Canucks Select C/RW Kole Lind 33rd Overall
By Jeremy Davis
6 years agoThe second day is underway and the Canucks have made the first of their two second round selections, grabbing Kole Lind of the Kelowna Rockets.
This is another solid selection by Jim Benning and his crew. Lind, who played both centre and the wing this season, scored 30 goals and 87 points in 70 games. We had him 37th overall, but 33rd is not a reach by any stretch, as many services had him in the bottom third of the first round. Lind has good acceleration and top end speed, and playmaking and hockey IQ are considered strengths. From HockeyProspect.com’s Black Book:
Kole possesses an excellent ability to shoot pucks from one-timers to snap shots, has elite ability to show consistent accuracy and pick some very small spaces off the rush, especially on the short side and around the top end of the net. Lind possesses a high hockey IQ making some plays that are a result of consistently thinking ahead, quite adept at one-touch passes in a Tic-Tac-Toe manner when he holds pucks for a fraction of a second and can really turn defences around.His defensive game has been strong in most viewings and is a good example of his overall compete level, as he tends to not turn picks over and shows a lot of drive to retrieve pucks after making a mistake. He consistently hustles on the back check and remains engaged physically even if his offensive game isn’t clicking from the get go.
From a statistical perspective, Lind shows quite well, with an expected likelihood of success of 41%, with Shane Doan, Ryan Smyth, Ray Ferraro, and Rob Niedermeyer being his most successful comparables.
Lind stayed on the right side of the goals ledger this season, with the Rockets scoring a 64.4% share of the goals while Lind was on the ice. While the Rockets were a solid team in this regard to begin with, Lind still has a GF%rel of +10.6%. Lind also performs well in SEAL adjusted scoring, who gets a nice boost from his situational scoring despite a relatively early birthday for this draft.
At first blush, this is a very likable picks by the Canucks, and good value at 33.
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