Niklas Kronwall is one of the few Red Wings left who were on the 2008 Stanley Cup winning team. He’s well-versed in the winning culture that management is trying so hard to conserve. There’s no doubt that he’s a warrior and inspiration to his teammates as he battled with knee injuries all season, but Kronwall’s physical abilities have been in a steep decline since his body started to crumble.

This year, Kronner found a way to play through the pain as he only missed three games all season.

This PET chart does not look good for Kronwall. His age does him no favours, nor do his offensive stats.

Kronwall thinks the game really well, though, as evidenced by the bottom half of this chart. His possession zone exit percentage is far above average as are his shot assists. He denies zone entries at a good rate, too. If I’m being honest, his defensive stats are better than I expected. They certainly don’t match the eye test, where I mostly saw lost netfront battles, giveaways, and failed zone exit attempts.

In any case, it’s a better performance than he put up last season.

Kronner has had a tough couple of season with his injury issues. He missed 18 games in 2015-16 and 26 games in 2016-17, but it wasn’t until the latter where his play really showed signs of slowing.

This year, Kronwall returned to 20+ point form, but his points-per-game was down 0.07 versus 2016-17 and 0.21 versus 2015-16.

Point production is not why Kronwall gets ice time, though. He’s a far more defensive player who’s meant to be an anchor on the blueline. Detroit brought in Trevor Daley this year to help with that as Kronwall slowed, which relieved some of the pressure on him to play a ton of minutes in a game.

He still saw far too much special teams time for someone who was already playing over 20 minutes a game at his age.

Kronwall’s 49% on-ice 5-on-5 Corsi-For percentage was fourth best among team defensemen. The leaders were Nick Jensen (51.53%), Xavier Ouellet (50.78%) and Danny DeKeyser (49.32%). Interesting how the younger players seem to have the better stats, isn’t it?

In Kronwall’s defense, since it is an on-ice stat, it’s indicative that the team as a whole is defensively unstable. That being said, Kronwall’s individual corsi-for was sixth best among team defensemen.

There’s not much to break down here. Kronwall isn’t the kind of player who can control possession anymore.

His goal based stats don’t get any prettier. In fact, they get uglier. With a relative goals-for percentage of -4.84, Kronwall was on the wrong side of so many goals at 5-on-5.

He was on the ice for 34 goals for at 5-on-5 and assisted on 10 of them. Breaking it down even further, only two of them were primary assists, indicating that Kronwall is impacting very few goals directly throughout the course of a game.

For the first time since his rookie season, Kronwall dipped under 20 minutes per game in 2016-17. This year, Kronwall’s average ice time per game dipped again, to 18:31. Expect this trend to continue next season as the Wings work young defensemen like Joe Hicketts and Filip Hronek into the lineup.

Kronwall’s stats will continue to look worse next year, but that’s okay. He’s not in the room anymore to make an impact on the ice. His job now will be to coach and influence young players on how to play at the NHL level. So don’t expect him to play a lot of minutes and don’t expect him to be impactful with the minutes he does play.

But expect him to make an impact in the locker room behind the scenes.

Kronwall has had an amazing career in Detroit and he’s been a key to the Wings success over the last 14 years. His career is now winding down as he enters the final season of his contract. This will likely be the final season of his career.

My advice to Wings fans is to treat it as a farewell season for him. Don’t get angry or frustrating. Kronner deserves our appreciation for what he’s given this team over the course of his career and 2018-19 is the last chance for him to be shown that.

As for this season? It kind of stunk.