Vancouver Canucks prospect profile: Forward Kole Lind

Kole Lind often gets overlooked when looking at the Vancouver Canucks prospects, but that should change soon.

This year was a great year for the Vancouver Canucks to show off some of their prospects with Elias Pettersson, Adam Gaudette, and Thatcher Demko all playing in the NHL. Pettersson was clearing the star of the team this year, putting up 66 points in 71 games this year and can’t wait to see what he will be able to do once he fills in some more.

Gaudette had a tougher time sticking with the Canucks for some of this season, playing back and forth between the Canucks and the Utica Comets. He put up 12 points in 56 games, but every time he got called up to the Canucks he looked better. Gaudette has earned that third line center position for next year.

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Thatcher Demko has had lots of time to develop in Utica and needed to be tested in the big club this year. He had four wins this year with a save percentage of .913 in the nine games he played. He would have had more starts if it wasn’t for some injury issues throughout the season.

Near the end of the season, Zack MacEwen, who played just 4 games but had an assist in one of the games, and Quinn Hughes, who was picked seventh at the 2018 draft and should be a cornerstone piece for the Canucks defense.

Hughes had three assists in five games and showed what great vision and ability he has to make a play out of nothing. With the Canucks heading in the right direction and becoming closer to a playoff contender I wanted to take a closer look at some of the Canucks prospects.

The first person on my list was Kole Lind. He was drafted in the second round of the 2017 draft year. Lind is a 6’1″ right wing who weighs 185 pounds. The year after the Canucks drafted him was his final year in the WHL where he put up 95 points ( 39G,56A) for the Kelowna Rockets, which put some pressure on him to do well this past year with the Utica Comets.

I believe that some fans were disappointed with the 17 points(5G,12A) he put up in 51 games and was a -10 on the season. To some, this could be a reason to hit the panic button, but looking into Lind’s past, his first year in every new league was always his weakest.

In his first season in the SMHL league he put up 37 points(21G,16A) but the following year he put up 79 points (45 goals,34 assists) in the same amount of games. The same could be said in his first WHL season where he had 41 points(14 goals, 27 assists) in 70 games and then in his draft year, he put up 87 points (30 goals, 57 assists) in the same amount of games.

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For most players, the sophomore year is usually you see a dip in production. But with Lind, it’s like it has the opposite effect. The other thing that really sticks out is how he always seems to be able to double his goals, which is a tough task especially going from 14 to 30.

This tells me that either he was fire the puck more often, he was finding a way to create space to get the shot that he wants, he was shooting from the tougher spots to be on the ice, or his shot was drastically improving every year and maybe it was a combination of all these.

Now, maybe I’m being too optimistic with this, but I believe Lind could end up with 20 to 25 goals next year with about 40-45 points. In the first half of this season, he did manage to get three assists and only managed to shoot the puck 12 times and was a healthy scratch for more than a few games.

Lind found himself in a bottom six role in the second half. He had five goals and nine assists. Lind had 4 times as many shots, having over 50 of them, and in the games from January forward I only found five games in which he didn’t record a shot.

That is probably the more exciting news because he started to find a way to get time and space to release his shot. Another reason I think he can get more goals in simple by his playing time. With some veteran players leaving the Comets there could be a spot for him to win in the top-six roles which would have him in more offensive roles.

I also believe that Lind could be a contributor on the second power-play unit for the comets with what i think is one of his strongest assets like mentioned above, is his shot. The last thing I think will help contribute to seeing his goals going up is his ability to adapt. He has done it in his second season no matter what league he was in and has always come out with better numbers.

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I know that he might not be the next Canuck prospect we see but I do think he could be someone who gets a chance at some point next season. I am also working on similar stories for Jett Woo, Olli Joulevi, Tyler Madden and Jack Rathbone. If there are any Canuck prospects that you would like to know more about that I haven’t mentioned let me know in the comments below. All stats were found on eliteprospects.com.

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