Ottawa Senators Report Cards: Erik Brannstrom
By Daniel Bruce
The highly-regarded blueliner fought through an up and down season
Starting the season in Ottawa following a successful loan in Switzerland and training camp, Erik Brannstrom had an uneven season, sometimes due to no fault of his own.
D.J. Smith struggled to trust Brannstrom and was quick to insert veterans Braydon Coburn and Josh Brown into the lineup instead of the obviously more talented and evidently better option. It took Pierre Dorion trading a few veterans at the trade deadline for Brannstrom to attain top-four minutes and he looked the part next to Artem Zub.
Brannstrom’s season also included his first of hopefully many goals in the NHL, which can be seen below:
2020-21 Stats
30 GP, 2G-11A-13P, 42 shots, 26 hits, 16:21 TOI/GP
82-game pace: 5G-31A-36P, 115 shots, 71 hits
Starting the season with the big club and having some confidence after playing over 30 NHL games the year prior, Brannstrom’s start didn’t go as expected.
One of the decisions that were unpopular amongst Senators fans was the healthy scratching of the talented defenceman for the first 10 games of the season, it’s no wonder this team struggled so much out of the gate.
Now given his chance, Brannstrom did nothing to improve his standing over the next month. Stuck playing third-pairing minutes and struggling to get second power-play unit duties, a return to Belleville was deemed the best course of action for the 21-year-old. Given top minutes with Belleville, it was a surprise to nobody that Brannstrom lit it up with 5 points in just 4 games.
Post-Deadline: Now promised big minutes the rest of the season as opportunity was aplenty, Brannstrom would succeed on the second-pairing with Artem Zub. In 15 games following the trading of Mike Reilly, Erik Gudbranson, and Braydon Coburn, Brannstrom produced 1 goal and 8 points, he’s slowly looking like more of the player Pierre Dorion hoped he’d get when they acquired him.
Here’s how Brannstrom fared analytically compared to his teammates:
- 50.41 CF% (6th)
- 45.20 xGF% (26th)-Gudbranson was 21st
- 45.83 HDCF% (20th)
The Almesakra, Sweden native was able to drive possession from the backend mainly due to his ability to break the puck out through his skating or passing. Being stuck to Erik Gudbranson for a large portion of the season is the reason for his low xGF% (expected goals-for percentage) and HDCF% (High-Danger Corsi-for Percentage), those marks when he started playing with Artem Zub.
B. While there’s plenty of ways to deem this season a success for the talented defenceman, people will always want and expect more because he was traded for Mark Stone. The fact is, Brannstrom fought through uneven deployment at the start of the season and was able to parlay that into a successful, foundation-building sophomore season. <p>The flashes were there in the majority of the games he suited up in, evidently, the next step Brannstrom has to make is to increase his consistency, especially in the defensive end where he tends to run into issues boxing out.</p> <p>This was a solid season to allow for the young, talented defenceman to blossom in the 2021-22 season as a full-time regular</p>. D. Ottawa Senators. ERIK BRANNSTROM
All metrics via Natural Stat Trick