Hurricanes Forward Elias Lindholm is Proving His Doubters Wrong
Elias Lindholm has put together a stellar last month of hockey for the Carolina Hurricanes, showing everyone how good he can really be.
How Swede it must be to be Elias Lindholm right now? The 22 year old is playing the best hockey of his career. Over the past 2 months, Lindholm has become the Carolina Hurricanes most consistent offensive player. Considering how his season began, it has been a total reversal. He has proven himself to be a vital player for this Canes team.
I will be the first admit, I jumped off the Elias Lindholm bandwagon early in the season. I even wrote what now is a very unfair editorial about the former 1st rounder. Shame on me for even thinking of comparing him to the likes of Zach Boychuk or Ryan Murphy. I am so glad I was wrong.
Rather than being a ‘bust’, Lindholm has broken out in a big way these past two months. Over the last 21 games, Lindy has a stellar 19 points, making him by far the most productive Hurricane over that time. It is now a common occurrence for Lindholm to be the key catalyst in the attacking zone. Even in yesterday’s poor team 5 on 5 offensive effort, Lindholm noticeably set up many excellent scoring chances.
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This season has seen Lindholm re-identify himself as a player as well. Despite being labelled as a pass first player as a prospect, Lindy found success early in his career scoring goals. This quality in his game started to fade away last season and now it looks to be almost all gone. That’s not a bad thing though. Lindholm’s new role as set up man has allowed him to really find his niche in the league. He is among the leaguest best in primary assist per 60 minutes this season, putting him on par with Evgeni Malkin and Nicklas Backstrom.
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Now that he has found his role offensively, it has helped Lindholm play within the Canes defensive structure a whole lot better. He had a rough night versus Calgary in terms of plus/minus, but his trend over these two months has been very positive. In this 21 game stretch, Lindholm is a -1. Considering he was a -8 before that and the Canes team defense has been a thorn in their side the last month, that’s pretty decent defensive work from Lindholm.
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It will be interesting to see how long Lindholm can keep it up. He has had hot runs before, but none this long. Maybe he has turned a corner in his still young career? Hopefully he has. But at the very least, Lindholm has proven his doubters (me especially) very wrong.