For years, the Calgary Flames have been home to some excellent Swedish hockey players. One of the latest additions to their pantheon of smart, skilled Swedish forwards is Elias Lindholm.

Entering his third season with the Flames, and his eighth NHL campaign, Lindholm is one of the team’s most versatile, important players. What can we expect from him in the upcoming season?

Born in Boden, Sweden but raised in Galve (eight hours south), Lindholm grew up around the game as the son of a pro – his dad briefly played in the NHL but was much more prolific in Sweden. The younger Lindholm worked his way up through the Brynas IF organization as a youngster and earned accolades for his hockey sense and scoring touch.

Eventually, Lindholm made his pro debut during the 2011-12 season (when he was 17) and played a full year in the Swedish Elite League in his draft year as an 18-year-old. He was selected in the first round of the 2013 NHL Draft, fifth overall, immediately before the Flames selected Sean Monahan.

Lindholm signed right away and headed over to North America for a new challenge. Aside from two weeks (and six games) spent in the AHL with the Charlotte Checkers, he found a home immediately with the Hurricanes in 2013-14. He carved out a niche as a rock-solid, but not quite spectacular, two-way forward for the ‘Canes that could play the center or the wing. He reached a contract impasse with the team after a two-year bridge contract – they probably felt like he had topped out as a 40-ish point player, while Lindholm’s camp felt he had room to grow – and so he was traded to the Flames along with Noah Hanifin in exchange for Dougie Hamilton, Micheal Ferland and the rights to unsigned college prospect Adam Fox.

The Flames signed Lindholm to a six year contract and he seemingly found another gear right away. Finding chemistry with Johnny Gaudreau and Monahan, he had 27 goals in 2018-19 and 29 goals in the pandemic-shortened 2019-20 season. He also dabbled a bit as a center in 2019-20, suggesting his role could grow further with the Flames as he continues to mature.

So far, Lindholm hasn’t done a lot to temper expectations for himself. He’s received Selke Trophy votes from the Professional Hockey Writers Association in each of his first two seasons with the Flames, and he’s managed to flirt with 30 goals in both seasons. (Take away the damn pandemic and he easily would’ve surpassed 30 in 2019-20.)

The big question going forward depends on what Flames management (and the coaching staff) feel he is going to be long-term – he’s signed through 2023-24, and the question is if he’ll be the team’s best right wing going forward or moved to centre full-time. With Mikael Backlund turning 32 during the upcoming season and the only right shot center on the team being (almost) 34-year-old Derek Ryan, a pending free agent, moving Lindholm to centre on an ongoing basis makes a lot of sense from a succession and logistics perspective alone.

From a performance perspective, he was pretty good up the middle in moderate usage in 2019-20 – he played with Andrew Mangiapane and Matthew Tkachuk, and they were the team’s best even strength trio during that span. Separating Lindholm from Gaudreau and Monahan also makes the Flames a tougher club to line match against, given that the other two could be split up onto different offensive lines and the club would have the likes of Lindholm, Backlund, Mangiapane, Tkachuk, Sam Bennett, Dillon Dube and Josh Leivo to potentially drive play with different configurations within the forward ranks. (Keeping Lindholm with his “usual” line-mates could maximize his scoring potential, but it’s very much the team putting all their eggs in one basket and is unlikely to unlock anything “new” about the players involved.)

The argument for keeping the top six the way it was for much of last season – Gaudreau/Monahan/Lindholm and Mangiapane/Backlund/Tkachuk as the two lines – is that it”s the devil the Flames staff knows, but the argument against doing so is that the existing top six didn’t do a whole lot in the playoffs, and that the changes the Flames made to their roster in the off-season could make the team a lot more flexible and dynamic.

Whether he’s on the wing or at centre, Lindholm can reasonably be counted upon for 30-ish goals over an 82 game season – or about 20 or 21 during a 56 game shortened calendar. If he can be relied upon to play tough minutes and drive play, in a similar manner to how Backlund was used in recent years (except with more scoring punch), it would go a long way towards making the Flames a deeper, stronger, more challenging team to play against. If that’s going to happen, though, it will probably need to be (a) at centre and (b) away from Gaudreau and Monahan.