Sabres might be hoping Anton Frondell or Victor Eklund last until ninth pick at NHL Draft

BUFFALO – In their first weeks as teammates with Djurgardens, a second-division pro team in Sweden, NHL Draft prospects Anton Frondell and Victor Eklund skated on separate lines.

The ultra-talent forwards wanted that to change. So they kept asking – actually, badgering might be a more appropriate term – their coach, Robert Kimby, if they could play together.

Eklund said he went to Kimby 10 times.

“He was like, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don’t know,’” Eklund said Friday in LECOM Harborcenter, where the NHL Scouting Combine is taking place this week. “He just said, ‘Yeah.’ Then we actually got to.”

Finally, in January, Kimby put Frondell, a center, and Eklund, a winger, together on a line.

Eklund said he kept going to Kimby because from the get-go, he believed if they received an opportunity to play together, they would run with it.

“We’ll take it and we’ll be the best line, I guess,” he said. “And, yeah, I think we did pretty good. The coach probably got sick of me asking, so they finally put us together.”

Djurgardens ended up winning the HockeyAllsvenskan championship and earning a promotion to the Swedish Hockey League, a top-tier circuit.

Frondell and Eklund rank first and second, respectively, in NHL Central Scouting’s final rankings of draft-eligible European skaters.

The 18-year-old Swedes enjoyed strong chemistry over the final months of their first full pro seasons, illustrating why they will likely be picked early in the draft June 27.

The Sabres have the ninth overall pick.

“Any team’s that looking at Frondell or Eklund, they’re going to get a good player out of it,” said Dan Marr, the director of Central Scouting.

Eklund scored 19 goals and 31 points in 42 games. Frondell, who underwent knee surgery in September, registered 11 goals and 25 points in 29 games.

“Victor is easy to play with,” Frondell said. “I don’t think I’ve played with a player with so much energy. He wins every battle. Even when we play against men, Victor wins all the puck battles and it’s just easy for me finding an open spot.

“Most of the times I got the puck right on the blade, right on the tape, so it’s easy for me, too. We like playing with each other.”

Eklund, whose older brother, William, was drafted seventh by the San Jose Sharks in 2021, said the 6-foot-1, 198-pound Frondell “is a tank on the ice.”

“He has a shot like a missile,” he said. “He’s just a really great player.”

Frondell likes to model his game after one of the NHL’s greatest talents, Florida Panthers captain Aleksander Barkov.

“Good size, strong, good hockey sense, smart player that likes to compete,” he said of perhaps the world’s top two-way forward.

The 5-foot-11, 161-pound Eklund tries to play like Philadelphia Flyers winger Travis Konecny.

“Plays with a lot of energy, trying to get under the skin of the opponents and, yeah, just plays pretty physical like I do,” he said.

Frondell and Eklund are just getting going together. They both told NHL.com they plan to stay with Djurgardens, the team Sabres prospect Noah Ostlund played with before joining the Rochester Americans last year, next season.

“I grew up in Stockholm,” Frondell said. “It’s where I live and where I always live, and since I was born, I was a fan of Djurgardens. So today, playing for them is really cool and being a part of the team who won the Allsvenskan and went up to (the) SHL was (such a) cool experience.”