Nashville Predators Season Grades: Dan Hamhuis

A long and successful career for Dan Hamhuis is coming close to the end. He’s had a great and respected run with the Nashville Predators.

A storied and respectable NHL career by Hamhuis didn’t translate much to this past season with the Predators.

It’s important to remember when evaluating the season for Dan Hamhuis that he’s had a solid NHL career and has done a lot of good for the Nashville Predators.

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Hamhuis was originally drafted by the Predators all the way back in 2001 in the first round. He initially played for Nashville for six seasons before playing for Vancouver and Dallas after thatn.

In total, Hamhuis has 16 seasons of NHL experience which is an amazing and commendable feat in its own.

When it comes to grading this past season, he wasn’t spectacular in his 60 games he played in. But let’s put it into perspective here; he played in 60 games as a 16-year veteran on a team that went through turbulent changes.

Hamhuis spent all of his time on the third defensive pairing, which had plenty of problems. Enough problems to be circled as a primary issue of the team.

Hamhuis has always been the true essence of a defenseman. He’s out there to disrupt the offense and do the dirty things like blocking shots. Scoring goals is nothing he’s every been out there to primarily do.

The problem with this previous season is the Predators were sorely lacking on the third defensive pairing, and Hamhuis was part of that.

Hamhuis has just 13 points over his two seasons since returning back to the Predators, and eight of those came this past season. He averaged 14:31 of ice time, which is by far the lowest of his career.

This really isn’t about Hamhuis, but more about a bad move by the front office. They could’ve gone with younger players from Milwaukee or made other moves in free agency where they didn’t have to rely on Hamhuis on year 16.

Hamhuis certainly has a career to be proud of and did a lot for the Predators. But his second stint was on the back end of his career and didn’t offer much to write home about.