Behind John Klingberg’s drive to revive his career with the Maple Leafs

John Klingberg knows what people have been saying about him.

He’s open to chatting about anything. His two young daughters. His dog. His new home in Etobicoke. And even, in great detail, the on-ice troubles that sent his career into a downward spiral.

Klingberg doesn’t sound bitter. But he’s well aware of how the perceptions of him have been turned upside down. It’s gone from “Who the heck is John Klingberg?” during his early emergence in Dallas to “What the heck happened to John Klingberg?”

“With how the last few years have gone,” Klingberg said, “I feel like I have to prove myself to the league and to a certain degree, with other people as well.”

Klingberg has very specific ideas on what went wrong and what he needs to do this season with the Toronto Maple Leafs to turn things around and revive his career. And the Leafs have some ideas of their own.

“I know what kind of player I can be,” he insisted. “I’ve not been that kind of player the last few years.”

You might say that player, the best of that player anyway, started to really emerge two weeks into the 2017-18 season.

That’s when Stars assistant coach Rick Wilson came to head coach Ken Hitchcock with an idea on how to further unlock Klingberg, 25 at that time and in the early days of his fourth NHL season.

“You’re going to have to really trust him,” Wilson told Hitchcock.

Wilson’s thinking was simple: The Stars needed to let Klingberg do Klingberg on offence. They wouldn’t interfere much there. Just let him play. They would, on the other hand, do everything they possibly could to coach Klingberg up defensively. Succeed and the Stars would end up with an elite No. 1 defenceman, the kind of player who could do it all for them.

Wilson had some inspiration: Sergei Zubov, who became a perennial Norris Trophy contender and Hall of Famer during Wilson and Hitchcock’s first stint behind the Dallas bench.

“He said he’s not Sergei Zubov,” Hitchcock recalled of Wilson’s thinking, “but he has similar qualities — patience with the puck, tremendous vision, long stick, really smart stick. He said, ‘I really think if you got him to buy into this we could have ourselves a hell of a player.’”

Patience, they believed, would be the key for Klingberg. Patience in defending especially is what they insisted on from Klingberg.

“Don’t force the issue,” Hitchcock said. “Use angling and stick positioning. Don’t chase checks. Just play with your head and play with your smarts and play with your stick.”

And don’t force the issue with the puck. Make the right play, the simple play, the play that got the Stars up and onto offence.

“He accepted it,” Hitchcock said. “He wanted to learn, he asked a lot of questions. And then we turned him loose.

“I was amazed by how quickly he bought into it, to be honest with you. There was almost an immediate change.”

The Stars were one of the stingiest teams in hockey that season. They did it with Klingberg playing more minutes — 24 a night — than anyone on their team. They had Klingberg-led pairs defending No. 1 lines. They had Klingberg killing penalties for the first time in the NHL. And of course, they let him run their offence.

Not only did Klingberg hit what remains a career high of 67 points, “He gave up nothing,” Hitchcock recalled. “When he was on the ice, you never had a scoring chance against. That was what was really impressive for me.”

The Stars had an 18-goal advantage at five-on-five when Klingberg was out there and won 55 percent of the expected goals.

Klingberg finished sixth in Norris Trophy voting that year, trailing only Victor Hedman (the winner), Drew Doughty, PK Subban, Seth Jones and John Carlson.

He morphed into the kind of No. 1 do-it-all defenceman Wilson and Hitchcock believed he could become.

And then, just a few years later, he was gone. That player was gone. Instead of spending his career in Dallas, as Zubov did for the final dozen years of his career, the Stars let Klingberg exit in free agency weeks before his 30th birthday. Klingberg found only a one-year deal with an Anaheim Ducks team that was rebuilding under GM Pat Verbeek.

What happened to Klingberg? He has some answers.

Above all, Klingberg says he stopped being patient, especially with the Ducks last season.

“In Dallas, our game was defence first. And we won a lot of games 2-1, 3-2 and we were successful with it,” Klingberg said.

In Anaheim, it was different, to say the least. The Ducks defended, defended and defended some more.

“And for me as a player,” Klingberg said, before letting out an uncomfortable chuckle, “you get frustrated when you don’t feel the puck.

“And then obviously all of a sudden you feel like you have to create something. And then all of a sudden you waste energy on maybe trying to do something where you lose the puck again and you’re late in a shift, where you’re trying to make a play or something, and obviously all of a sudden you’re playing even more in (the) D zone.”

Shifts would snowball on him. Klingberg would defend and lose precious energy along the way. Then, the puck would come free and he would desperately try to make something happen with it, create something out of nothing. Which would backfire and lead to even more defending.

Which led to some of the worst defensive underlying numbers of any player in the league last season.

“I put that on myself because I was trying to do too much,” Klingberg said. “You want to be part of the game and you want to be a difference-maker. But it all leads to you often just trying to do too much, and you play D instead of playing with the puck and joining the rush and (getting) your touches with the puck in the O zone.”

Hitchcock, who now works as a coaching consultant for the Blues, said “chasing the game” is not Klingberg’s strength.

“John’s strength is being able to control the game and let the outcome take care of itself,” Hitchcock said.

And that was always the thing with Klingberg, said Alex Goligoski, a teammate during those early years in Dallas and again, after his unraveling in Anaheim, last season with Minnesota.

“Honestly, he’s a good defender,” Goligoski said. “The only time he gets himself in trouble is when he’s trying to do something offensively and maybe turns one over, or he’s in the wrong spots because he’s looking for offence. But when he’s defending, he defends well.”

Told of Goligoski’s assessment, Klingberg lets out another light chuckle. “Exactly. And that’s been through my entire career.”

The Leafs coaching staff, led by Sheldon Keefe, have been counseling Klingberg on his decision-making — on gauging how much energy he has when the puck squirts his way in his own zone, on what his teammates are up to as well.

“If you see Option A, do it, and join the rush,” Klingberg said. “Instead of, if you see Option A, and all of a sudden Option B pops up and C, and then you hold onto the puck for too long instead of moving it and joining the rush.”

When he is defending, Klingberg is focused on how he positions himself, on keeping a sharp gap between himself and his opponents and then closing that gap and killing a play like that when he has the chance.

Klingberg knows he’s not the biggest or strongest guy (at 185 pounds, he’s actually the lightest defender on the Leafs) and admits that physicality won’t be part of his arsenal. It doesn’t have to be, he says. His former Stars teammate Miro Heiskanen isn’t exactly bulky at 197 pounds but excels defensively through his positioning.

Klingberg could stand to stiffen up and hold his guard with more force, though. At times already this season, he’s been exposed by stronger forwards willing their way past him to the net. He has occasionally gotten himself and his teammates into trouble with poor puck management.

He often defends from an upright position, more content to use his stick than his body. He has the kind of length when wielding that stick that GM Brad Treliving likes in his defenders. The ability, that is, to poke pucks free from a distance.

The Leafs want him to wield it effectively.

Poke more pucks free, make better decisions with it, spend less time defending, and Klingberg believes he can get back to being Klingberg again — the good Klingberg.

Which could make him a popular member of the Leafs. Goligoski, 38 and over 1,000 games into his NHL career, called him “one of my favourite guys I’ve ever played with.”

Why?

“You play with the puck a lot because that’s what he does,” Goligoski said. “The way he sees the puck, the way he thinks the game, it’s very, very high level. Like offensively, I’d put him up there with four or five guys in the league as far as how he can impact the game.”

After briefly experimenting with Klingberg in more challenging top-four terrain, where he and Jake McCabe flailed together, the Leafs have sharply pivoted in their deployment of Klingberg.

They now appear determined to keep him on offence (and out of the defensive zone) as much as they possibly can.

Over the last four games, Klingberg has lined up for 26 offensive zone faceoffs, 12 neutral zone faceoffs and just five (!) defensive zone faceoffs. (For context, Morgan Rielly has lined up for 25 in his own zone.) That amounts to an offensive zone faceoff percentage of 84 percent.

Just 22 percent of the five-on-five draws Klingberg has lined up for overall this season have come in the defensive zone. Forty-eight percent have come at the other end. Extreme sheltering in other words, the kind rarely seen in Toronto for a defenceman, let alone one making over $4 million this season.

Leafs’ D since 07-08 (min. 50 mins)

PlayerSeasonOZF%DZ%

TJ Brennan

14-15

48%

27%

John Klingberg

23-24

48%

22%

Erik Gustafsson

22-23

46%

35%

Scott Harrington

15-16

42%

30%

Anton Stralman

08-09

41%

23%

Jaime Sifers

08-09

40%

30%

Rasmus Sandin

19-20

39%

27%

Connor Carrick

16-17

39%

28%

Travis Dermott

20-21

39%

30%

Conor Timmins

22-23

39%

26%

Klingberg has played a much quieter game facing lighter competition, in fewer minutes, on the third pair with Mark Giordano.

His days as a No. 1-calibre defenceman appear over.

Klingberg’s attempts at reinvention in Toronto will hinge instead on whether he can be just good enough defensively to make the other stuff — the ability to ignite the offence and run the power play — worth keeping around.

“I don’t think defensively I am (as bad as) people might say that I am,” Klingberg said. “But it looks that way because I’m trying to do too much with the puck in D zone. So I think if I just know what to do with the puck before I get it and just make that simple, easy play in D zone and through the neutral zone it’s going to take care of itself.”

Klingberg notes repeatedly how “excited” he is to be playing for a “really good team” again.

“That’s why I signed here,” he said. “And being able to help this team try to go as far as possible and get a Stanley Cup obviously. And with that said, obviously if I want to be top-six or a top-four guy I need to be really solid defensively.”

— Stats and research courtesy of Natural Stat Trick, Evolving Hockey, Hockey Reference and Cap Friendly.

(Top photos: Mark Blinch, Bruce Bennett / Getty Images)