Detroit Red Wings from the vault: Defenseman Jakub Kindl
By Tyler Kotila
In the latest edition of from the vault, take a look at former defenseman Jakub Kindl and his seven years with the Detroit Red Wings organization.
The Detroit Red Wings season is on pause, so now is the perfect time for a look back to the past when Jakub Kindl was a part of the team. Back in 2005, the Red Wings drafted Kindl with the nineteenth overall pick in the first round, he would make his debut during the 2009-10 season.
Kindl played eight total seasons with seven seasons for the Red Wings and then also spending a season and a half with the Florida Panthers. Kindl was a 6-foot-3, 199-pound defender with a left-handed shot who was not a Norris trophy candidate but was a second pairing defenseman.
He played in 331 total games in the National Hockey League (NHL) with sixteen goals and fifty-eight assists for seventy-four points. During his time with the Red Wings, Kindl averaged fifteen minutes of ice time which is essentially right for his role as a second pairing or sometimes third pairing guy.
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He was never a top pairing scoring defenseman but he still saw the ice over guys like Carlo Colaiacovo, Mike Commodore, and Ian White who all had short stays with the team.
His best statistical season came in 2013-14 with the Red Wings. He would play in a career-best, sixty-six games where he scored two goals and notched seventeen assists for nineteen total points.
He would also play a role on the Red Wings power-play in 2013-14, with seven assists coming on the power-play. He would follow up his power-play time in 2014-15 with another seven-point performance on the power-play. It’s not amazing, but it counts for something at the end of the day.
Ultimately, his time with the Red Wings would come to an end during the 2015-16 season when Kindl was traded to the Panthers for a sixth-round draft pick for the 2017 NHL Entry Draft. He would play one more season after being traded, playing in thirty-nine games, notching only four assists on the year.
All-in-all, Kindl was not racking up the points, seeing twenty-plus minutes of ice time, or playing an integral role for the Red Wings but he was similar to Jonathan Ericsson or Kyle Quincey. These players are not anything super special, but they play a part on a team like the Red Wings who was coming down from a window of competition and entering a rebuilding phase.
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The year Kindl was traded to the Panthers, was the last time that the Red Wings made the playoffs when they were on a three-year stretch of first-round exits from the playoffs.