Ottawa Senators 2024 Top 25 Under 25, #6: Tyler Kleven

Last Year: 9th

Reader Rank: 6th

With a full season of professional hockey under his belt, Tyler Kleven is currently set to be one half of the Ottawa Senators' third defence pairing for 2024-25. Despite having accumulated just 17 NHL games of experience across the past two seasons, he's often looked like he's ready for a full-time role. There's cause for optimism that he will be able to carry the load on the third pair. However, with Thomas Chabot's health concerns, there's a chance Kleven will be relied upon to play more than the occasional game on the second pair. With a lot riding on his performance, this upcoming season may be too tall of a wall to scale – though he might also just run through it like the Kool-Aid man.

Following a suspension-filled college career with the North Dakota Fighting Hawks, the 6'4 LHD entered the AHL last season, which proved to be more forgiving towards his physical brand of defence. He took part in 53 games with the Belleville Senators, scoring 5 goals, notching 16 assists and posting a +14 rating – all while racking up 51 penalty minutes.

Of those 51 PIMS, 17 were coincidental, which means he put his team shorthanded (51 - 17) / 2 = 17 times – roughly once every three games. Most of those were the kind of penalties you wind up taking when you're caught out of position, like hooking, tripping, and slashing. If there's a tangible area for improvement in Kleven's defensive game, that might be it.

When it comes to the more violent penalties – charging, roughing, head contact, boarding etc. he's done a better job of limiting those than in the past, as he only took one minor penalty each. Again though, that's probably impacted by the change in environment as well.

This past season in the NHL, he was serviceable with an assist in nine games, along with positive shot metrics in small samples of play alongside Erik Brännström and Nikolas Matinpalo.

As I alluded to earlier, being physical doesn't equate to being great at defending, but it also doesn't mean you're incapable of moving the puck. The Senators' scouting staff, for example, has historically overrated the defensive ability of the more physically imposing players they've drafted – Ben Roger and Filip Nordberg being the most recent examples. Conversely, many scouts who were much lower on Kleven (and especially the trade to move up to draft him 44th overall in the 2020 NHL Entry Draft) perhaps didn't consider the potential for growth of his skating, puck movement and offensive abilities.

In his end-of-season presser, Kleven spoke about improving his decision-making and playing with more poise, and I think the following play in the NHL in which he opts to shut down a rush chance without giving another team cap relief, demonstrates this pretty well:

Maturing is realizing that while it's more fun to just spam Fire Blast with Charizard, eventually you need to expand your move pool to become more flexible in handling different situations.

No I won't explain the above any further. Moving on.

The offseason moves made by GM Steve Staios in an attempt to upgrade all three positions of the roster, were made partly with Kleven and other prospects in mind. He wouldn't have spent $2M more on goaltending if he felt that money would be better spent on an established defenseman.

With Filip Roos being the only other option on the left side with more NHL experience, Staios has implicitly placed a lot of faith in Kleven to put in a strong rookie season for the Senators. Sticking around for the year would be huge for Kleven, as he's a pending RFA at the end of the season, and will be looking for that sweet, sweet one-way money. He's moved up our rankings to the point where he's to make an impact at the NHL level – we're going to find out very soon if he's ready to do just that.