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It's far from the top of general manager Brad Treliviing's to-do list but I'm interested to see if he elects to re-sign defenseman David Schlemko.

After being acquired from the Dallas Stars via waivers Schlemko stepped into Calgary's lineup and gave them some stability on the 3rd defense pairing.

He didn't get a ton of ice - Schlemko played ~13 minutes a night - but when he was out there good things were happening and he drove play in the right direction.

During his 19 regular season games with Calgary each player he spent more than 60 minutes with at 5 v 5 posted better possession numbers with him than without him.

Note: sorted from most minutes (140 with Raphael Diaz) to least (62 with Josh Jooris).



While all five players posted better numbers with Schlemko on the ice, I think it's even more telling that four of the five were over 50% possession players with him and zero of the five were over 50% without Schlemko.

The sample size was small, though, as Schlemko didn't play a lot of minutes on a nightly basis nor did he play a lot of games with the team.

With that in mind I decided to graph his numbers over the last two seasons with the Arizona Coyotes to get an idea of what kind of an impact he has on his teammates over a more substantial period of time.

Once again the results are encouraging.

Note: Numbers sorted from most 5 v 5 minutes together (left) to least (right). Minimum 150.



As you can see all 11 Coyotes Schlemko played more than 150 minutes with since the beginning of the 2013-14 generated a higher percentage of the shot attempts with him on the ice than without him.

Schlemko is not going to put a team on his back and win hockey games. He's not going to put up many points, either.

That said good things tend to happen when he is on the ice - and he wouldn't cost much to retain - so I think the Flames would be smart to keep him around.

Note: Numbers via Stats.HockeyAnalysis.com.

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