At the beginning of the year, Kulak was struggling to adjust to his bigger role and increased minutes, but it appears his struggles are in the rearview mirror at this point in time.
He has gone from a low of -8 earlier in the season to a solid +3 now, and I wouldn’t be surprised if that keeps going up.
This is also helped by the fact that Jack Campbell has stopped struggling and the rest of the team has also committed to better defensive play overall, but there’s no doubt Kulak deserves some credit for redeeming himself from earlier in the season. It was looking like his $2.75 million contract would become a bad one for a while there. We knew it would take a while for him to adjust, but just not as long as it did.
When a player is on an upward trajectory, if you’re the GM you think long and hard before trading that piece away. For all the talk of the Edmonton Oilers needing to acquire a stay-at-home D-man, we may have had that guy in the lineup all along.