If there’s one event on the National Hockey League calendar that’s extremely fun from a media perspective, it’s the annual NHL Draft. There’s a guarantee of a certain amount of news based on the number of draft choices that the team you’re covering has, and you have a rough idea of when the news will come based on the draft order.

Moreover, the draft is fun because you get to learn a lot, and often quickly, about players you may have only heard about briefly during the scouting season. A bunch of excited young hockey players get to have their dreams come true, and we get to write stories about them doing so. It can be a lot of fun.

But sometimes, usually late in the draft, a player is selected that you cannot find much information about. You head to Daily Faceoff to see if Steven Ellis had them ranked or wrote a blurb about them at any of the many events he covered. Nope. You check their Elite Prospects bio, only to find it pretty lean on information. Heck, sometimes Google in general runs dry.

Such was the case with the 208th player selected in the 2025 NHL Draft, new Calgary Flames prospect Jakob Leander. His Elite Prospects page, usually a fairly reliable source of biographical information, didn’t even have his hometown listed.

At Flames development camp, we had a chance to chat with Leander after an on-ice session. And as is often the case, the more we dig into Leander, the more we can see the upside in him as a late-round draft selection.

A product of Jönköping, a lakeside city in south central Sweden, Leander is a big, lanky young man, listed by the NHL at 6’4″ and 196 pounds.  He was watching the televised Swedish coverage of the draft when the Flames selected him.

“I was at home with my friends, five friends, and yeah, I saw my name on the TV and was so happy,” said Leander.

Quietly, Leander has progressed up the ladder of Swedish hockey. Originally with HC Dalen, another team in Jönköping, he moved to HV71’s system as a 15-year-old. He played primarily in Sweden’s main under-16 league in his 15-year-old season (2022-23), then moved up to their under-18 league in his 16-year-old season (2023-24), and spent the majority of his draft season (2024-25) as a 17-year-old in Sweden’s top under-20 league, the J20 Nationell.

“It went very well because I had a really good season,” said Leander. “I had upgraded myself from the last season, so it was a really good season for me.”

Because of his size and two-way defensive style, Leander can be compared to fellow Flames draft choice (and Swede) Axel Hurtig, who was coincidentally enough drafted at 208th overall in 2023. While Hurtig had a higher stock in his draft year based on his international experience and slightly higher offensive production in the J20 Nationell, Leander has shown the ability to adapt and figure out how to generate offence as he spends more time in a league.

After continuously moving up the Swedish hockey leader in recent years, Leander is aiming to continue that trend in 2025-26 as he returns to HV71 for the coming season.

“To play in SHL, the highest league in Sweden, a few games and then maybe the second league,” said Leander, describing his goals.

Leander was a seventh-round draft choice. It’s natural to not know a ton about him. But the more we’re learning about him, given his size, style and ability to adapt, the more it seems like there could be some sneaky value for the Flames in the seventh round.

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