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Arizona Coyotes All-Star Break Grades- Jordan Oesterle

By Jim Lynch

RALEIGH, NC - JANUARY 10: Jordan Oesterle #82 of the Arizona Coyotes skates for position on the ice during an NHL game against the Carolina Hurricanes on January 10, 2020 at PNC Arena in Raleigh, North Carolina. (Photo by Gregg Forwerck/NHLI via Getty Images)
RALEIGH, NC - JANUARY 10: Jordan Oesterle #82 of the Arizona Coyotes skates for position on the ice during an NHL game against the Carolina Hurricanes on January 10, 2020 at PNC Arena in Raleigh, North Carolina. (Photo by Gregg Forwerck/NHLI via Getty Images) /
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Jordan Oesterle is never going to be the Coyotes best defenseman, but he can be one of their most reliable ones. Because of so many other great defensemen, Oesterle is a supporting player in a big cast.

Think about some of the defensemen on this team. The Coyotes have Oliver Ekman-Larsson, Niklas Hjalmarsson, and Jason Demers just to name a few defensemen. Despite losing Oesterle and Hjalmarsson this season at times the team bounces back on the blue line.

When the Chicago Blackhawks traded Oesterle two years ago I never really expected him to turn into anything in the NHL. He was always the 7th defenseman rotating in every 3 or 4 games, he really has turned that around with the Coyotes.

Jordan Oesterle is averaging 16:04 minutes of ice time a night through 40 games with the Coyotes this season; he would have played in more if it wasn’t for an injury due to a puck to the head. I really think I saw how much Oesterle meant to this team when he went down to injury. After that, the Coyotes had to rotate a lot of younger guys like Kyle Capobianco, and Ilya Lyubushkin from time to time, even Jordan Gross got in a few games this season!

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The Coyotes have a lot of defensemen, and Oesterle is just as good as any of them, because of this I am giving him a B- rating through the season so far. Oesterle deserves all the credit for helping this team win games by keeping pucks out of their net, but is he worth keeping when he is worth more traded for assets?

I would say at 1.4 million a year till the end of next season he does make some great trade bait for this franchise. Arizona has a great group on their backend but could look to upgrade their front. Maybe trading Oesterle will give the team an asset upfront, plus the team does have a slew of young defensemen who could step in.

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