How NHL Draft prospect Mats Lindgren Jr. built a unique playing style - The Athletic

2022-05-28 11:48:04 By : Mr. Bruce Huang

In his years working in the WHL, first as a scout with the Edmonton Oil Kings and then as director of player personnel for the Kamloops Blazers, Robbie Sandland has never seen a hockey player, nor met a kid, anything like Mats Lindgren.

When he’s asked about Lindgren, a likely second-round pick in the 2022 NHL Draft, the first word that comes to mind is “relentless.”

“I’ve never seen a kid work like this. His work ethic is second to none,” Sandland said on a recent phone call. “He’s a special kid. As a person, he’s a very, very humble kid. He’s soft-spoken and very polite. He’s a rink rat. And everything he talks about is hockey-related. He’s a self-starter. He’s on the ice more than other kids in the summers and any extra ice he can get in season, you have to basically kick him off the ice after practice. He’s always working on his game. He’s just so driven. He wants it.”

If you ask others who’ve been around Lindgren about what made him that way, they all come to the same conclusion for different reasons.

That’s because to understand Lindgren the hockey prospect is to understand the singular journey that has shaped him into a kid and player whose influences are diverse and numbered.

What makes him different than most other players is the path he has travelled.

Lindgren’s story technically starts in Vancouver, but his memories begin in Skelleftea, Sweden, a city of roughly 70,000 people known for its gold mining, its hockey team, and its location in Sweden’s northern Västerbotten County, just a few miles inland from the sea of Bothnian Bay.

He was born in North Vancouver in the summer of 2004, a year after his father, Mats Lindgren Sr., a 1993 first-round pick of the Winnipeg Jets, finished his seven-year, 411-game NHL career. It was while playing with the Canucks that Mats Sr. met and married Vannessa (who is from Vancouver).

But just a couple of months after Mats Jr. was born, they moved, returning to Skelleftea, Mats Sr.’s hometown and the place where his pro hockey career began, when Mats Sr. was hired as an assistant coach with the local pro team (which he helped coach to promotion out of the second-tier HockeyAllsvenskan and into the SHL).

After coaching for five seasons with Skelleftea, the Lindgrens (whose family had expanded to four after Mats Sr. and Vannessa had their second child, Gabriella, in 2006) moved again, travelling south to the suburbs of Stockholm when Mats Sr. was hired on as an assistant coach with AIK, located in Solna, just outside the Swedish capital.

Though Mats Jr. started playing hockey in Skelleftea, his formative years were in Stockholm as he began what his dad calls the “Swedish hockey curriculum,” with its focus on building a foundation of skating and skills.

Mats Jr. took to Sweden’s individual development model like a natural, often skating with the pro team’s coaches when there was free ice, and quickly became one of the top young players in Sweden’s biggest hockey hub. Gabriella took to her own sport, tennis, with equal aptitude too. So much so on both fronts that by the time Mats Jr. was 11 and Gabriella was 9, the Lindgrens decided to move for a third time to return to Vancouver in 2015 so that the kids could both pursue their sports to the fullest in North America.

Once he got integrated into Canada’s much different development model, Mats Jr. never let go of his Swedish roots, working closely with his dad and the skills and skating business, Lindgren Elite Hockey, he established in Vancouver (built upon Swedish development principles).

“My dad wanted to keep (the Swedish-style training) going because it’s different over here and it’s not as much skill, it’s more speed and team practices,” Mats Jr. explained.

When Mats Jr. quickly established himself as one of the top players in and around Vancouver’s minor hockey circuit (like he had in Stockholm), he was enrolled at the BWC Academy in Burnaby, B.C. At the academy, Mats Jr. would go to class from 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. and then join his dad on the ice for two-hour sessions (five days a week for three years) at 1:30 p.m.

In that time, he became obsessive about the work he was doing with his dad and felt his game take off. In time, some of his classmates and teammates began working their way into the Mats’ private skates, as Sr. worked with Jr. on his edges, stickhandling and deception to teach him things that his Canadian coaches weren’t.

“He has always had an interest in skating and edgework and that makes it a lot easier to teach. And we made sure we had fun along the way but he was building a strong platform when it comes to skating. One of the things that he has always had is the passion to play hockey and want to learn. His work ethic has just always been off the charts,” Mats Sr. said.

When he wasn’t working with his dad to hone those tools, he was working with other unconventional local teachers, too, first with Canadian ice dancer Victor Kraatz (a three-time Olympian and 10-time national champion Mats Sr. had met at Vancouver’s North Shore Skating Club) and then, after Kraatz moved to Finland, with Barb Aidelbaum (a skating coach of 40-plus years who has worked with hundreds of NHL players).

Mats Jr. has spent the last three summers doing morning skates with his dad and afternoon ones with Aidelbaum, the two sharing notes in between (Aidelbaum insists Mats Sr. has “a lot to contribute”).

“We’ve found the secret sauce with Matsy,” Aidelbaum said. “And he thinks very globally. He clearly watches a lot of international hockey and NHL hockey with his dad and they determine what the gaps are in certain players and discuss it at a very high level. And the big thing with him is his burning desire to be an NHL player. He always looks at the big picture and strives for that. That’s what’s unique about Matsy Lindgren.”

Last offseason, Mats Jr. then took the unique foundation he had as a skater a step further when he became one of kinesiologist Rob Williams’ understudies. Williams, a movement coach of 30-plus years who trains and teaches athletes across a wide range of sports (and has worked with NHLers like Mat Barzal, Andrew Cogliano and Kent Johnson) about body connectivity, became a fast fan of Mats Jr.’s in their one-on-one sessions.

Mats Jr. became the kind of client who’d text Williams apologizing when he’d be three minutes late to the field because the Uber he’d taken to get there took a wrong turn. Where many of his hockey-playing clients would stop during a drill when they were struggling, Mats Jr. always finished his through.

“He’s the highest quality person that you’ll meet. He’s probably one of my favourite athletes ever,” Williams said after just one summer with him. “I honestly can’t say enough good things. He responds in the right ways, he’s positive, he’s ridiculously professional for his age. He’s a joy to work with. I really, really like the kid.”

Mats Jr. also became a sponge, soaking up pointers Williams would give him on how best to propel, decelerate and leverage his body.

“We all play different sports but the law of physics and the forces that we need to create in our body are kind of the same. And it doesn’t make sense to them until you get them on a field, you ask them to do a movement, and then you can show them where all of the energy leaks are and where they drift. Kids are so hyper-focused on their skates and sticks that nothing is being done with the middle of their body,” Williams said. “He’s ahead of the curve because he wants to dive deeper into it in order to be quicker and more explosive on the ice. And it jives with what Mats Sr. teaches. There’s an appreciation from Mats Sr. for the fact that there’s a better way to move than how most hockey players are coached to move.”

The first time agent Will Kawam put eyes on Mats Jr., it was almost by chance.

Kawam, an agent with Orr Hockey Group, had told his colleagues in a meeting that he’d reach out to contacts in Western Canada about a potential 2004-born target.

When he did, he kept hearing the same name.

Mats Lindgren. Mats Lindgren. Mats Lindgren.

When he’d heard it enough times, he got on the online streaming service Hockey TV, watched four of his games in a row one afternoon, and then immediately reached out to the family and booked a flight to Vancouver two weeks later to recruit him.

In that first video review, Kawam was immediately struck by how differently Mats Jr. moved on the ice.

“The first thing that everybody sees is the skating and the poise. Up until that point in my career, I had really never seen edgework like that. The way he’s just so balanced on his skates, he’s elusive, he can turn on a dime, he escapes pressure. I was just enamoured by it,” Kawam said. “And then you start to pair that with his hockey sense, and how he doesn’t panic under pressure. It doesn’t matter if there’s a guy that is 6-foot-2 barrelling down on him, it’s almost like that player is invisible and he’s just reading right through the player and seeing his options.”

In their first meeting in Vancouver, Kawam also picked up on the same attributes of drive and competitiveness that others would later identify.

“This year in Kamloops, they’ve had to tell him ‘we don’t want to buy you another pair of hockey skates’ because he breaks them down so quickly staying on the ice for an extra hour and a half each and every day,” Kawam said. “He’s just insane like that.”

Enamoured by Mats Jr., Kawam made the pitch to his colleagues and they settled on him as their new target for the 2004 age group.

“It was just a no-brainer for us,” Kawam said. “It was clear that no matter what we put in front of this kid, he was going to find a way to come out on top.”

It was also a no-brainer for the Blazers to draft him with the No. 9 pick in the 2019 WHL Bantam Draft.

Who he was going to represent internationally, however, was a more difficult decision.

That one came in his post-WHL draft campaign. As he played to 27 points in 33 games as a 15-year-old on BWC’s under-18 team and played his allowable WHL games as an underager, Mats Jr. was invited to play for Canada at the 2020 Youth Olympics in Switzerland.

After living in Canada for four and a half years, knowing that he would likely call it home for the rest of his life due to the career path he was on, and feeling more and more comfortable with his English, Mats Jr. chose to represent Canada as a player internationally — a  choice which would be binding for the remainder of his career because it was an IIHF-sanctioned event — in part because the Swedes weren’t participating in the tournament. 

“It was a really difficult decision for Matsy. If you’d asked him if he’s Swedish or Canadian, he would have said Swedish. So Team Canada put their sales pitch in and we sat down and put it all together and walked through the pros and cons,” Kawam said. “I don’t think he wanted to pass up the opportunity to represent Canada at the Youth Olympic Games.”

Last year, with the WHL slow to get back up and running for what should have been his rookie season, he then made another difficult choice when he went south to play for the Chicago Cougars in the USPHL’s Premier Division. With the Cougars, he posted 11 points in 10 games before returning for the WHL’s belated shortened season, where he posted 10 points in 22 games as a 16-year-old (second among all under-17 defencemen).

On the back of that strong but brief first season in the WHL, NHL Central Scouting gave Mats Jr. a “B” rating (which indicates a second- or third-round candidate) in their fall players to watch list. In his return to Kamloops though, staff quickly felt like he was playing at a first-round level.

“The reason I’m such a big believer in him is because his skill set, his foundation, the way he plays the game, it’s all translatable to the NHL, especially the way that it’s played now,” Sandland said. “I refer to him as a breakout machine. Just how elusive he is, how he can process the game under pressure. He invites pressure really well and then he opens up time and space for his linemates. He controls the game. His zone exits, the way he transitions the game, I don’t have the data in front of me but I’d put it up against anybody. Like it’s unbelievable.”

That play crescendoed into NHL Central Scouting’s January midterm list (when they slotted him 30th among North American skaters) and then the March CHL/NHL Top Prospects Game. In Kitchener for the event, he performed well in the league’s combine testing, finishing with the third-fastest time in its 30-metre backwards skate with a puck. Then scouts spoke of him as a standout for his poise on the big stage in a winning effort with Team White.

“You could tell the guys that were coming unhinged or it was too big a moment for them, whereas he thrives in that,” Sandland said. “As the pace elevates, his game elevates. He can think and process the game at a high pace.”

By year’s end, the 5-foot-11, 173-pound defenceman — who doesn’t turn 18 until August 28, making him one of the youngest players in the 2022 class — had put together one of the most productive age-adjusted seasons at his position in the CHL, posting 44 points and a plus-25 rating in 68 games while playing more than 22 minutes a game on a 48-17-3 Blazers team.

Leaguewide, his 44 points ranked third among all under-18 defencemen behind only first-round locks Denton Mateychuk and Kevin Korchinski. Of those 44 points, 28 of them were scored at five-on-five, for a 0.41 five-on-five points-per-game clip that ranks ahead of more than a dozen recent first-round defencemen out of the CHL, including names like Henri Jokiharju, Mikhail Sergachev and Jakob Chychrun — and comparably to others like Thomas Chabot (0.42), Jamie Drysdale (0.43) and Ivan Provorov (0.43).

When Aidelbaum went to see him play in early May when the Blazers were in Vancouver to play the Giants in the WHL playoffs, that success came as no surprise to her.

“Everything that he does in his running shoes in the dryland setting, he can do in his skates on the ice. And that’s always the goal,” Aidelbaum said. “He’s very agile. He can go forwards, backwards, sideways, twists, turns. He’s got good edges. And he can rotate, which means he can snap his hips around in the turn. And rotation is a huge thing for a defenceman who is always going forwards, backwards, forwards, backwards.”

Despite his strong play down the stretch and into Kamloops’ playoff run, though, his NHL Central Scouting ranking actually dropped from 30th to 47th among North American skaters on their final list.

Sandland thinks that sells him short. So does Williams, who has told scouts as much whenever they’ve called to ask about him this year.

“At this point, he’s very physically underdeveloped. It’s one thing to be a late birthday and some kids have a full-grown beard. He’s still a young man,” Sandland said. “When he packs on what some of his peers have now, his game’s going to go through the roof.”

When Mats Jr. is asked about his game and his hockey story, he talks about both through their ties to his two homes.

He hasn’t been able to get back to his first home in Sweden these last couple of years due to the pandemic, but when his season finishes in Kamloops and he gets through his draft weekend in Montreal, the Lindgrens have plans to return to their oceanside summer house up north to visit with grandparents and cousins.

“I’ve only been able to go back once since I moved here. It has been tough. So I’m really excited to go back,” Mats Jr. said.

At home in Vancouver, though he speaks English with his mom, the most common language spoken at the Lindgren residence remains Swedish. That’s what he, his sister, and his dad all talk (and they credit Vannessa for knowing it “really well” too).

This year, the Lindgrens have put down roots in a third country, too. While Mats Sr. runs Lindgren Elite Hockey in Vancouver and Mats Jr. plays in Kamloops, Vannessa and Gabriella, who is now 15, have moved to the United States to train at a tennis academy in Florida while Gabriella tries to climb the ITF junior world rankings. After representing Tennis Canada for several years, Gabriella now wears Sweden’s flag.

But Mats Jr. says he has no regrets about making the opposite decision.

He also calls his little sister the real athlete of the family, something that comes as no surprise to his dad.

“Matsy is first of all a very humble kid. And we care about each other in the family. If you were to ask Gabriella, she’d say the same thing about her brother. And she has the same attitudes as Matsy as far as the passion and dreaming high but also being willing to put in the time. So we want to give her that opportunity,” Mats Sr. said. “And in the meantime, I’m working here by myself. Those are the sacrifices that we have to do as a family. And sometimes it gets lonely when Mats is away with hockey and they’re away with tennis, but I wouldn’t like it any other way and any time you have a kid with that passion, it gives you a lot too.”

During the pandemic, Mats Jr. finally got to see his dad play when Sportsnet rebroadcasted one of his old games on TV. When the entire family sat down to watch it together, Mats Sr. caught himself reminiscing about how much the game has changed since his day, and how much better Mats Jr. fits its next evolution than his checking game as a 6-foot-2, 200-plus forward ever would have.

“He was a very different player than me,” Mats Jr. said. “I’m an offensive defenceman. I love to use my skating. I love to create. I think I use my vision really well. I think I make the players around me better when I’m at my best, especially in the O-zone when I’m creating stuff and using my deception.”

There have been times this year when Mats Sr. has admitted he hasn’t, for the first time in his life, had advice for his son. He can’t compare their draft years, because so much has changed in the three decades since his.

He can’t compare who he was at 17 to Mats Jr. either, because Mats Jr. just seems to have it figured out in a way that he didn’t at that age.

And that’s what he’s most proud of.

When he talks about his son, he doesn’t talk about his skills as a hockey player — even though he knows them better than anyone from their countless hours spent on the ice together — but of the person he’s become.

“He’s a really fun, caring young man. He’s a great kid. He really is,” Mats Sr. said. “It’s fun being a fan from the sideline for sure.”

With reporting in Kitchener, Ont.

(Photos: Luke Durda / CHL Images)