Ben Kindel picked up votes and finished ninth in the Calder voting. The award was announced early and handed to the unanimous winner, Matthew Schaefer live on national television.
Considering Kindel in his draft+1 wasn’t even expected to be in the NHL until his training camp performance forced his way into the picture, it’s a nice little recognition to pickup votes. It would have required a lot more points to standout as a top-3 choice in the voting but doesn’t take anything away from the bright future that Kindel has.
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While Kindel was stacked up against all rookies for this voting, for added nuance it helps to consider what playing as an 18-year old in the NHL might mean for the future. Via Sportsreference.com we looked at 18-year old forwards since 2005-06, taking out the ringers of this category like first overall picks like Sidney Crosby (102 points), Nathan MacKinnon (63), Macklin Celebrini (63) and Connor Bedard (61) who belong a notch above the ’common’ type of performers at this incredibly young age.
Kindel had the sixth most points of this group, and would rank 12th when including all age-18 forwards. Of this list, only Cole Silinger (picked 12th), Zach Benson (13th), David Pastrnak (25th) and Ryan O’Reilly (33rd) were lower draft picks in their respective drafts than Kindel was, which speaks to the rarity of a forward outside of the top-10 producing points as an 18-year old. In the last 20 years most of the draft+1 forwards are going to be top-10 picks, only a very select handful are going to be in the sample.
This chart can be useful to show areas of growth. There was once a world where Pastranak, a future 60-goal scorer, scored 10 goals in a season (albeit, in 46 games since he spent time in the AHL that season). Jack Hughes, Andrei Svechknikov, Steven Stamkos, Valeri Nichushkin, Ryan O’Reilly and Aleksander Barkov weren’t always the point-producing monsters that they turned into during their first season. There still can be a lot of growth and development for a young player that gets to the NHL on an accelerated path. What you see today isn’t the finished product, plenty of players have doubled, tripled or expanded their production to even greater heights.
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Of course, on the flip side the list shows success is not guaranteed by getting to this point either. Players in this sample like Jesper Kotkaniemi, Cole Silinger and Alex Galchenyuk had wonderful rookie seasons that didn’t turn into tremendously impactful careers. Kindel’s age-18 sample doesn’t point him straight to the top, but it’s a good grouping of players to work his way into after being the 11th pick of the draft (that even many observers and experts thought was a reach on draft night, no less).
The Penguins have a lot of reason to be excited about Kindel moving forward. One reason he stuck in the NHL, beyond counting stats, was displaying a good work rate and poise away from the puck. He played center all season and was a boost to the team. The next step should come shortly to integrate him into a scoring line and an increased role on the power play so that he can keep developing his offensive game and hopefully get on the path of some of the other 18-year old NHLers who have gone onto become key players on their teams.
The results of Calder race show that Kindel still has a ways to go in that department, but it’s also worth emphasizing and remembering the rare and impressive accomplishment of sticking in the NHL and having a solid season at such a young age.
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