That just is not true as it is high end puck skill and IQ that separate the Ellers from the Malkins. Big guys that can skate are common in the bottom six of most teams and you don't draft players without high end puck skills in the top 5.
His hands may prove to be better than I have witnessed as well as his IQ but from my limited viewings he has not impressed me with his vision or with his hands. I am not saying he has stone hands just that they do not appear to be anything special. He looks a lot more like a player living off of his size/skating tools and that rarely translates to offensive production in the NHL.
He may very well be a future star and I may change my mind as I watch more of him but what I have seen so far is mostly a high floor prospect.
When it comes to stickhandling, at the NHL level less is more.
How often are defensemen getting beat through the legs or under the stick in the NHL?
How often are their ankles getting broken like you see every second shift in Junior?
There are a handful of players in the league who do this stuff with any regularity against NHL defensemen, and you just named one of them, a generational player in Malkin.
Suzuki doesn't, and he has probably top 10 hands in the league.
Galchenyuk is another who you would probably have defined as having elite hands as a prospect, but what does that amount to in the NHL when his feet aren't moving and defensemen aren't complete pylons?
Slaf has better dangles than Lindstom, but always looks like he's on the verge of losing control. That's not effective either. It takes him an extra half second to corral a loose puck, or move from a stickhandling/passing to shooting motion, which is resulting in him not being able to execute high level plays at the NHL level and getting his shots blocked.
Far more important than flash, is puck control and security. The puck is glued to Lindstom's stick. Whether he's accelerating, changing directions, fighting off a check, spinning off the wall, transitioning into a shooting motion, etc. That's 90% of what high level hands look like in the NHL.
On the topic of hockey sense, while I tend to value IQ above all - which is typically reflected in my rankings - there's a need to admit that some players aren't required to play by the same rules as others.
I wouldn't classify MacKinnon, Barzal, Cozens, Tage, or Kyle Connor as particularly intelligent players, they just have game warping tools. Eller never did.
It remains to be seen if Lindstrom falls in that category, and correctly evaluate his IQ for that matter. We'll see how he progresses throughout the season.
