FN’s mid-season Flames prospect updates: Jakob Leander

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: the Calgary Flames have a lot of really exciting young defenders in their system.

While the system is chock full of exciting young puck movers – guys like Zayne Parekh, Hunter Brzustewicz, Henry Mews and Etienne Morin – they have also been quietly amassing a crop of what we’ll call “complimentary defenders.” That’s not meant to say these guys aren’t as good as the puck-movers, but these guys are meant to be the Robyn Regehrs of the future Flames rosters: guys that can excel at shutdowns, squeeze-outs and puck retrievals, and who can get the puck to the puck-movers to do their thing with.

Yan Kuznetsov? He’s a complimentary defender, and a damn good one.

One of the newest complimentary defenders in the Flames system is big-bodied Swedish blueliner Jakob Leander, who the Flames picked up in the seventh round of the 2025 NHL Draft.

A product of Jönköping, Sweden, Leander is a right shot defender listed at 6’4″ and 205 pounds. He’s currently in his fourth season with the HV71 organization, which he’s been a part of since he was 15 years old. He turned 19 back on Feb. 3.

Leander is in his second season with HV71’s under-20 team in the U20 Nationell – Sweden’s top junior league. HV71 are in the southern (“Sodra”) division of this league, and they’ve had a tough year. They’re 9-19-2 and are second-worst in their division in points percentage. They have a minus-38 goal differential, and they have the third-fewest goals for and the second-most goals against in their division.

With this in mind, we do think Leander is having a pretty decent year given the context of his team.

First off, he’s serving as an alternate captain, and he’s been a fixture on their top defensive pairing all season. He’s first over the boards in most even strength situations, usually paired with Boston Bruins prospect Vashek Blanar, and he’s a fixture on their penalty kill. He’s also increased his admittedly modest point production over what he had last season – six points in 39 games in 2024-25, eight points in 30 games so far this season.

More impressively, on a team that gives up a lot offensively, his plus/minus is really solid – especially when you consider how much he plays.

Leander is minus-1 through 30 games. The players with better numbers in this category are a pair of fairly sheltered defenders – Edvin Persson Noren and Victor Nilsson Dalsjo, both plus-7 – and Sigge Lindh, who’s plus-1. Considering Leander’s role and what he’s being asked to do on a fairly weak team, he’s performing quite well given the circumstances.

Leander is a project. He’s not a player that’s likely going to contend for a World Junior spot. He’s not quite as good at what he does as Axel Hurtig was at that age. But Leander’s progressing and performing well, and we’ll see if he can keep growing his game over the next few years in Sweden. So far, so good.