I don't think I have ever been vocally really tough on Lindholm, but I will admit that I was on the fence about if he'd ever amount to anything more than a middle six forward. I would have met news of him being traded with a guy like Murphy at the deadline with a relative shrug if it brought back something dynamic. I'm happy to have been wrong and hope that this is just the beginning for him. Swedish players seem to take a bit longer for whatever reason to acclimate. There have been conversations around most of the really good ones about not meeting expectations early in their careers. I remember when a lot of people thought the Sedin twins were busts. Hedman. Naslund. Zibanejad. Larsson. I feel like whatever culture shift that has happened in other big hockey nations that makes 18-20 year old hockey players more prepared for the NHL than they were 15 years ago never translated there. When I first started watching hockey, even the elite prospects weren't expected to contribute much of anything in their D1 seasons. People would start to get a little squirmy if it carried over into the D2 season, but even then patience was the rule. Now you have guys coming into the league and just throwing the doors wide open and announcing their arrival. It's an interesting case study. I remember baby deer legs Eric Staal and just hoping against hope that nobody would break him in half at 18. 31 points that year and most of us were THRILLED with that season from him. Deployment was so different in those days. Rookies didn't play the powerplay as a rule. Just a really strange transition to present when you see teams handing the keys over and naming players under 20 as captain and giving them all the icetime they can physically handle. But as it pertains to Lindholm, I feel like he's been on the more traditional developmental track by comparison. It's good to see the year 4 breakout, but it does still concern me that he hasn't been the best about starting the year on time. That will have to change if he's going to break into the next tier. It's fun when you get to watch guys figure it out and start to put it all together in terms of how they need to approach the game, the maturity it takes to be disciplined enough off the ice to maximize minutes, and what style they need to employ to be the best version of themselves. All signs point towards this being more than a hot streak for Lindholm and that's the best news we've gotten all season save the emergence of Slavin as a hockey deity. One thing that always bothered me about Lindholm as well was the visible lack of self-belief that would set in when the results weren't coming and I think that's another maturity issue he's starting to overcome. He would exacerbate his cold streaks by disengaging from the game and two bad games would roll into 10 underwhelming ones. But when he's rolling and he knows it, he starts to take more chances and he starts to play with that edge that we're seeing right now. That confidence in his ability is part of what makes him good. He needs to find a way to keep that feeling even when the pendulum swings back to not being awarded results for it.
