Helene St. James

Detroit Free Press

The NHL is in its quieter days, offering a fine opportunity to take a look at individual Detroit Red Wings and assess expectations for the coming season.

D Niklas Kronwall

Looking at 2015-16: 3 goals, 23 assists, 26 points, minus-21 in 64 games. One assist, plus-3 in five playoff games.

Looking at money: Signed through 2018-19 at an annual average value of $4.75 million. Actual salary next season is $5.5 million.

Looking back: Kronwall, 35, played his worst season of pro hockey last year, looking like a shell of his former self as he consistently turned in substandard performances. He has been a minus player before, but part of that comes from being out against the opponent’s best players. Never had Kronwall finished a season worse than minus-5, though. To his credit, Kronwall readily admitted he wasn’t playing well enough — but he was not able to turn things around. He still ended up with the highest average ice time on the team at 22 minutes. He’s long been the workhorse, used in all situations.

Looking ahead: It is deeply troubling to the Wings that Kronwall may have the sort of bad knee that can’t be improved via surgery. He underwent a procedure on his left knee in mid-January that sidelined him 15 games (Kronwall also missed time in March after spraining his right knee). Doing any more surgery to the left knee was ruled out after the season ended, with Kronwall saying he’d have to find other ways to improve, such as maybe altering his workouts. The fact is, Kronwall has a lot of hard wear-and-tear on him and is long removed from the dominating, productive, big hitter he was in the late 2000s and into this decade. If he can come close to the form he had as late as 2014-15, however, it would be a huge improvement over last season.

More players

• Teemu Pulkkinen must find spot after surgery

• Red Wings need more from Tomas Tatar

• Frans Nielsen good on both ends of the ice

• Riley Sheahan valuable at center or on wing

• Jimmy Howard expensive backup, but may be worth it

• Brendan Smith gritty, aggressive, sometimes reckless

• Drew Miller inexpensive grinder to kill penalties

• Mike Green’s ‘go’ signal always on for Wings

• Dylan Larkin could make switch to center this season

• Wings expect more from veteran Jonathan Ericsson

• Tomas Jurco has winger skills but needs to regain form

• Alexey Marchenko proving to be a solid decision-maker

• Justin Abdelkader a player to count on

Contact Helene St. James: hstjames@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @helenestjames.

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