Welcome back to The Journey, where we track the development of prospects as they excel in junior, make the NHL, and push towards stardom.

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John Klingberg (now with TOR) is an out-of-control power play thief. Everywhere he goes, he blocks young defensemen from getting well-deserved power play time.

First it was Miro Heiskanen (DAL), who never exceeded 11 Power Play Points (PPP) or a 42-point pace while Klingberg ran the Stars' power play. The second Klingberg left town for Anaheim, Heiskanen put up 73 points and 34 PPP.

Then it was Jamie Drysdale (ANA), who went from seeing about 50% of the Ducks' available PP time over his first two years to only 11% with Klingberg in the picture. Drysdale went down with a season-ending injury only eight games into the campaign, of course, so there is a chance he could have wrestled the job back—especially given how hard Klingberg struggled to quarterback the lowly Ducks into scoring relevance in the days following.

But finally, it was Calen Addison (MIN), who was putting up very, very strong numbers to kick off the 2023-24 campaign—albeit with some notable inconsistencies. He came out of the gates hot with seven points in his first seven games (five PPP), went cold over his next 11 (one PPP), then re-ignited for seven over his next eight (five PPP). Then came another nine-game cold stretch followed by a final impressive run of 11 points in 17 games (six PPP).

And then the scratches began.

He played almost seven minutes with the man advantage against Florida on February 13, which included one even-strength assist, and then watched from the press box as a healthy scratch for 25 out of the following 35 games. Who showed up less than a month after that game against Florida? You guessed it. John "Take Away the Power Play" Klingberg. The lanky Swede then largely dominated the Wild PP for the remainder of the season and into the playoffs—for which Addison sat the entire time as a healthy scratch.

Okay, so I am overstating Klingberg's supervillain status here a bit. He has been a power-play superstar for eight years out of his nine-year career, putting up between 12-23 PPP from the blue line while averaging a 54-point pace and generally providing a couple shots, a block, and a half-hit per game. But now he is an expensive ($4.15 mill), aging (31) average play-driver who has posted increasingly ugly plus-minus ratings over his last four years (-10, -15, -28, -25). He is now off to Toronto in 2023-24 on a one-year contract, where he will likely pull off this same PPP-stealing dark magic trick with his next victim, Morgan Rielly.

Turning our attention back to Addison, who is one of the top-ten most-viewed profiles on Frozen Tools right now, the most significant reason for his decline was not actually Klingberg but rather his poor defensive play. His struggles began weeks before the Wild brought in Klingberg, for whom there was a natural fit of sorts because he was not clicking with the Ducks. But once Klingberg arrived, that was it for Addison's fantasy relevance.

With Klingberg now out of the picture and bothering Rielly owners instead, where does that leave those of us holding onto Addison heading into 2023-24?

Contract

The first thing Addison needs is a contract. The three-year entry-level contract he initially signed with Pittsburgh expired at the end of 2022-23, and he remains unsigned at the time of writing with training camp only weeks away.

The infamous buyouts for Zach Parise and Ryan Suter (almost $15 million per year) are in effect until the end of the 2024-25 campaign—two more years. That means the Wild still have some tough days ahead budget-wise and will presumably attempt to sign Addison to a short, possibly two-year bridge deal.

Assuming he signs soon, the term and amount should tell us more about how firmly the Wild see him in their future plans.

Why The Wild Need Addison

Even with Addison's struggles (more on that after) and the mid-season addition of Klingberg, Addison is the clear-cut most dangerous weapon the Wild have from the back end. It is also vital to remember that this was Addison's first NHL season. Rookies are expected to hit a wall mid-year just like he did. It wasn't great, but it wasn't a surprise either.

The most telling stats in the table below are not just Addison's raw PP totals but also his PPP/60 and PP IPP.

The per-60 stat shows that he produced the most with the man advantage in the time he was given; he was also given by far the most time, of course, but he was efficiently productive with that time, which is an important predictor of future success. The fact that he also has the highest PP Individual Point Percentage (IPP) on the team, narrowly edging out Jared Spurgeon, shows that he was heavily involved in scoring that happened with him on the ice. In other words, the power play ran through him more than other defenders.

Another important consideration in assessing Addison's value to this team is the fact that they do not have many exciting prospects coming up on the back end and also said goodbye to the right-handed Matt Dumba (ARI). Jonas Brodin and Spurgeon are the stalwarts here, each signed for at least four more seasons. Behind them, Jake Middleton and Jon Merrill provide some cheap depth for the next couple years. And Alex Goligoski brings some veteran support for this year only. After that, everything is wide open.

Brock Faber looks like he may make the Wild directly out of college but is not an offensively minded defender and should slide smoothly into a top-four shutdown role. As is clear from the PP table above, Spurgeon is the only real threat on this team to Addison's PP time. But as we can see from the Wild's Frozen Tools deployment chart (under Advanced Stats in any player's profile), Spurgeon excelled for the Wild in more of a shutdown role last year and they will likely ask him to stick with that in 2023-24.

In 2022-23, Spurgeon played most often with the struggling Middleton (orange bubble, top left), facing the highest Quality of Competition from other teams. Then Brodin (dark blue, upper middle) propped up Dumba in the middle while Merrill and Addison were heavily sheltered. What you see is what you get with Goligoski, as always; his dark blue bubble in the middle suggests that he is still more than capable of playing whatever role is asked of him. Faber (not pictured here) did great in his first couple games with the big club and may take Dumba's place alongside Brodin as a premier shutdown pairing.

As it stands, and assuming everyone is healthy, Merrill and Addison are the sixth and seventh defenders on this team. But Addison brings a lot more to the table than his steady, stay-at-home partner and actually drove play better too, suggesting he might be ready to handle harder minutes. Unless a Brodin-Faber combo frees up Spurgeon to play more offensively this year, there is a clear need for dynamic offence on the Wild blue line, and that is what Addison is all about.

The Good…

My personal experience with rostering and trying to trade Addison over the second half of last year suggests that his fantasy value is quite low right now. My feeling is that fantasy managers are spooked by his poor defensive play, healthy scratches, and the fact that he did not see the ice at all during the playoffs.

But Addison, now 23, still looks fantastic in the Hockey Prospecting model. He aged out after his Draft+3 AHL campaign (22 points in 31 games), so this snapshot is a bit out of date, but he followed this up with another incredible AHL year and then a fantastic (all things considered) NHL rookie campaign, so his star probability is likely north of 70% at this point.

Players who look like this rarely miss, although Addison's three full player comparables capture a range of potential outcomes for the young defender:

• Full-fledged star (Dan Boyle)
• Adequate PP weapon (Erik Brannstrom)
• Likely bust (Reilly Walsh)

In case you've forgotten how dynamic Addison can be, here are a few clips to help jog your memory. He consistently displays high-end vision, excellent mobility, and slick, creative passing with the man advantage.

Here he holds onto the puck longer than expected, skating backwards deep into the zone to evade a check before threading a seeing-eye, cross-seam pass to an open Matt Boldy on the far side.

Calen Addison -> Matt Boldy -> Power Play Goal 🚨 pic.twitter.com/PQ1SijtNY4

— x – Sound the Foghorn Pod 🚨 (@SoundTheFoghorn) April 11, 2021

He has a knack for getting point shots off quickly and keeping them low for his teammates to tip—an absolutely vital skill for a PP defenseman.

Joel Eriksson Ek gives the #mnwild a 1-0 lead on the power play! A phenomenal tip out front from a point shot from Calen Addison, Ek's 10th Power Play goal of the season and 20th goal overall pic.twitter.com/KktKqKOVqQ

— Alex Micheletti (@AlexMicheletti) February 12, 2023

And if you give him too much time and space, he can also just take it in himself:

Calen Addison goes iso on the power play for his first goal of the season. What a solo effort. 1-1 #mnwild pic.twitter.com/TDsQPZXfdr

— Spoked Z (@SpokedZ) December 18, 2021

Very impressive stuff from a rookie defenseman.

…The Bad & The Ugly

This quote from GM Bill Guerin sums up where Addison's game is currently: "His five-on-five play has to get better on both sides of the puck. We need him to generate five-on-five and we need him to be able to defend…It's a learning process for him. He's a young player. He's got one part of the game down — the power play. But there's a whole other side to it."

So the Wild clearly need Addison running their top PP unit, but teams can rarely afford to shelter players for long as heavily as they did with him. Take away his PP time and production, and Addison scored only 11 points in 62 games skating 12 and a half minutes per night.

Below is a chart showing most of the top offensive-minded defensemen in the league. In the bottom- and middle-right are a few players who Addison could look similar to in a couple years from now: in particular, Torey Krug, Damon Severson, Adam Boqvist, Erik Brannstrom, Vince Dunn—all smaller, sheltered, power play weapons who have also learned how to play decent enough defence and score enough at five-on-five to secure power play roles on their respective teams. All of them play more often and against harder competition than Addison did last year.

Verdict

My prediction is that the Wild sign Addison to a cheap, two-year bridge deal and again give him all the power-play time he can handle right out of the gates. He goes almost a point-per-game over the first ten or so games of 2023-24 and his fantasy value skyrockets back up to where it was at the start of last year. His defensive deficiencies continue, however, and he makes fairly steady cringey mistakes, and his hot start again slows down as the year goes on—but less dramatically, and it doesn't lead to the string of healthy scratches we saw for him last year.

Dobber has Addison down for 42 points next year in the Guide—get yours here!—with a potential upside of 68 points. This is a dynamic offensive defender whose value is in a serious dip at the moment. Poolies don't like red flags and question marks, and although Addison appears to have many hanging over his head, I would dismiss most of those to growing pains. He will figure it out in the next couple of years, and it would not be surprising to see production similar to a peak Torey Krug in Boston—a 68-point pace with 30+ PPP, plus 2.5 shots, a hit, and a block per game.

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Thanks for reading! Follow me on Twitter @beegare for more prospect content and fantasy hockey analysis.