Canucks Top 10 Prospects: Kole Lind's a jack of all trades, but can he master NHL game?

The 2020 NHL Entry Draft is just 10 days away.

The Vancouver Canucks don’t have a pick until the third round. As they prepare for the draft, we’re evaluating the top 10 prospects in the system, today at No. 7 with Kole Lind.

The Canucks have hit home runs in the first round in recent years, but a top 10 list means checking out more than the players who are almost certain to make it — which usually happens with first-rounders — as the best teams find players in the edges of the draft.

Is Lind one of those guys? Despite being drafted to some acclaim in the second round in 2017, he struggled in his first year of pro hockey in 2018-19. But this past season he took a big step forward and is now back on track as an interesting face in the Canucks’ development pipeline.

Kole Lind

(Prospect No. 7)

Age: 21

Height: 6-1 Weight: 179 pounds

Draft year: 2017, second round

Current team: Utica Comets (AHL)

Outlook: Fourth-line winger

Everyone remembers Jim Benning’s statement during the 2017 season — “why isn’t anyone taking Kole Lind?” — with good reason. The lanky winger from Saskatchewan was considered a fascinating offensive talent.

Lind, who turns 22 next month, had a poor first pro season. Players whose first season in the AHL go as badly as Lind’s did rarely turn out to be NHL players.

Going into the 2019-20 season, the buzz of the 2017 draft had worn off.

Coming out of the 2019-20 season, it’s fair to suggest he’s righted his course. He produced all season for the Comets, impressed many with his aggression on the forecheck and along the boards, and put together an impressive showing at the Canucks’ Return to Play training camp in July, nearly making the travelling roster for the post-season.

It’s not a lock he’ll be an NHLer, but it’s no longer seen as a major long shot.

Ryan Johnson, the Canucks’ senior director of player development and also the Comets’ general manager, said this week that credit for that re-set goes to Lind.

“He’s made some huge strides,” Johnson said. “His first season as a pro, we knew it was going to be an eye opener for him based on some of the habits he had in junior. You can prepare people all you want but they have to face it. You give him credit, he put in the work in the areas that we had talked about.”

Lind was a regular offensive contributor for the Kelowna Rockets in his draft year and the season following, but his first year in Utica saw him skate in just 51 games, many of them on the fourth line.

He only scored five goals. It was a difficult season that might have crushed the spirits of another player, but Johnson said Lind came to camp a year ago with fresh confidence.

“And also an understanding of how tough a league the American League is,” he said. “T here’s nothing to feel bad about being humbled your first year pro.”

In 2019-20, Lind often played on the first power-play unit. He scored 14 goals and added 30 assists in 61 games before the world came to a crashing halt in March because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“This year was so good for Lind’s development. He finally started to play high enough in the Utica Comets’ lineup to show off his offensive chops, and they shone through in a big way for a massive leap in year-over-year production,” said J.D. Burke, the editor in chief at Elite Prospects .

“Really hard on the forecheck, supports the puck well, can anticipate plays relatively well, and when he has the time to get his wrist shot off it’s a credible threat even from intermediate range. Even Lind’s skating, which has long been a cause for concern, is starting to take strides in the right direction.”

Johnson said the Comets’ coaching staff — head coach Trent Cull and his assistants Gary Agnew and Jason King — pushed him to be more aggressive on the forecheck. The results spoke for themselves; it wasn’t just Burke who noted how good Lind was at winning puck battles and applying pressure on opposing defencemen looking to retrieve the puck, other scouts made the same observations as well.

Johnson said getting Lind on top of the puck more also served a second purpose — getting the puck on his own stick more.

“One of the challenges in his first year was we wanted him to be assertive on the forecheck. He sees the ice so well we were trying to get him involved more, getting the puck on his stick,” Johnson said. “We told him ‘we want you to have the puck because when you have it, you do great things with it. We need your initiative on the forecheck.'”

The fact he tallied 30 assists this past season speaks to success in that area.

Johnson also pointed out that necessity this past season also saw Lind playing some centre. With injuries hitting a number of veterans, Lind was asked to slide into the middle, a position he hadn’t played much before.

“It grew his confidence in his 200-foot game,” Johnson said. “A lot of players, when you ask at this level ‘you’re going to play in the middle,’ they might look at you like you’ve got 12 heads. He wasn’t intimidated.”

It’s fitting, then, that Burke called Lind a “jack of all trades-type player,” which is good and bad.

“I’m not sure what sort of ceiling Lind brings to the table. The problem with jack of all trades-type players is they’re usually not top of the lineup pieces. But he could carve out a bottom-six support role as a secondary scoring threat and it wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest,” Burke said.

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