There have been a ton of boxes checked for Pittsburgh Penguins' rookie sensation Ben Kindel in the last two months.
First, the 18-year-old center impressed so much during training camp that he earned a spot on the opening night NHL roster, which was not necessarily something that was expected. Then, he impressed even more as the team's third-line center during his nine-game trial that he earned an NHL stay and activated his three-year entry-level contract. He also earned the chance to play on the Penguins' top power play unit in the injury absence of Rickard Rakell, and he already has two power-play goals.
Now, it appears he will get to check yet another box.
During Wednesday's practice, Kindel was taking line rushes with future Hall-of-Fame center Sidney Crosby and top winger Bryan Rust on the team's first line, which is a good indication that he will slot there in the lineup when the Penguins take on Washington Capitals on Thursday.
And for the rookie center - who has five goals in 12 games on the season already - it will be yet another earned opportunity for him to play a bigger role on this Penguins' team.
"If I get that opportunity to play with two elite players like that, I'm very honored and grateful to have that opportunity," Kindel said. "Just going to do whatever I can to help that line."
And it's no secret that playing with an all-time great player doesn't always come easy to players. But, given how Kindel has adjusted to the NHL up to this point, it may be a piece of cake for the young center.
For one, Kindel has switched from center to the wing before, so this is nothing new to him. He has played wing for Canadian national team camps, and he switched between center and wing last season for the Calgary Hitmen, when he put up 35 goals and 99 points in 65 WHL games.
But even more so than the positional familiarity is the hockey sense that Kindel possesses at such a young age. That has been on display during his entire first taste of NHL action, and he hasn't missed a beat. He reads plays in all three zones akin to how a 10-year NHL veteran would. He knows how to expose the soft areas of the ice. He's a workhorse down low and uses some high-end edgework to his advantage.
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Does that sound a bit familiar? It's not unlike his new linemate - even if expectations aren't quite as high as they were for that guy at 18. Crosby and Kindel think the game on a similar level, and that will probably lend to them developing some chemistry.
Crosby said Kindel's speed and compete in puck battles will help, too. But, at the end of the day, it's about communication, as it is with any other linemate - not just a young one.
"I think that you always want to communicate," Crosby said. "You can [try to] accelerate that learning curve as best you can, but ultimately, you've just got to go through things and read off each other. I think that the more you can talk things out, the better you can do that. That's going to be part of it."
Kindel himself also identified his ability to win puck battles and get the puck to some of the best players on the ice as things he can do to help out his new veteran linemates.
"Just kind of trying to work as hard as I can," Kindel said. "They're all very smart players, and I'm just trying to read off them as much as I can and just trying to move the puck to them, win puck battles, just keep plays alive, stuff like that. You know, things like that... I think it's going to be really important."
With a boatload of injuries and a roster shakeup - the Penguins placed three players on injured reserve, sent down young defenseman Owen Pickering, and recalled three more players Tuesday - there is bound to be a lot of experimentation going forward. Kindel's third line was really getting the job done in recent games - including controlling 95.5 percent of the expected goals share against the Toronto Maple Leafs on Monday - but with two regular top-six players missing from their lineup in Rakell and Justin Brazeau, things were probably going to change eventually.
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Well, it appears that word travels fast across hockey circles, and the rest of hockey is quickly learning that <a href="https://thehockeynews.com/nhl/pittsburgh-penguins">Pittsburgh Penguins</a>' rookie center Ben Kindel is the real deal.
And head coach Dan Muse thought it was the right time to give Kindel a try in the top-six, especially since he's played on the wing in the past, during training camp, and even in some game action.
"It's something we wanted to see today in practice," Muse said. "Like I said before, we're still going to have some conversations and make some final determinations in terms of how things are going to look [Thursday]."
He added: "There's been enough of an evaluation in the past for us to feel comfortable with seeing what that looks like. Obviously, those guys are together on the power play, and we've seen them be able to read off each other, make plays with each other. So, it's something we wanted to look at. It's just another option. It's nice when you have practice days, especially when we had some new faces in there today and some things that we needed to shuffle around."
For Kindel, playing with Crosby is an opportunity to really start to show the rest of the hockey world what he can do. He's already starting to get some of that outside recognition, especially after a dominant two-goal performance in hockey's biggest market Monday.
But, at the end of the day, the young rookie is just grateful for his opportunity to keep playing and keep thriving at the NHL level. And he will get the opportunity to share the ice with another NHL legend Thursday against Alex Ovechkin and the Capitals.
"Obviously, every night you're playing against different elite NHL talent, but playing against a guy like that, Ovechkin, like... I mean, such a legend in the league," Kindel said. "Very few guys come around that have that kind of status. So, I'm really excited to have the opportunity to play against him."
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