 20:19 and his play improved.

Again, DeKeyser will never be the player carrying the puck from behind Howard, into the offensive zone, trying to create a scoring chance. But, if he can consistently do what he did just three seasons ago, then he can become a decent NHL defenseman.

There is always the issue of age and DeKeyser is not getting any younger. At 28-years-old, he is at the prime of his career right now and is likely to only see a decrease in his play from now on.

I somewhat find this hilarious.

Even though DeKeyser was below 50% in his 5v5 CF%, he is still seen as good at controlling shot attempts relative to the rest of the Red Wings. Basically meaning that most of the team got absolutely shelled-in and were horrible at creating more shot attempts than their opposition.

In both CF% and CF%rel, DeKeyser was top-10 among all players that have played at least 50 minutes for the Red Wings this season. To have someone that is essentially a mute point as a player, be in the top-10 of an important metric, just shows how poor the Red Wings as a whole played this season.

Proving my “mute point” player opinion further, DeKeyser had no real effect on any goal-based metrics. He allowed the same amount of even-strength goals as his team scored while he was on the ice. With that 50 GF%, he is still a whole 6.02% better than his teammates. He was top-6 in both categories among all Red Wings.

In the expected goals margin, DeKeyser performed poorly, but not as poorly as his whole team. He was still a negative in xG+/-, but was still only ranked 10th among his team. This hockey club let a lot of opposing scoring chances happen, and simply got lucky that they weren’t blown out on a consistent basis. Only five Red Wings were a positive in xG+/-, and you can probably guess those five players without thinking that hard.

I’m going to give DeKeyser the benefit of the doubt, and say that he was misused. He was misused in the way that he was simply played way too often and in the wrong situations. He can be a capable player if he only had the right players surrounding him. As stated before, he is not the defenseman that will be leading the rush and creating the scoring chances – he is the guy that you have on the penalty kill and put out there for defensive faceoffs. I believe a defenseman should be capable of doing both, but that’s just me.

I predict that nothing will change all that much. The blueline is pretty much locked in for next season, other than potentially adding a Filip Hronek or having Joe Hicketts play in Detroit all year.

In the forward group, they are in a logjam as well. Unless Holland and co. do some serious shedding this offseason, all one can predict is that Michael Rasmussen will be a top-9 LW and Evgeny Svechnikov will be with the team all year.

All DeKeyser needs is better players surrounding him for his offensive, shot attempt, and expected goal numbers to improve. I still predict that he will be playing 20+ minutes a game and that can be worrying, but at least there are some decent defensive prospects to help carry the burden of playing for the Red Wings team in the upcoming years.

He did what he was told to do.

That’s basically it. He was on the ice against some tough competition and he didn’t completely fail.

He will be okay if you ignore his contract.