Should Erik Brännström play more?

In our (belated) weekly question, we ask: should the Sens’ young prospect be given more ice-time?

My apologies, friends, for the tardiness of this week’s edition of our Weekly Question. It will return to its regular Saturday posting next week.

This week we ask: should Erik Brännström be playing more?

Despite making the team out of camp, the young defenseman has failed to really earn DJ Smith’s trust. Brännström’s averaging a meager 13:46 a night, by far the lowest total among the regular defensemen (Mark Borowiecki is next lowest at 16:31). He hasn’t been spectacular, but it’s hard to argue he’s been bad either. The Sens are getting just over 48% of the shot attempts when he’s on the ice, and friend of the blog Micah McCurdy’s model at hockeyviz.com has him looking this:

He’s basically been totally average in every component. He’s not the world beater we’d hoped for, but he’s also probably been better than maybe Smith is giving him credit for. I will note that he played a season-high 16:44 in Buffalo on Saturday.

So, back to this week’s question: should Brännström be playing more than he is?

Should Brännström be playing more than he is?

Yes, absolutely!50
Yes, but maybe only 16-18 minutes109
No, but he looks close to breaking out40
No, he needs more seasoning; preferably in the AHL145

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