Saw enough of Karrlson to say that if Runblad is not as good a defender as Karlsson is, then he may have a tough time finding an NHL career. Karlsson is not a good defender. Excellent PP guy, great with the puck, but has shown no ability to stop people in any way as of yet. That was easily on display last year.
Karlsson at his best is a good defensive player in this league, he is just still very inconsistent with the defensive effort. Karlsson is a
very good PKer, which shows that when he really focuses on D and isn't thinking whatsoever about scoring, he is very good defensively. His positioning is good and his speed getting from pt. A to pt. B in the zone is incredible. He also backchecks very well when he does screw up. When he gains strength in his upper body and becomes a bit more comfortable in his own zone, he will be average defensively. If he makes a true commitment to the defensive side of the game, he could be a quite good defender. Rundblad will obviously need to work harder than Karlsson on defense if he wants to have a solid NHL career but at this point its not the most important thing. Even if he's not NHL ready defensively, he will be given the chance to develop it at the NHL level. I have little doubt that Rundblad will be an NHL regular, and I think a cerebral player like him will do okay defensively because of a)smaller ice surface, and far more importantly, b) he will be playing within a far more organized system (I'd assume-- this is sort of going off of what we saw with and heard from Patty Wiercioch). Rundblad is also much bigger and more physical than Karlsson, and Richardson has done well to polish those qualities in some of our DMen (Campoli, Lee). I expect Rundblad to be heavily coached, and I believe that if he works hard he could eventually surpass Karlsson defensively.