The Ticking Klefbom

Oscar Klefbom was drafted in June and then forgotten about, lost in the flood of teenagers at rookie and training camp vying for attention from the club and Oilersnation. The trouble with these SEL kids is that it’s hard to track them and then even more difficult to evaluate them based on miles and miles of zero’s in all the scoring columns. Well, how IS Oscar Klefbom doing?

On draft day he was interviewed on tsn and advised not to ask for #11 (Messier’s number and the number on his uniform, reflecting draft year). Klefbom answered the questions well and seemed like a nice enough fellow. There’s not much else we can glean from the 90 seconds with… that tsn gives the first round kids on draft weekend’s Friday night.

The Klefbom scouting reports were glowing (especially Redline report) and as a fan I was looking forward to tracking the youngster this year. It’s difficult because Klefbom plays for a deep team (despite struggles) and has often been playing for the J20 Farjestad squad so far in 11-12.

I think the best way to compare these seasons is to add in items aside from the basic boxcars (GP, G, A, PTS). Below, I’ve given the boxcars by year but also added TOI and then plus minus. Let’s have a look.

The SEL and hockeydb sites have Klefbom playing 23 games last season but I went through and counted them and 7 of the games that had him listed did not show any TOI. For the purposes of our look at progress, I think games played is important so wanted to make things accurate.

Klefbom has had some injury issues (we discussed them here) and is playing fewer minutes this season. However, in recent games the young man appears to be getting more ice time and there’s a lot of season left to burn.

I don’t think we can read too much into the lack of offense, as PP time doesn’t appear to be plentiful at this point in his SEL career.

We shouldn’t expect major items like goals and assists from a kid playing 7 minutes a night, but if we look again in January and he’s up to 12 minutes that shows progress. He doesn’t appear to be hampering the team at evens and despite injuries and HS’s Klefbom is playing.

This week it was announced that Klefbom will play for Sweden in the 4Nations tournament in Finland during November, and he would have to be considered a strong option for the WJ’s in Alberta this December. He went 6, 1-3-4 a year ago at the World Juniors for Sweden.