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The Shaunavon Shift Disturber: My Mid-Season Chat With Utica Comets Forward Kole Lind
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Photo credit: Cory Hergott
Cory Hergott
Jan 7, 2020, 11:00 ESTUpdated: Jan 6, 2020, 21:43 EST
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10 Minutes With Kole Lind
This season, thanks to some help from Joe Roberts, (@RobertsOnTheMic) I have been able to bring some short chats with Utica Comets players to our readers. This is something that I have been wanting to do since I started writing for CanucksArmy, so I really appreciate the help from Joe.
This will be the third installment in this series, as I have spoken with defenders Guillaume Brisebois and Brogan Rafferty already and will add links to those articles below.
Guillaume Brisebois
Brogan Rafferty
“Why Isn’t Anyone Taking Kole Lind?”
Vancouver Canucks General Manager Jim Benning has left us with many memorable quotes since taking the helm, but this could end up being one of his best, especially if Kole Lind has anything to say about it.
Gallons of digital ink has been used up to write about how last year didn’t go the way many had hoped it would for Lind in his rookie campaign. There were a few healthy scratches, a lengthy injury absence, and an adjustment period to the pro level that all conspired against Kole in his rookie year.
Kole got into 51 games last season and scored five goals and 12 assists, giving him 17 points on the year. Things have gone a little better for him this year as he is coming off of a 13-game December that saw him pick up six goals and six helpers to give him 12 points for his efforts, nearly matching last season’s output in far fewer games. He’s up to 29 points in 36 games this season. That seems like the young man is developing his offensive game quite nicely.
The thing is, Kole is doing some nice work away from the puck this season as well. He is noticeably more aggressive in terms of taking away time and space from opponents. He is closing gaps more quickly on opposing defenders in his own end and he forechecks like a demon.
I asked Kole what the biggest difference has been for him this year on that side of things.
“I think the biggest difference is knowing what to expect in my second year. Obviously, I struggled in my first year and I had to put in the work in the summer. It wasn’t just in the gym, there was a lot of stuff on the ice that I had to work on with my skating and obviously, when I came into camp this year and coming down to Utica, Coach was telling me that he was holding me accountable for a lot of things, so obviously, I wanted to pick up a bunch of different pieces of my game that I can hopefully translate one day to the NHL level.”
As mentioned earlier, Kole had some injury issues in his rookie season that saw him miss nearly all of November before coming back and starting to show some promise. That promise was stymied, somewhat, when he missed more time in the second half with another injury.
This year, however, the Comets have played 36 games, (at the time of this writing) and Kole has played in every one of them. Being healthy, along with his production, has allowed Kole to stay in the lineup and earn more trust from his coaching staff. That goes a long way in building confidence for a young player, and let’s not forget, Kole just turned 21 in October.
I was curious if there was something from Kole’s offseason training that has helped him stay healthy this year.
“I don’t know if there’s anything you can say about the luck with that. It was kind of an unlucky year for me last year with injuries and not playing as well as I expected to. Lots of my years in Kelowna, I was able to play most of the games every year. I try to stay in as much as I can, and not get injured, but obviously you get unlucky every once in a while like I did last season. 
Obviously, I’m off to the kind of start that I want this year.”
I have seen every game that Kole has played at the pro level and I have seen some very nice growth since last season. I spoke above about Kole taking away time and space from opponents more often this year and I mentioned to Kole how often it stands out to me when he’s forcing turnovers in all three zones on the regular and wondered if that was a product of him being at the point where it is less about learning a new league for him now, and more about fine-tuning the details in his game.
“Yeah… totally! Like I said, with seeing it all twice, I know what to expect and a big thing about playing with the puck in the offensive zone is getting on the forecheck and getting the puck back. So that’s something that I’ve obviously keyed in on this year and I took a lot of steps with that last year as well.”
Anybody who watched Lind’s junior career with Kelowna will tell you that Kole is at his best when he is being a bit of a jerk on the ice… a “shift disturber”, if you will.
We didn’t get to see a lot of that in his rookie season as Kole was trying to navigate his new work environment that now consisted of grown men in their 30’s with families to feed and are more or less the size of your average ’56 Buick, rather than babyfaced teens whose biggest concern is which zit cream to use and whether or not they can buy the new accessory pack for their latest video game.
That isn’t the case this season as Kole seems to thrive in post-whistle scrums, where he can trash talk and get under the skin of his opponents. His after the whistle antics remind me of a certain former Canucks forward who was just added to the Ring of Honour in Vancouver.
Kole’s best games have been the ones where he rides that line of annoying the ever-loving bleep out of his opponents without crossing the line and heading off to the box as well. We have seen Kole jamming his glove into the yap of opposing players after whistles, jawing at them, poking them and generally pissing them off.
I asked Kole if playing on that edge helps him stay engaged in games and if he sees it as being as big a part of his game as I do.
“Yeah… that is a HUGE part of my game. Obviously, in junior, I did a lot of the same stuff, kind of mixing it up in between the whistles and obviously, last year not as much. But this year it’s coming back a little. 
That’s a HUGE part of my game, just keeping me in the game, and you know, getting the rivalries with guys and stuff just makes you want to play the game that much more, produce and be a better player. 
So that’s a huge part of my game for sure.”
Kole is having a good season, but there is always room for improvement. I wanted to know if there were any specific areas of his game that Kole wanted to target in order to take his game to the next level.
“I don’t know if there’s one specific thing. I think a bigger thing that I need to work on is just shooting the puck more. I think there are some times where I look to pass first instead of shooting the puck… and just being a little more gritty around the net and trying to bury those rebounds. Obviously, I’ve had success with doing that this year and I want to continue that as well.”
Up until this point, we had only discussed how things have been for Kole on the ice this season, but I am always curious about what life is like away from the rink for these young players. It can be a part of the shift from junior to pro that players can have troubles with and it can have an effect on what happens on the ice at times.
“It’s good… it’s a lot better. Obviously, the team is winning a lot and the guys are a great group. We have a lot of fun outside of the games too, so it’s been a huge part this year, not only for my success but the team’s success as well.”
Every time that I get the opportunity to speak with a Comets player, I hear similar comments to what Kole said above. This is a pretty tightly knit group of players who are growing together as they learn the pro game. They won’t all make it as fulltime Vancouver Canucks, but you sure get the feeling that those who do will have some ready-made chemistry/comradery with their teammates. These will be players who will go through walls for each other.
I always like to end my interviews/chats with a couple of “fun” questions, so I started by asking Kole about his number. When he first joined the team at the end of his final junior season, he got into six regular-season games for the Comets and was wearing the number 37. Last year, he switched to number 13, so I asked him if there was any significance to either number for him.
“Not really with 37… that was kind of just given to me when I came here… 13 is the number that I wore in my younger days through Bantam and the younger stuff. My whole family wears that number, so that’s kind of been our thing with my siblings and my dad, and basically, my whole family.”
I know that players will often tell us that they don’t worry about or keep track of personal statistics, but I couldn’t help but bring up the fact that Kole is currently on pace for a 61-point season and that the single-season record for points in a Comets uniform is 62, (Pascal Pelletier in 2013/14 and Reid Boucher last year) and wondered how Kole felt about that.
“Yeah, that would be really cool. Obviously we have a lot of skilled players who will put up big numbers this year, but to be up there with those guys is obviously a huge honour and hopefully,I can get close to those numbers for sure.”
My last question for Kole was based on the fact that the AHL All-Star is right around the corner and I thought it would be fun to finish with finding out who Kole would pick as individual winners if the Comets tried their hands at the skills competition.
For the most part, I had a good idea whose names he would say when asked, but it was a fun exercise, none the less.
Shooting Accuracy
“Ah… I think that’s a pretty easy one. You’d have to go with Reid Boucher… obviously. He’s one of the best shooters in the league.”
I followed up by asking how it is possible for Boucher to have such an accurate shot when it is well known that his hockey stick of choice has pretty much the same consistency as a wet noodle.
“Yeah, haha, I don’t know. I guess he’s just kind of used to it. I think it’s kind of just a preference for flex and stuff. Obviously he’s got a really accurate shot and a really quick release too, so he can get it off quickly from either side and surprise the goalie.”
Hardest Shot
“Oh… honestly, I don’t know… Boosh would probably be up there. There would probably be a couple of D… I think Sautsie would be close up there too. He has a pretty hard shot. I don’t know… probably one of those two, to be honest with you.”
Fastest Skater
“Yeah… Justin Bailey, for sure, haha. I don’t know if there’s anyone to even compare to him. He’s definitely the quickest man on the team, for sure.”
Rapid-Fire Relay
Finally, I asked Kole if he were taking part in the rapid-fire relay, which of his teammates he would want to have dishing the puck to him.
“There’s three that stand out to me. I think we’d go with Brogan Rafferty, Sven Baertschi, and Nikolay Goldobin. They’re all really good passers and they find guy’s tape and find guys open in a game, so those would be three of the top for me… for sure.”
I hope that you enjoyed today’s chat with Kole Lind. We plan to keep doing these chats as the season goes on. If there is a player that you’d like to hear from and a specific question that you’d like answered, let me know in the comments section and I will see what I can do.

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