With the Arizona Coyotes 2015-16 season complete, it’s time to dive into each player’s performance and make a final tally on how they fared this season.
The Arizona Coyotes had high hopes for several rookies coming into 2015-16. One of those rookies was Swedish blue liner Klas Dahlbeck.
The twenty-four-year-old defenseman was acquired along with a first round pick from the Blackhawks in the trade that sent Antoine Vermette to Chicago. Vermette won the Stanley Cup during his brief stay and subsequently re-signed with the Coyotes, making the trade look like a huge coup for former general manager Don Maloney.
The jury is still out on Nick Merkley, the promising young player the Arizona Coyotes acquired with the Blackhawks first round pick, but we now have a full year of viewing Klas Dahlbeck under our belts.
The Arizona Coyotes results with Dahlbeck on the ice varied from middling to disappointing, and the mid-season additions of Kevin Connauton and Jarred Tinordi saw the rookie in-and-out of the lineup at times due to being scratched or injured.
Dahlbeck spent most of his time paired with Zybnek Michalek and that is where most of his WOWY chart (with-or-without-you) is plotted. Nearly every Arizona Coyotes player who stepped on the ice with Dahlbeck had issues generating shots and they weren’t too great at stopping the opposition from getting them, either.
His brief pairings with Michael Stone and Connor Murphy were particularly awful, however. With Stone and Dahlbeck on the ice, the Yotes were virtually unable to generate shots. When paired with Murphy, the team saw an alarming uptick in shots against.
It was a bit of an adventure with Klas on the ice, which is unfortunately a far cry from what management and Coyotes fans would’ve hoped after the Vermette trade.
Beyond his defensive liabilities, Dahlbeck did not contribute much offensively either. He scored 2 goals and bagged 6 assists in 71 games averaging 15:44 of time on ice.
He’s not shown himself to be a traditional puck mover, and he does not appear to be a reasonable imitation of a shutdown defender, so what exactly is Klas Dahlbeck? Does he deserve the chance to patrol the Arizona Coyotes blue line next season?
Dahlbeck made $605,000 in 2015-16 after signing a one year, two-way contract with the Coyotes in the summer. He is a restricted free agent this summer.
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Dahlbeck’s status is probably highly contingent on what ownership and the team’s new general manager can acquire via trade and in free agency to shore up their abhorrent defensive corps. If they whiff in their search, it’s possible we’ll see the Swede return on another short-term deal.
If they acquire some other talent such as a Kevin Shattenkirk or someone else who is top-4 viable, however? I would keep him on a two-way deal for depth in Glendale and Tucson…or let him walk.