Ducks Find New Talisman in Lindholm

October 13, 2013; Anaheim, CA, USA; Anaheim Ducks defenseman Hampus Lindholm (47) moves the puck against the defense of Ottawa Senators right wing Bobby Ryan (6) during the third period at the Honda Center. Mandatory Credit: Gary A. Vasquez-USA TODAY Sports

If any of you play FIFA than you should recognize that title. I stole that title format from FIFA, “(Team Name) Find New Talisman in (Player Name).”

Anyway, on a night where the franchise remembered its roots, it was a young man who wasn’t even born when the franchise first started that was arguably the talk of the town afterwards. The 19-year-old Hampus Lindholm is only three games into his NHL career and he’s already a +6 and displaying 10-year-vet decision-making. I haven’t been able to watch all of the games so far this season, however, in what I have seen, I am very impressed. He’s currently averaging just under 20:00 minutes TOI a game in those three appearances, which ranks 5th among the Ducks seven defense. That may change though with the way he’s been playing. Lindholm got his first career NHL point Sunday night and then later got his second career NHL point, both assists.

On his first assist, he was at the middle of the blue line back at the point with the puck, waited for traffic to get to the front of the net before unleashing a low, rebound-making shot that Ottawa Senators goaltender Craig Anderson kicked out and Ryan Getzlaf was there to cash in on the rebound. Then, just a few minutes into the second period, Lindholm jumped up to join a forming rush and found himself on a 2-on-1 with none other than Corey Perry. Lindholm patiently waited and waited before finally sending a sharp pass over to Perry who was able to slam it home by Anderson’s replacement, Robin Lehner. In both situations, Lindholm showed very good decision-making and an aggressiveness and confidence that is rare among 19-year-olds.

He caught enough eyes Sunday night to be named the 3rd star of the game. Bruce Boudreau was asked about Lindholm after the game and here is what he had to say:

"“From the first day of rookie camp to now, the improvement has been really remarkable. He absorbs everything and he’s taking everything in. He was plus-4 tonight with a couple points. He’s still only 19, so it’s going to take a little while, but he’s getting better every night.”"

The bottom line is that Hampus Lindholm has shown the incredible maturity and poise that we heard about when he was selected virtually out of nowhere by the Ducks 6th overall in the draft a couple years ago. Watching the game on Sunday, it seemed like Anaheim Ducks broadcast analyst Brian Hayward couldn’t stop talking about Hampus and how much he was impressed by him. He was just eating him up. And who wasn’t eating up his little baby face after Sunday night’s game. Adorable little Swede. If he continues playing like this, his cute little baby face is going to continue to get attention, especially from some hot SoCal bombshells who just wanna eat him up as well. Careful Hampus, women weaken legs.

Ok, lastly, I would like to apologize for the lack of content from me. Unfortunately, my laptop hard drive crashed a little over a week ago. I bought a new one and when I tried to install Mac OS X, the hard drive wasn’t registering with the logic board. So, at first I thought that I had bought a bad hard drive. So, I exchanged it for another on. However, even that one didn’t register with the logic board. So, the only other possibility was that the cable that connected the hard drive to the logic board was malfunctioning some way. However, the old broken hard drive still did register with the logic board when I hooked that one back up. So, it was a real mind-@*&#! Anyway, I found out what the problem was, the cable couldn’t handle the transfer rate that the new hard drive was capable of, and a new cable is on it’s way. Once I can get my laptop up-and-running again, I promise to post more frequently than I have over the past week and a half.