Is Sweden's Ivar Stenberg a contender to go No. 1 in 2026 NHL Draft? He has a case
SOURCE:The Athletic|BY:Scott Wheeler
If Stenberg is going to be picked at the top of the draft, his play for Sweden at the World Juniors could make the difference.
ST. PAUL, Minn. — Frölunda general manager Fredrik Sjöström can only call what Ivar Stenberg has done in the SHL with his team this year “hugely impressive.”
“Obviously, we were well aware of his talents before the season started, but it’s one thing to think it and one thing to actually do it, and I don’t know if I should say it’s been above expectations, but you just never really know until you see it,” Sjostrom told The Athletic. “It has been fun to watch.”
The numbers speak for themselves. When he departed Gothenburg for Minnesota to play for Sweden at the World Juniors, the 18-year-old winger was his team’s leading scorer with 24 points (six goals, 18 assists) in 25 games and a plus-13 rating.
In the same number of games, that’s nine points clear of the nearest U19 skater in the league, Anton Frondell, who was just taken third in the 2025 NHL Draft. If Stenberg’s near-point-per-game production holds, it’ll go down in history as one of the — if not the — best age-adjusted seasons ever at Sweden’s top professional level, placing him in a pantheon with just one name: Markus Naslund. He’s producing at a higher clip than Peter Forsberg and the Sedins did in their post-draft seasons. In a more recent context, he’s already just one point shy of passing the 25 points that 2023 No. 2 pick Leo Carlsson (who, like Stenberg, was a late birthday) registered in his draft year, and he has played 19 fewer games to date.
From a purely statistical standpoint, if Frondell and Carlsson both went top three, Stenberg belongs right at the top of the draft.
But if it’s going to be No. 1, his play for Sweden in the Twin Cities could make the difference. Entering the World Juniors, NHL scouts remained unconvinced by both Stenberg and Canada’s Gavin McKenna, the preseason front-runner, as the top player in the class.
Stenberg opened his tournament with an assist on Sweden’s first goal and the late Boxing Day game-winner in a 3-2 win over Slovakia, and added a third point on an empty-net assist against Switzerland. On Monday, Stenberg didn’t register a point against Germany, but he drew two penalties, both of which led to Sweden goals by the other power-play unit, and hit a crossbar. Across three games, he has also missed three backdoor tap-ins (two against Switzerland and one against Germany), banging his stick at the bench in frustration after the third because he knows he still has more to give — and that three points in three games isn’t up to his standard.
“In Frölunda, I really like the way I’ve played. But in the national team, I can be better. I don’t think I’ve created as much as I can. It’s tough to go down tempo, but it’ll get better the longer the tournament goes. It’ll come. I know it,” he said.
Sweden’s head coach, Magnus Havelid, knows it’s coming as well.
“It will get better and better. He’s getting used to this kind of hockey again as well,” Havelid said on Sunday. “It’s different than the SHL and with the smaller surface and the chemistry in the unit. I’m sure he will be better. He’s working hard. It’s only a matter of time.”
Some of the names that have been thrown around with Stenberg’s can make your head spin.
He likes to compare himself to Tim Stützle, whose combination of playmaking, shooting and skating he thinks mirrors his own.
In Sweden, Sjöstrom says Nicklas Backstrom’s name has been thrown out there a lot because they have the “same type of smartness.” But Sjöstrom thinks Backstrom was more of a pass-first guy and that Ivar “also has a lethal shot and can be a big-time goal scorer as well.”
Frölunda’s head coach, Robert Ohlsson, uses Henrik Zetterberg and Mats Naslund.
Naslund for the way he reads the game.
“The way he sees the ice, his vision on the ice, and his decision-making from that is what stands out most about him. He’s real top quality the way he sees the ice,” Ohlsson said on a recent phone call. “I’m up to 20 years now, and I haven’t had many or any players in my coaching career who can really read and see the ice like that kid.”
And Zetterberg for that sense and the balance he has on his skates for a 5-foot-11, 183-pound player.
“Even if he’s a little bit smaller, he’s always in good balance in battles because he can anticipate where everybody is at and is going, even when it’s really, really tight in the corners and stuff like that. He’s always ready to find those small things,” Ohlsson said. “Zetterberg had that balance on the ice, and he was really good on seeing the ice, and I think Ivar has that as well.”
Coming into this year, Ohlsson didn’t want to set his expectations too high for Stenberg. But when he first saw him play last year for Frölunda’s under-20 junior team, he remembers thinking, “Oh, this is something extra. This is something that doesn’t come around every day.”
“I could tell right away when you were watching the games he played and some of the decisions and the plays he made. But I didn’t know he was going to be this good in the men’s. You never know with the young players, but Ivar can really play with the men’s team,” Ohlsson said, chuckling as if he was understating it. “I can say that!”
Stenberg’s standout trait is how he controls the pace of the game when he has the puck. Sjostrom talks about him almost as a puppeteer who pulls the strings of his opponents with his hockey sense.
“He’s not the fastest guy — and he’s not slow — or the strongest guy, but he plays in his own rhythm, and I think it’s pretty impressive as a young kid like that playing men’s hockey in a very good league in Europe,” Sjöstrom said. “He just seems to have so much time. (He’s) never in a hurry making plays, and I think that’s his biggest attribute as a player on the ice.”
He’s got that same aura about him off the ice, according to both Sjöstrom and Ohlsson, too.
“He’s a pretty cool guy,” Sjöstrom said. “He never seems like he gets nervous, and he keeps everything on an even keel. It’s impressive. I mean, look how much it has been for him off the ice already for him this season. It has just been nonstop journalists and TV. He seems to take it in stride and doesn’t get flustered, and doesn’t let it get to his head either. He’s really well-liked by all of the older guys on the team, and he doesn’t come across as cocky or anything like that.”
That calmness about him shouldn’t be construed as a lack of competitiveness, though, either, they both insist.
“He’s an easygoing guy, a happy guy, and socially real good. People like to hang with him, and he can hang with everybody. He smiles in his eyes and not only with his face, too, which I think is a good quality. (But) he’s also really ambitious and driven,” Ohlsson said.
Ohlsson only has one gripe.
“If he wants to be a really, really, top, top player in the NHL, I just tell him he has to shoot more,” he said, laughing. “Hopefully, the smaller rink will add that scoring mentality a little bit. I’ve noticed in the last couple of weeks in the SHL here, he has started to shoot more shots, so I think he’s aware of it, and he’s working on it. And I think when he comes to the smaller rink, he will pretty fast adapt to that as well.”
On and off the ice, Stenberg never looks like he’s under the pressure that he is.
The draft?
“I have no expectations,” he told The Athletic before the season started. “I can’t think about it. What happens happens. I’m looking forward to making good things happen for myself.”
Part of that comes from following the example his older brother, Blues forward Otto, and dad, David, a former professional player in Sweden, always set for him. Part of it comes from wanting to set the same example for his younger brother Knut, a 16-year-old defenseman for Frölunda’s under-18 team.
He’s happy to say he idolizes his big brother. They’ve always done everything together. They grew up playing on a backyard rink at their house, and his competitiveness comes from their many “big battles.” They spend their summers golfing, skating, training and hanging out together. And they both took the same path from their hometown of Stenungsund on Sweden’s west coast to Gothenburg with Frölunda.
He’s also happy to say he wants to be better than his brother, too.
“I would say I’m a little bit more skilled, and he’s more heavy and has a better shot. I’m more offensive,” he said. “I think I have an OK shot and really good skating and hockey IQ. I can see plays and make plays.”
Ivar now lives alone in an apartment in Gothenburg, about 40 minutes south of his family.
He started to realize how good he was the first time he was invited to the national team and he got onto the ice and still felt like he was one of the best players. He was a pretty good soccer player growing up but dealt with some knee problems and made the full-time switch to hockey (don’t worry, “that was a long time ago and they’re good now,” he says of his knees).
With Frölunda, he has worked hard on his board play over the last couple of years, turning his ability on stick lifts, steals and puck protection along the wall into real features of his game.
“He’s impressive,” Havelid said, using the same word Sjöstrom did. “He can just play the game. He competes hard, he’s got a good shot, he takes responsibility for what he does out there as well, and he sees the plays and doesn’t play with pressure on him.”