I will add that while Klefbom is not all that assertive defensively (lets positioning do the work). This has caused him to take historically low penalties. Easily top in the league given the amount of minutes he plays
Ill present a new way think about this trade off between assertive play and penalties. The draw back of not playing assertive is that you allow opposition to make plays in your zone against you. Set up/make passes etc. The benefit it is that you dont take penalties because you are in tight areas jabbing sticks here and there and taking slashing/hooking/tripping/high sticking calls. Right off the bat we can all agree that cost outweighs the benefit when you are getting shredded and allowing plenty of goals. But we can also all agree Klefbom is solid defensively. He has his ups and downs but right in the middle is a solid defensive player
So now the important part. People need to start thinking about a penalty as essentially the same thing as if that player had NOT taken a penalty but played so bad on the ice for a full 2 minutes he caused his team to get outshot, out chanced and most times- scored out. A player taking an unnecessary penalty is the same as that play playing horrendous for 2 minutes. Because they result int he same impact on a game, for 2 minutes (or less) your team get hemmed into their own end and have a wahck of chances against them. Where I think we fall veyr short evaluation wise is that when a player gets a penalty we kind of go "eh to bad, dont like it but lets kill this thing" and when a player has a horrendous shift people go "Omg this player is so bad, what the hell, horrible game, just cost us a goal". Similarly, people also tend to not see the massive benefit from NOT taking penalties and not putting your team on the penalty kill but also being a solid defensive player at the same time. I fully understand some penalties need to happen and are just inevitable and some are missed calls, but if can avoid those and also all the unnecessary calls, you re bringing immense value to your team
