Cayden Lindstrom

November 2023: Lindstrom has been showing up all over the place on different draft boards, and for good reason: it’s quite hard to get a grasp of his true upside.

Physically gifted and willing to use it, Lindstrom is incredibly disruptive along the boards, competes hard on every puck, and does a lot of little things right. From his tendency to cut to the middle off the rush, to his hard back-checks, to his ability to take each puck in stride without needing to slow down, there are many details of his game that scream ”NHL”. On top of that, his skating is polished and he has no problem carrying his large frame on 200 feet, with or without the puck. Early on, we probably would have ranked his playmaking as a below-average tool. However, we’ve seen incremental growth in his ability to draw pressure in and dish the puck through it, to go along with the refined goal-scoring and stickhandling mechanics. His ranking at 8th overall on our early board is a bet on that incremental growth continuing, and if it does, Lindstrom could develop into something special. Hadi Kalakeche (November rankings: 8th overall)