How Hampus Lindholm is already transforming a stout Bruins D corps

You don’t need to be a hockey maven or an analytics whiz to appreciate Hampus Lindholm’s physical talents and the presence he carries when hopping over the boards.

Hell, before Lindholm even took to the ice for his first practice as a Bruin, Brad Marchand gave his seal of approval.

“What a good-looking guy,” Marchand joked on Thursday morning about his first impression of Boston's new defenseman. “Man he's got it all. He's like an Arnold-Schwarzenegger-type figure. But no, he's a really good guy. We're really excited to have him. Even just playing against him the little bit that we did this year, I didn't enjoy it.”

Lindholm’s tangible tools and his standing as a top-four workhorse are easy to glean. The 28-year-old blueliner has the frame (6-foot-4, 216 pounds) to gobble up minutes and taxing shifts night in and night out. His poise with the puck and booming slap shot are welcome additions to a Bruins offense that still ranks 17th in the league in goals scored per game.

But Boston did not relinquish a boatload of draft capital — and ink its trade-deadline prize to an eight-year contract extension before he even donned a black-and-gold sweater — to have Lindholm serve as just a minutes-eating regular on the blue line. 

The Bruins might only play the Anaheim Ducks sparingly each season, but Patrice Bergeron would be the first to tell you that a player like Lindholm is far more than just a big-boded pillar in the D-zone. 

"His skating — I think he closes really fast on guys defensively,” Bergeron said of his impressions of Lindholm as an opponent. “He doesn't work for no reason, meaning that he's always in good position. … What I remember playing against him was you couldn't really sustain pressure in their zone, because he's always finding a way to poke the puck out or break out or go back on the offense by making a smart play. And that's frustrating when you're playing against a guy like that.” 

The Tampa Bay Lightning likely share in Bergeron’s sentiments after Thursday night’s showdown at TD Garden.

Even though Lindholm’s baseline stats in his B’s debut were impressive in their own right (23:26 ice time, one assist), it was the minutiae — the unheralded parts of his game that are a bit tougher to quantify beyond just a regular scoresheet — that left the most sizable impression on Bruce Cassidy, and showcased just how Boston’s new top-four blueliner can make an already stingy D corps downright lethal against some high-octane offenses. 

On a Bruins' blue-line grouping already adept at moving the puck with authority and limiting time spent treading water in their own end, oftentimes the best defense can be a good offense. Cassidy has seen that plenty of times over the years with smaller bodies on the back end like Matt Grzelcyk and Torey Krug.

But a 6-foot-4 specimen like Lindholm? That type of talent doesn’t come around very often.

"I think he was actually maybe a better puck mover in small areas than I anticipated,” Cassidy noted. “Thinking more about the size, the mobility, the ability to close plays, get his shot through on the offensive blue line. But he made a lot of small-area plays on the breakout that are gonna benefit this hockey club. 

“Escape moves where he puts someone on his hip, strong enough to separate, hold on to a puck, bring another forechecker to him and bump it into the middle. He led some really nice breakouts tonight.  Did a really good job with that. … And that's the part where the argument about adding a D vs. a forward — when you get a defenseman like that that can start the attack, that's going to generate more offense for your team automatically.”

For all of the discourse involving the Bruins and their failed efforts to add another weapon up front, it was Lindholm’s puck-moving talents and first-pass recognition that orchestrated Boston’s first tally of the night in an eventual 3-2 statement win.  

What looked like a simple puck retrieval in Boston’s own end quickly turned into opportunity for Lindholm in the second period. Shielding the biscuit from Brandon Hagel’s stick check, Lindholm kept his head up and sent a lateral feed to Erik Haula in the slot. A second later, Haula’s bank pass off the boards sprung David Pastrnak for a breakaway bid against Andrei Vasilevskiy. 

A quick dangle or two. The puck slides to the backhand. Money. 1-1 game. 

“He was nasty. He was amazing,” Pastrnak said of Lindholm.

Lindholm nearly recorded his second helper of the night just a few minutes later, serving as the middle man in a tic-tac-toe passing sequence that ended with an attempt from Trent Frederic clanging off the post.

But Lindholm's ability to shield the puck, fight off forecheckers and then either orchestrate a counter-rush or carry the puck out of danger on his own is a game-changing talent not just limited to offensive generation.

Throughout Thursday’s win, the Lightning failed to land much of a punch against the Bruins with Lindholm thwarting their O-zone possessions — even on power-play bids for the two-time defending Stanley Cup champions.

Thursday represented the ideal trial-by-fire scenario that Cassidy was looking for when it came to testing the fortitude of his new super-pairing of Lindholm and Charlie McAvoy. Turns out, you put two puck-moving weapons and top-tier blueliners on the same pairing, and good things happen.  

In total, during the 12:37 of 5v5 ice time that the Lindholm-McAvoy pairing logged against Tampa, the Bruins held the edge in:

Shot attempts: 21-9
Shots on goal: 12-2
High-danger scoring chances: 7-1
Goals scored: 2-0

And the three players that recorded the most head-to-head minutes against Lindholm?

Nikita Kucherov (10:04 5v5 ice time), Brayden Point (9:43) and Victor Hedman (7:12).  

Dominant. 

(Be it on the PK or even-strength action, Lindholm’s ability to break the puck out limited Tampa’s ability to generate consistent O-zone pressure all night.)

"He's one of those guys that anyone can play with," Lindholm said of McAvoy. “He's such a good defenseman. Everyone knows it and everyone sees it. And I hope we can develop something here and I can make him a better player and he's obviously gonna make me a better player — so I'm excited about that. But we got some really good D on our squad here. Everyone was making plays tonight and you need all six playing like that if you're gonna win games."

And yes, while Lindholm is more than just a big body — that heft is also very much welcomed, such as on the sequence below where he cleared Pat Maroon out of the crease on a potential Grade-A chance. 

Of course, it’s just one game. And we’re not saying that No. 27 is suddenly going to get his own visage added to the mural at Halftime Pizza alongside some other Hall-of-Fame B’s blueliners. 

But the road ahead will be perilous for Boston if it wants to make a deep Cup run, with high-octane offenses like the Panthers and suffocating forechecking squads like the Hurricanes poised to make life miserable for Cassidy’s crew in May. 

And if the Bruins are looking for a potential trump card in those matchups, they might just have it in their latest weapon on the back end.

"My girlfriend says I look good in black and yellow, so that's all I need to hear,” Lindholm said postgame. “But it feels great to be out there. We have a great group of guys, there are so many players on this team that make plays that normal guys just don't make. So it feels great to be a part of that and I just want to keep improving here."

Stats and graphs via Natural Stat Trick.