Player Discussion Oscar Klefbom

[The Batman]

Hitch commented in last game's pre-game imterview that 25 min/GP is really the floor for him. He should play more.

Not to take anything from Klefbom's game--it's been great to see what a healthy Klefbom can do--but I think part of that is due to our lack of depth.

Of the bottom 4 only Russell has been consistently decent; Nurse looks lost out there, Benning has gone from sinking to treading water, Gravel has been alright, Larsson is generally solid, but he gets beat a lot this year.

The best candidate to feed more minutes is automatically Klefbom. The way the team is built, 25 minutes isn't the floor. It has to be the floor. Same problem with our forwards too.

 

[Todd from Leduc]

Kid’s turning into quite a player. I see him as #1D and a lock for Team Finland’s Captain.

 

[LaGu]

Not to take anything from Klefbom's game--it's been great to see what a healthy Klefbom can do--but I think part of that is due to our lack of depth.

Of the bottom 4 only Russell has been consistently decent; Nurse looks lost out there, Benning has gone from sinking to treading water, Gravel has been alright, Larsson is generally solid, but he gets beat a lot this year.

The best candidate to feed more minutes is automatically Klefbom. The way the team is built, 25 minutes isn't the floor. It has to be the floor. Same problem with our forwards too.

Not sure if this was the point of his comment, but ok. I agree to an extent, but Hitch I think was talking about players recovering fast and being built for big minutes.

 

[Tobias Kahun]

Kid’s turning into quite a player. I see him as #1D and a lock for Team Finland’s Captain.

That's impressive considering he's swedish.

 

[BleedingOil]

Kid’s turning into quite a player. I see him as #1D and a lock for Team Finland’s Captain.

Klefbom is not from Finland

 

[Oilhawks]

Kid’s turning into quite a player. I see him as #1D and a lock for Team Finland’s Captain.

I see him as more of Norway or Iceland's captain, to be honest. Their languages are much more similar so maybe he could pass as Norwegian or an Icelander.

 

[space321]

Klefbom is not from Finland

He's a troll, it shouldbe pretty obvious by now

 

[thadd]

He's had a lot of ups and downs this year. Some really inconsistent play. There was about a 10 game stretch where he and Larsson were just getting destroyed in GA.

Playing well right now. Still making a lot of mistakes defensively though. Even last night.

I really don't like his slap shot. It often takes a long time for him to get it off. It's horribly telegraphed.
That being said, he's had some nice moments pinching over the past 10 games and I figure if he's doing that at the right moments it's going to pay off often enough that it makes up for his defensive deficiencies. Too early to tell.

 

[Todd from Leduc]

That's impressive considering he's swedish.

It autocorrected.

 

[McBooya42]

It autocorrected.

Oh for sure.. my phone auto-corrects countries all the time too, and I'm from Australia.

 

[Zaddy]

Tim & Sid talked a little bit about Klefbom and how much he is missed by the Oilers.

Some numbers:

Oilers with Klefbom
17-12-2 record
2.81 goals per game
2.94 goals against per game

Oilers without Klefbom
3-8-1 record
2.67 goals per game
3.92 goals against per game

Quite a significant difference. Would be nice if people could acknowledge that he is an actual top pairing D and not just a #3 or even a #4 as some people say he is. Every time he's out, the Oilers suffer tremendously.

 

[Mcnotloilersfan]

Tim & Sid talked a little bit about Klefbom and how much he is missed by the Oilers.

Some numbers:

Oilers with Klefbom
17-12-2 record
2.81 goals per game
2.94 goals against per game

Oilers without Klefbom
3-8-1 record
2.67 goals per game
3.92 goals against per game

Quite a significant difference. Would be nice if people could acknowledge that he is an actual top pairing D and not just a #3 or even a #4 as some people say he is. Every time he's out, the Oilers suffer tremendously.

There is more to defense than putting up 50+ points, which many people can't seem to realize. He's an elite shut-down defenseman who can transition the puck better than most. He makes Larsson a much better player.

He isn't a top 10 dman in the league, but he's top 30 IMO, and there isn't even a remote debate as to whether he's in the top 60. He's a top pair dman hands down.

I'm hopeful for the future because Jones reminds me of him. Likely won't put up elite points, but once he develops, he will effortlessly get the puck going the other way.

 

[CupofOil]

Klef is a top pairing Dman (a #2) but I think the record with and without him is more of an indictment on the defensive depth of the organization than praise of Klefbom as a player.

My issue with Klefbom is that his play is a little too inconsistent for a top pairing Dman and he's almost always injured or playing injured. Injured this season, played injured (apparently) all of last season, injured in '15-'16, little nagging injuries the season before that, a shoulder injury in one of his SEL seasons. It's a long list and a very concerning pattern.

I'll say one thing about Klef. When he's on his game, he's a great player. His play prior to the injury this season was legit #1 level and he was starting to come around on the PP as well. I saw this in him in '15-'16 as well before he went down with injury. The injuries always seem to come when he's peaking. Frustrating

 

[Zaddy]

Klef is a top pairing Dman (a #2) but I think the record with and without him is more of an indictment on the defensive depth of the organization than praise of Klefbom as a player.

My issue with Klefbom is that his play is a little too inconsistent for a top pairing Dman and he's almost always injured or playing injured. Injured this season, played injured (apparently) all of last season, injured in '15-'16, little nagging injuries the season before that, a shoulder injury in one of his SEL seasons. It's a long list and a very concerning pattern.

Personally I believe he's a #1, a low-end one, but still a #1 and a top30 D in this league. He's not elite in that role, but he gets the job done quite admirably and as we've seen this season, while playing some heavy, heavy minutes to boot.

The difference in record obviously doesn't tell the whole story as more goes into that than just Klefbom, but I think it's still a pretty good indicator of his importance to the team. This isn't the first time the Oilers have gone from being a competitive team to a complete nosedive once he got injured. Same happened in 15/16 and it has generally been the trend.

I actually disagree that he's inconsistent. I think he has been very consistent the last couple of years. He had a small dip in performance in a stretch this year but I think every single D (or player for that matter) in this league has those stretches over the course of a season. It's not something unique to Klefbom. But I think it becomes more eye-popping with Klefbom just because the Oilers isn't a very good team. If you have a good and deep team, then other players can make up for it when a top player is struggling. For instance, Vlasic has been garbage by his standards this year for the Sharks, but they have Burns and Karlsson to cover it up.

I don't know what you can say about the injuries either. The shoulder injury he had for most of last year reportedly was from an incident at the end of the previous season IIRC that was never fixed and it seemed like it just got aggravated during pre-season. By then he just wanted help his team (probably knowing just how important he is to this team) and kept playing through it, which proved to be a mistake.

Then the injury he got now was just unlucky, getting hit with a hard shot on his glove, giving him fractures on his fingers. Like that has nothing to do with him being prone to injuries IMO as that could and does happen to players on every team. Just pure bad luck, like the staph infection.

 

[Zaddy]

There is more to defense than putting up 50+ points, which many people can't seem to realize. He's an elite shut-down defenseman who can transition the puck better than most. He makes Larsson a much better player.

He isn't a top 10 dman in the league, but he's top 30 IMO, and there isn't even a remote debate as to whether he's in the top 60. He's a top pair dman hands down.

I'm hopeful for the future because Jones reminds me of him. Likely won't put up elite points, but once he develops, he will effortlessly get the puck going the other way.

100% agree with this post. It's interesting to hear you say "elite shut-down defenseman", that's not something I've really heard from anyone before but now that I think about it you might be right. I mean, Klefbom is hands down one of the best guys in the league at shutting down the cycle and moving the puck out of the zone. It's beautiful to watch and he does it with such ease. He really knows how to use his body as well as his stick in the corners to win those battles and get the puck out out of danger. And the best part is that despite all this he almost never takes any penalties or play beyond the rules. That's a valuable and underrated trait in itself.

 

[CupofOil]

Personally I believe he's a #1, a low-end one, but still a #1 and a top30 D in this league. He's not elite in that role, but he gets the job done quite admirably and as we've seen this season, while playing some heavy, heavy minutes to boot.

The difference in record obviously doesn't tell the whole story as more goes into that than just Klefbom, but I think it's still a pretty good indicator of his importance to the team. This isn't the first time the Oilers have gone from being a competitive team to a complete nosedive once he got injured. Same happened in 15/16 and it has generally been the trend.

I actually disagree that he's inconsistent. I think he has been very consistent the last couple of years. He had a small dip in performance in a stretch this year but I think every single D (or player for that matter) in this league has those stretches over the course of a season. It's not something unique to Klefbom. But I think it becomes more eye-popping with Klefbom just because the Oilers isn't a very good team. If you have a good and deep team, then other players can make up for it when a top player is struggling. For instance, Vlasic has been garbage by his standards this year for the Sharks, but they have Burns and Karlsson to cover it up.

I don't know what you can say about the injuries either. The shoulder injury he had for most of last year reportedly was from an incident at the end of the previous season IIRC that was never fixed and it seemed like it just got aggravated during pre-season. By then he just wanted help his team (probably knowing just how important he is to this team) and kept playing through it, which proved to be a mistake.

Then the injury he got now was just unlucky, getting hit with a hard shot on his glove, giving him fractures on his fingers. Like that has nothing to do with him being prone to injuries IMO as that could and does happen to players on every team. Just pure bad luck, like the staph infection.

I disagree with your disagreement of his consistency.

I see a player with a lot of peaks and valleys. He struggled for a while in '16'-17 as Larsson covered a lot of errors he was making then he took off later in the season. He was awful last season, whether or not the injury played a big role is up for debate but the fact of the matter is that he was barely a functional Dman last season then he struggled to start this season until he really found his footing the last 12-15 games prior to the injury and was really poor on the PP most of that time.

I have no problem calling him a #2 because he certainly plays at a high level for long stretches but the lows can be really low and #1's just don't have that many peaks and valleys, that's why they're #1's.
#1's aren't considered wild cards going into a season and he was perhaps the biggest one going into this season and I wouldn't use minutes played as an indicator of him being a #1. Just because he's a #1 on Edmonton, that doesn't mean he's a #1.

His injury this season was just bad luck but the fact of the matter is that most of his career he's either had some kind of injury or playing with injury. '16-'17 was the one outlier. It's a concern.

 

[Little Fury]

His injury this season was just bad luck but the fact of the matter is that most of his career he's either had some kind of injury or playing with injury. '16-'17 was the one outlier. It's a concern.

Aren't all injuries bad luck?

I understand the idea that injuries are limiting his effectiveness here, but I'm not sure what anyone is supposed to do about it.

 

[DingerMcSlapshot]

Klefbom is a number 1/2 defenseman only on a bad team like the Oilers. Too inconsistent injury-prone and sometimes I feel as his heart is not in it. He's way too soft for defenseman he has a less than 50 penalty minutes in like six seasons of N/A hockey pretty sad. Way overrated take away the 16/17 season and he's done absolutely nothing for the most part. Imho

 

[Zaddy]

Klefbom is a number 1/2 defenseman only on a bad team like the Oilers. Too inconsistent injury-prone and sometimes I feel as his heart is not in it. He's way too soft for defenseman he has a less than 50 penalty minutes in like six seasons of N/A hockey pretty sad. Way overrated take away the 16/17 season and he's done absolutely nothing for the most part. Imho

Uh, the fact that he doesn't take many penalties while playing huge minutes is a good thing. If that's your definition of soft then I guess he's soft, but the guy actually uses his body every game, only he does it in a smart way that wins the puck without causing penalties. You don't have to be nasty to be effective.

 

[DingerMcSlapshot]

Uh, the fact that he doesn't take many penalties while playing huge minutes is a good thing. If that's your definition of soft then I guess he's soft, but the guy actually uses his body every game, only he does it in a smart way that wins the puck without causing penalties. You don't have to be nasty to be effective.

Hahaha he's no Nicklas Lidstrom.

 

[Zaddy]

Hahaha he's no Nicklas Lidstrom.

Who said he was...?

 

[oXo Cube]

Klefbom's dinosaur detractors are now at the point where they're arguing that he isn't good because he doesn't take penalties.

Amazing.

 

[Oilers in NS]

Kid’s turning into quite a player. I see him as #1D and a lock for Team Finland’s Captain.

There would be some letter U’s in there if he was Finnish

 

[BoldNewLettuce]

Watching how dominant the dmen were for sj....klef is not there.....

Hes a top pair dman that is average at the point. Sadly our best option. Though nurse is approaching average.

Its a real shame larsson hasnt developed much. He should be better at the point too.

At the boards holding the zone i mean....

 

[Oilers in NS]

Klefbom's dinosaur detractors are now at the point where they're arguing that he isn't good because he doesn't take penalties.

Amazing.

I had an argument a while back with a fella that doesn’t think he is that good and us Oiler fans over-value him. He even said he is an Oiler fan. I think this proves what happened to our team when he went down how valuable he is. What you think now @harpoon ? Do u think Klefbom still no that good?