Danton Heinen is an often chastised, often maligned player for the Boston Bruins, who inevitably ends up in people’s suggested trades.
This might be unfair on Danton Heinen as he is the victim of a lot of line shuffling and general misuse by the Boston Bruins. At even-strength, he has had three key groups of line mates, but none for more than 11% of his overall even-strength ice-time this season.
His most common line-mates have been David Krejci and Jake Debrusk, followed by Anders Bjork and Charlie Coyle as well as seeing a decent amount of time alongside Brett Ritchie and Coyle. Casting Danton Heinen as a second to third-line winger is not the problem; rather the shuffling is.
Compare this to the top line as a prime example; David Pastrnak at even-strength has spent 49.59% of his even-strength ice-time with Brad Marchand and Patrice Bergeron.
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A large part of that falls on Boston Bruins head coach Bruce Cassidy for failing to find a working combination with the middle-six, but equally it speaks to a near-perfect top line that you’d want to avoid changing.
The issue with all this shuffling is that while Heinen has learned to play with everyone, he doesn’t have that ‘knowing when and where his line-mate will be’ type chemistry with anyone.
Perhaps the even bigger issue though is that it looks like Danton Heinen is a slight over-pay for the Boston Bruins. Earning $2.8 million this season and next, you expect him to offer something by way of point production, drawing penalties or generating turnovers.
Instead, his statistics all point to a very much middling winger; he has 21 points for the year so far, but that’s nowhere near his career-high of 47. Even last year’s total of 34 points seems like a bit of a stretch.
When it comes to giveaways, his total at all strengths of 25 doesn’t compare well to the 15 takeaways he’s managed. In previous seasons, even being deployed on the second-line more regularly and thus facing tougher competition, he managed to have more takeaways than giveaways.
A healthy scratch for the past four prior to Sunday’s game with the Red Wings; you have to wonder whether the Boston Bruins were keeping Danton Heinen out of the line-up for fear of an injury scuppering a potential trade.
His contract certainly lends to being dealt, what with having a year’s term, being cheap and him being a versatile roster option. He could offer depth on a contender at the very least, in fact he could possibly offer top-six fore-checking if dealt to the lower end of the league.
Whether or not Danton Heinen is truly available is anyone’s guess; but if I’m the Boston Bruins, he is a trade chip I’m dangling in pursuit of a game-changer.
Statistics courtesy of Natural Stat Trick.