FWIW, I look at Hanifin as a consistently reliable minute muncher who can play long stretches of relatively mistake-free hockey. He isn't overly physical, but he doesn't get out-muscled very often in a puck battle. He is strong on the transition and has both a very good first-pass out of the zone, or he can reliably and effectively skate the puck up himself and into the offensive zone (he is very good at this). The one thing that holds him back from being a #1 D in my opinion is his lower offensive ability. He doesn't have a big shot, and he doesn't have the offensive creativity that you want to see in a #1, but as you can see from his stats, he is offensively capable. I look at him as a good #2. I think you can pair him reliably with a more offensive defencemen on your top pairing, and he can play big minutes effectively. He is also still relatively young - only 26 years old and already has played 598 games. I do think he is a little underappreciated because of this - everyone acknowledges that Kylington has room to improve (and Andersson), but they are from the exact same draft (2015 - the Marner draft for you Maple Leaf fans). I guess you can look at development purely based on games and conclude that Hanifin is who he is already, or you can look at his age and conclude that - especially since he is a defencemen - one can expect more development in his game.
What's he worth? I won't speculate as I simply am not good at trade proposals, but it would really hurt the Flames' D-core substantially to lose Hanifin right now. I am anticipating that he gets re-signed rather than traded. I do think that the returns should probably reflect how much pain it would cost, especially after an injury to someone else, and watching them have to defend against McDavid.
