It’s the offseason here at Defending Big D, which means it’s the time for Player Grades!
We’ll be going through each player on the Dallas Stars roster and giving a general breakdown of how their season went in Victory Green. At the end, I’ll assign my personal grade for their 2022-23 performance, and y’all can can offer up your own grades and analysis in the comments below.
Before we get started, a couple of notes:
- We’ll only be looking at Stars currently on the roster who played at least 20 games (regular season + playoffs) for the team.
- Grades will be based on both a player’s regular season and postseason performances for Dallas specifically. Since the team had a deep playoff run, that will factor a bit more into the ratings, but we’ll try not to overreact to a single games/series.
- These grades are my sole opinion, and are not reflective of the Defending Big D staff as a whole. Except for the ones you disagree with – those aren’t mine.
Fredrik Olofsson (No. 42)
Regular: 28 GP, 1 G, 3 A, 4 P, +0, 2 PIM, 10:12 ATOI All-Situations; 55.2 CF%, 55.2 FF%, 97.9 PDO Even-Strength
Playoffs: 2 GP, 0 G, 0 A, 0 P, +5, 4 PIM, 10:19 ATOI All-Situations; 63.8 CF%, 66.7 FF%, 105.3 PDO Even-Strength
Contract Status: UFA
Our last pending-UFA to profile is perhaps the most straight forward to evaluate. Signed this past offseason from the Swedish Hockey League, Fredrik Olofsson spent the year as the Stars’ 13th/14th forward. Like Joel Hanley, Olofsson only came into the lineup when needed, which normally meant there was an injury.
In his limited ice time, Olofsson performed just about how you would expect from such a player – he had a negligible impact on the scoresheet, but was able to put in a consistent performance and not be a liability on the ice. He wasn’t going to win you any games, but he sure wasn’t going to lose you one either.
Where Olofsson does stand out a bit from the crowd, however, is his possession stats. His CF% and FF% were second on the team behind only Hart Trophy candidate Jason Robertson, and that’s with 62.6% of his faceoffs taking place in the defensive zone. His two playoff games are a ridiculously small sample size, but he posted even better numbers then.
In fact, his performance was impressive enough in those two games – the Stars’ only wins against the Vegas Golden Knights – that you could have argued Olofsson should have stayed in the lineup for a third game over Mason Marchment. Obviously Olofsson’s presence wouldn’t have prevented Dallas from getting blown out 6-0 in Game 6, but as Sean Shapiro spoke about after the game, it’s possible those two games were enough to convince another NHL team to give him a chance at a regular lineup spot.
Otherwise… there’s not much else to say, really. Olofsson met expectations, perhaps exceeding them just a little. After all, he was scoring at a higher rate than some other fourth liners such as Joel Kiviranta and Luke Glendening. In fact in hindsight, maybe Kiviranta should have been a ‘C’, cause I liked what I saw from Olofsson more. Oh well.