"A Lot of Belief"

After the Penguins took Ben Kindel 11^th overall in last summer’s NHL Draft, a move that surprised the people who had the forward ranked lower, President of Hockey Operations and GM Kyle Dubas provided his perspective on the pick.

“I think right from the beginning of the year, he was a player that our area scouts and [Penguins Vice President of Player Personnel Wes Clark] really keyed in on as someone that they just had a lot of belief in,” Dubas explained. “And then I had watched him play, and he just continued to get better and better. We understand he’s not the biggest guy, but you look at the production and you look at the intelligence and the skillset, and where we came to in the last couple of days is that if we passed on him, we had intel that he wasn’t going to go much further beyond [our pick].

“And we just didn’t want to look back on it and say, ‘Geez, why did we pass on this guy that had 99 points and then stepped up his game in the playoffs?’ And it has all the makings of one of these prototypical ones that we were going to kick ourselves about.”

That will go down in Penguins history as an all-time quote, considering what happened next.

Kindel made the team out of training camp and went on to have one of the best NHL seasons by an 18-year-old in Penguins history. He finished the year with 17 goals, the fourth-most in a season after Sidney Crosby, Jordan Staal and Jaromir Jagr. Kindel did a terrific job of handling the responsibility that comes with playing the center position at such a young age, and earned the respect and admiration of his teammates for the overall maturity he displayed.

“It was awesome,” Kindel told Josh Getzoff in the latest episode of Get Me the Brandy. “It’s been a whirlwind since the draft and development camp. Just really happy just to be able to make the team and get to know the organization, get to know all the guys, and have that opportunity to play a full season with the Penguins.”

So, what sparked that belief in Kindel?

Clark actually met the Vancouver native before any of the scouts did, at the 2024 Hlinka Gretzky Cup, which takes place in August. They were staying at the same hotel and ended up riding an elevator together, where Clark introduced himself.

After watching Kindel win gold with Canada at that tournament, Clark ended up catching one of his games early in the season, with his Calgary Hitmen playing the Swift Current Broncos. While Kindel wasn’t the reason Clark was there, “that’s where Ben initially popped off the page for myself,” he said.

From there, Clark and the two Penguins amateur scouts based out West – Dan McLean and Robbie Sandland – began focusing on Kindel. His hockey IQ is what jumped out.

“The first time I actually started keying in on Ben, there were a number of sequences throughout that game where his spatial awareness and quickness in his decision-making really stood out,” Clark said.

While the area scouts are in charge of doing due diligence on prospects, there are a select few players that Clark will take personal interest in, doing his best to get to know them to help the decision-making process. Kindel was one of them, though he wasn’t fully aware of it at the time.

“I mean, you always hear from different people, or your agents sometimes, who would be a little bit more interested. I think you’re never sure with the draft,” Kindel told Getzoff. “There's so much uncertainty. I had a feeling the Penguins were somewhat interested, but you can never be so sure. Teams are trying to get leverage on other teams and all that kind of stuff. You just kind of got to go into draft day just enjoying it, and whatever happens, happens.”

And when Kris Letang and his son Alex announced that the Penguins had made Kindel their first pick of the draft, while there was some confused chatter amongst the hockey media and analysts, the feeling inside Pittsburgh’s headquarters was much different.

“Excited, intrigued,” Clark said. “Happy for him, happy for the Penguins. Like any player we select, I felt inside that he had a real chance, right from rookie tournament into training camp. Genuinely really excited for him and for the organization, thinking that we were able to get a real good player and person into the organization.”

At that point, Clark’s advice to Kindel was this:

“Just to stay hungry and never look back,” Kindel said.

He took it to heart.

Kindel made his NHL debut at Madison Square Garden, a venue he had visited with his dad Steve a few years earlier, getting a tour during a Rangers morning skate. He sat for games here and there early on as part of the development plan the Penguins put together to put the teenager in the best position to succeed, but soon enough, Kindel was in the lineup every night.

“To come in here as an 18-year-old kid and be able to do what he's doing, and have the high character and the ability to play the way he has, I think, is extremely special,” Bryan Rust said before adding with a laugh, “When I was 18, I wouldn’t have been anywhere close to this league. ... Nothing seems to faze him. There is no moment that seems to be too big for him.”

It helped that Kindel got a locker stall next to Sidney Crosby, who has been playing in the NHL longer than the rookie has been alive, and will go down as one of the top-five all-time greats.

“I think there’s no better way for a young player to come into the league and to have a guy like that to look up to and a guy like that to be next to,” Kindel said. “And learn from him and learn from all the other legends in this room, I think it was a golden opportunity for myself. Just trying to take advantage of every moment this year to learn and to take that stuff with me in the future throughout my career.”

The season ended on a tough moment for Kindel, who was on the ice when Philadelphia scored the overtime winner in Game 6 of the First Round to eliminate Pittsburgh from postseason contention. But he gained invaluable experience from playing in the Stanley Cup Playoffs for the first time.

“Just learning to play in high-stakes games, the physicality of it, the speed, the pace you need to play at, all the intensity is higher and everything just gets raised,” Kindel said. “Just trying to raise your game to another level in the playoffs is going to be key.”

He’s currently back home in Vancouver, for a summer much calmer than the previous one, and filled with a ton of focus.

“I’ll just want to keep getting stronger, keep wanting to get faster, bigger,” Kindel said. “All those things to help improve my game. It’s going to be a big offseason again. Still in the development phase.”