Looking at the Senators’ roster on paper and the changes they made over the offseason, it is obvious management emphasized the need to change the dynamic of this team’s depth.
This shift was represented through the addition of players who brought different elements that were lacking. David Perron, for example, will provide secondary scoring while adding strong board play and a willingness to go to the dirty areas of the ice. Another, like Noah Gregor, adds sorely needed speed to a fourth line that lacked pace.
The most significant change occurred on the blue line when the Senators elected not to qualify restricted free agent Erik Brannstrom. Make no mistake, the financial considerations in maintaining Brannstrom’s rights were a contributing factor. Still, the decision to move on from the undersized defenceman spoke to the organization’s quiet confidence that 22-year-old Tyler Kleven will be an NHL regular and perform well in his role.
Brannstrom and Kleven could not be more diametrically opposed. Stylistically, Brannstrom is a puck-mover with a soft shot whose defensive game is predicated on skating, gap control and an active stick. Kleven will never put up many points, but he has a bomb of a shot. As a highly physical player who looks to impose his size on the opposition, these traits make him a unique defender on a blue line that has often been portrayed as soft and easy to play against.
Kleven impressed in an eight-game stint with the Senators after the organization signed him to an entry-level contract following his 2022-23 season at the University of North Dakota. He showed enough during that time that it was surprising he was not given more preseason games with the Senators last year.
This reluctance to get Kleven into more NHL games bled into the 2023-24 campaign. The left-shot defenceman only played in nine games near the end of the season when Thomas Chabot was sidelined by injury. Kleven was eventually returned to Belleville where he finished the season with five goals, 21 points and a +14 plus/minus rating in 53 games. In seven additional playoff appearances, he added a goal and two assists.
Appearing on the Coming in Hot Podcast, general manager Steve Staios explained that Kleven’s absence was purposeful and not a reflection of his development in Belleville.
“Tyler Kleven was a player that I kept down in Belleville last year. He probably could have come up and played more games, and that comes from the experience of not rushing a player along. And when he did come up and play, he played well enough to stay.”
What is intriguing about Kleven’s performance at the NHL level to this point is how strong his underlying metrics have been. Granted, 17 games and 209 minutes of five-on-five ice time is not a large enough sample size to glean too much information from. In saying that, you cannot fault a player when the Senators have generated the majority of shots (55.37 CF%), shots on goal (55.88 SF%), expected goals (54.30 xGF%) and scoring chances (55.93 SCF%) while Kleven’s been on the ice per NaturalStatTrick.
Taking that positivity one step further, these strong results were mirrored in the limited minutes that Kleven played with Jacob Bernard-Docker. During the 2022-23 season, his most common defensive partner was Bernard-Docker, according to Evolving-Hockey‘s data. In those 51 and a half minutes of five-on-five ice time, the Senators generated 66.69 percent of the shots (CF%), 72.80 percent of the shots on goal (SF%), and 78.64 percent of the expected goals (xGF%).
Barring some last minute addition to the roster via trade or PTO, a strong indicator of the confidence in Kleven is that there is no viable internal candidate to compete with him for the left defence spot on the third pairing.
Travis Hamonic and Jacob Bernard-Docker are projected to be the sixth and seventh defencemen on the roster, and both are natural right shots. A quick glance at the Senators’ depth chart on PuckPedia reveals that Donovan Sebrango, Tomas Hamara, Jorian Donovan, Matthew Andonovski, Filip Roos and Jeremy Davies are the non-roster left shot options. Of those aforementioned players, only the 25-year-old Roos has any NHL experience — 17 games during the 2022-23 season with the Blackhawks.
The job will be Kleven’s, but watching his usage and playing partners throughout camp and the preseason will be intriguing. The weakest spot in the lineup is the quality of depth on the right side behind Nick Jensen and Artem Zub. It is tough enough being a rookie defenceman playing regular defenceman in the NHL; it is another to be asked to carry or buoy a pairing that will likely feature a right defenceman who played at a sub-replacement level in 2023-24.
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