A rare success during Edmonton’s long rebuild, why Oscar Klefbom is the model for finishing Oilers’ blue line (2024)

Oscar Klefbom came to the Oilers by way of the 2011 NHL Draft, one of the early returns of the Steve Tambellini-led Edmonton rebuild. Eight years later, he’s both one of the few remnants and few successes of that failed effort, a 26-year-old top-pair defenceman on a team-friendly contract who has evolved into the cornerstone piece of Edmonton’s blue line.

That evolution happened relatively quickly. Klefbom played depth minutes in the SHL at 17 and 18, lost most of his age-19 season to a shoulder injury, but by 20 had worked his way into the NHL and at 21 was averaging 22 minutes per game for the Oilers.

“When you have meetings with players at the end of the year there are normally four or five things you can point out that you’ve got to do better, that you’ve got to improve on, your fitness … I’m at a bit of loss for him with the exception of experience,” then-GM Craig MacTavish said at the end of that age-21 season. “I think offensively he’s grown in the last 20 or 25 games. I don’t know what everybody in here feels but I feel a whole lot of comfort when he’s going back and defending and going to break the puck out.

“When I look at Oscar, all I think of is that we need a couple of more of him.”

All of Edmonton’s general managers over Klefbom’s time with the organization made more than their share of blunders, especially on the blue line, but each could rightfully point with some measure of pride to the Swedish defenceman as a case where they got it right. Tambellini drafted him, MacTavish promoted him aggressively and one of Peter Chiarelli’s first moves was to sign Klefbom to a seven-year extension a year before his entry-level deal expired.

Each step in the process was vital. Tambellini and his head scout, Stu MacGregor, left behind an uneven record on the draft floor, but in 2011 landed the second-best defenceman that year with the No. 19 pick.

The pick itself was the product of a trade deadline move that sent Dustin Penner to Los Angeles, a deal that worked out for Edmonton despite the failure of the other components (a third-rounder and prospect Colten Teubert) to emerge as full-time NHLers. Penner’s important playoff contributions in L.A.’s 2012 Cup win also made the deal worthwhile on the other end.

Tambellini’s replacement, MacTavish, was bullish on the player but allowed Klefbom to spend most of his first season in North American in Oklahoma City before bringing him up to the majors late in the year. He was certainly one of the voices on Chiarelli’s staff urging the new GM to lock up the young defenceman.

That contract remains one of the highlights of Chiarelli’s tenure. It didn’t kick in until 2016-17, the year that Klefbom set career highs across the board: 12 goals, 26 assists, 38 points and an average of 22:22 per game. He led all Oilers in minutes played and the blue line in points in a year in which Edmonton collected 103 points and won its first playoff round since 2006.

It would have been easy for the Oilers to bridge Klefbom, as they did Jeff Petry and later Darnell Nurse, but the seven-year extension has paid off handsomely. At an annual cap hit of $4.17-million per season, Klefbom ranks 78th among NHL defencemen by cap hit, meaning he’s paid like a No. 3 defenceman. As a fixture on the Oilers’ top pairing, that makes him a bargain.

Better still, Klefbom’s contract has three more seasons after this one, running until 2023. As the salary cap climbs and the league shifts to paying players earlier in their careers, his already team-friendly deal should be one of the NHL’s better bargains by the time it finally expires four summers from now.

The length of that contract makes Klefbom the one certain element on an Oilers blue line in flux.

Contract status is a question mark for the team’s other standbys. Adam Larsson and Kris Russell are a year and a half from unrestricted free agency. Darnell Nurse is a pending RFA looking at a big raise, one which will vault him well past Klefbom in terms of their respective paycheques, even as the two remain neck-and-neck in terms of usage. Matt Benning too is a pending RFA but is at risk of being lost in a flood of incoming young defencemen.

Two have already played significant minutes this year: training camp surprise Ethan Bear and rookie Swede Joel Persson. William Lagesson has been recalled from Bakersfield; Caleb Jones and Evan Bouchard await their turns. Behind them are Dmitri Samorukov and Philip Broberg. Broberg, like Klefbom, is a swift-skating 6-foot-3 defenceman trained in the SHL.

Klefbom has played with both Bear and Persson, giving his less experienced counterparts a stable partner.

“Klef is just a really steady guy, a really steady guy,” Dave Tippett said after one game in which Klefbom played with Persson. It’s a refrain the coach has already repeated multiple times in the young season.

Tippett and his staff have leaned on Klefbom in all three disciplines.

At 5-on-5, Klefbom’s 51 percent Corsi and 54 percent goal share make him the only Oilers defenceman to be above break-even by both statistics. He has played a lot with McDavid, but his 57 percent Corsi share away from the Oilers’ superstar testifies that he isn’t merely riding the captain’s coattails.

Klefbom is the lone defenceman on Edmonton’s red hot top power-play unit, where he has recorded four of his nine points this season. He’s also playing a team-leading 3:36 per game on what so far has been a revived penalty kill.

In an early season where the Oilers have surprised everyone by winning seven of their first nine games, there are all kinds of positive stories to be told, from the top line’s ridiculous scoring numbers to the recoveries of James Neal and Mike Smith to the emergence of Bear. Against that backdrop, it is possible to lose sight of the fact that Klefbom is scoring at a point-per-game clip and already one-third of the way to his point total from last season. His average of 24:56 per game is also a career high.

If Klefbom is a No. 1 defenceman, a bargain on a cap-strapped team and the rare certainty on an uncertain blue line, he’s also something else. He is an example of the fact that the really good defencemen generally don’t take a long time to show their quality.

The conventional wisdom is that it takes 300 games to be sure of a defenceman, and perhaps there’s some truth to that. Klefbom, after all, came into 2019-20 with 316 games on his resume and has stepped forward in terms of both role and production in the early going. Yet it’s also true that it was pretty clear at 21 that he was going to be special.

“I really feel very strongly about the way he’s playing,” MacTavish told Oilers’ radio analyst Bob Stauffer just 47 games into Klefbom’s major-league career. “You have to be optimistic and enthusiastic based on the way he’s playing and asserting himself in the game.

“He’s got a head for hockey, he closes gaps quickly, he protects gaps in the neutral zone, he can break the puck out under pressure. He’s got the leg strength that he can hold the tight turns under pressure and still make plays. He’s never tired on the ice, he’s in incredible shape and we’re seeing more of an emergence of an offensive game.”

Bear, playing more than 20 minutes per game and playing them well, has taken a major step at 22 after coming from a lot further back than Klefbom. Jones is the same age. Bouchard and Samorukov are 20.

There is no guarantee that any of those prospects will have Klefbom-level careers, but Edmonton’s long-term success will depend in no small part on the emergence of those young blueliners. If they’re as good as their early results suggest, we’re going to start seeing that emergence happen in the near future.

Klefbom has been a rare bright spot for the Oilers of the last decade and is the type of player the present team needs to find more of. If the Oilers are very fortunate, in two years enough of those young prospects will have emerged to make Klefbom the rare greybeard on a young, cheap, effective blue line.

(Statistics from Natural Stat Trick and Hockey Reference. Contract information from CapFriendly)

(Top photo: Andy Marlin/NHLI via Getty Images)