2025 NHL Draft Prospect Profile: Ben Kindel
Upside Hockey's NHL Draft profile series: Aces Edition, Vol. 6
Upside Hockey’s prolific prospect profiler Trevor Curtis’s 2025 NHL draft eligible prospect profiles are all featured on our dedicated page for this with all featured prospects indexed in our table of contents alphabetically by last name. For the 2024 NHL Draft, for example, we had well over 200 prospect profiles completed.
Draft Thoughts (Aces Edition, Vol. 6):
RW Ben Kindel (5'10", 176lbs)
Calgary (WHL): 65gp/ 35g/ 64a/ 99pts, +39, 39 PIM
The Calgary Hitmen seemed to get better and better as the season wore on, finishing the regular season as the 3rd-best team in the WHL, but they were bested in the second round by the Lethbridge Hurricanes in seven games. RW Ben Kindel (ranked # 21 NA Skaters, # 25 by McKenzie, # 21 by Button) led the team in playoff scoring by 6 points, with 8 goals and 15 points in 11 contests.
Ben Kindel (Calgary Hitmen)/Photo Credit: Kyle Smutzki - Portland Winterhawks)
With the Hitmen's season over, he joined Team Canada at the U-18's, already in progress, and hit the ground running- going home with a gold medal, and finishing 7th on the team in scoring, with 7 points in 5 games. In the regular season, he was 2nd in scoring on the Hitmen, and 7th-overall in the WHL, with 99 points in just 65 games.
Kindel is a highly cerebral offensive winger who can both create offense through his playmaking, as well as score goals. He's rather diminutive, but plays a solid 200-foot game, and doesn't shy away from the rough stuff. A high-end playmaker with elite hockey sense and keen vision, he's the type of player who can create something out of seemingly nothing, and catches opponents off-guard with passes that come out of nowhere; he spots seams that few others could see, and has the ability to make plays in tight areas.
With sublime passing skill, he can thread the needle through the tiniest of holes in traffic, and connect on cross-ice feeds, with the ability to pull-off any kind of pass imaginable- from saucers, to slips, to backhands, to banks. He can expedite his team's transition with long-distance stretch-passes, and can hit a teammate from the point to the opposite corner, with precision.
Kindel has the patience and composure to slow the game down long enough to scan thoroughly, in order to read the play and process quickly; he always seems to make sound decisions with the puck, and shows a propensity for creating a ton of high-danger chances for teammates. With his strong offensive instincts, he makes the players around him better, and his feeds give recipients the upper-hand on their adversaries.
A master of space-creation, he is always deceiving and patiently manipulating to make defenses move, or to bait pressure, in order to unlock passing seams and shooting lanes, with delays, feints, and look-offs. Kindel is often tasked with running the powerplay from the point, because of his vision, creativity, and distribution skill. A high number of giveaways per-game suggests that he needs work on his decision-making and puck-management in high-pressure situations, however.
Kindel reads gaps well, exhibits a goal-scorer's instincts, and locates open space to unleash his wrister, which could use more power and precision, but comes with a sneaky release and a change of angle in the blade of his stick to fool goalies. His one-timer is hard and heavy though, and the placement of his shot is usually precise.
Positioning himself with foresight, he readies himself off-puck in high-danger areas for the pass, as a constant playable option for his linemates- sneaking behind defenses, and dipping in-and-out of the slot; getting inside was considered a weakness of his at the beginning of the season, but he seems far more willing to play in the middle these days.
He attacks the net with the puck fearlessly, works his way into the greasy areas around the net, sets up in front of the crease to jockey for position and pounce on tips and rebounds- he gets off the wall with the puck a lot for a smaller player, as well. Kindel is a hard-worker with a high compete level, and despite his size, he is willing to get his nose dirty and will engage opponents physically.
He forechecks tenaciously, battles hard in the trenches, and wins more 50/50 battles than he loses. He will take a hit to make a play, moves through contact, and often wins inside position on opponents along the boards.
Kindel's skating has some mechanical issues that need to be smoothed out, most notably a short and choppy stride that shows up at times, but I believe that he has improved his speed somewhat from earlier in the season. Still, he needs to keep adding strength to his lower-body in order to improve his overall quickness and explosiveness. He navigates his way through traffic adroitly with shiftiness on his edges, that give him lateral quickness, superb agility, a rapid change of speed and direction, and the ability to spin off of checks.
Even with a lack of separation speed, he can bob and weave his way through transition, skating winding routes through the neutral zone while evading checks. His competitive drive propels him forward, and augments his mobility in times when he needs a boost, but his straight-line speed is somewhere around average- perhaps a notch or two above.
Kindel's puck-skills are somewhere in the above-average category as well; he handles and protects well, and displays a soft-touch in his passing, but has issues controlling at high-speeds at times, particularly when under duress. I'm always surprised by how involved he is defensively, and how effective he is at disrupting plays all over the ice, in every step of the backcheck; he sometimes looks like an elite shut-down specialist.
He's aggressive, engaged, and so flawless in his positioning, with high-end awareness and anticipation to act proactively against the attack. He hounds puck-carriers with intensity- stripping pucks, lifting sticks in pursuit, clogging lanes, and putting his body on the line to block shots. He's often the first forward back in the defensive zone, and is an excellent penalty-killer.
Size issues aside, Kindel is a pretty sure-fire middle-six NHL-player in the making, with the potential for more - look for him in the latter half of the first-round.
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See where Kindel landed in our most recent draft rankings: