CALGARY — New Vancouver Giants head coach Parker Burgess has only worked with Ryan Lin for a few months. But after three seasons coaching first-round picks like Sacha Boisvert, Matvei Gridin, Vaclav Nestrasil and Tynan Lawrence with the Muskegon Lumberjacks, he has learned the difference between prospects and top prospects.
Lin, one of the most promising defensemen in the 2026 NHL Draft, checks all of the top prospect boxes.
Ultra-determined to be the best he can be? Check.
Not your typical one-dimensional 17-year-old player? Check.
Leadership qualities? He was chosen by Burgess to wear an “A” in Vancouver and by Team CHL to wear one at this week’s CHL USA Prospects Challenge. So, check.
Pedigree? A year ago, before Burgess’ arrival, Lin was one of the first WHL defensemen in decades to break 50 points as a 16-year-old, along with top 2027 prospect Landon DuPont. At season’s end, he was named to the CHL All-Rookie Team. He played for Canada at U17 and U18 worlds as well as the Hlinka Gretzky Cup, winning gold at the first two and registering five points and a plus-9 rating in five games at the latter. This season, he has averaged 26 minutes per game, and his 28 points in 24 games lead all WHL defensemen. When Team CHL named its first three players for the CHL USA Prospects Challenge, he was one of them.
When puck dropped at the Scotiabank Saddledome on Game 1 of the CHL USA Prospects Challenge, he skated on Team CHL’s top pair with Carson Carels and finished plus-1 in a 4-2 loss to the U.S. NTDP.
Ryan Lin skates in the CHL USA Prospects Challenge. (Jenn Pierce / CHL)
Burgess jokes that he has tried to find ways to take ice time away from Lin because he wants to maintain his level for all 68 games and into the playoffs. That’s easier said than done, though, “because he’s so good in every situation and he’s our best penalty killer and best defensive defenseman on top of the offensive piece.”
While some scouts want to see him add more explosiveness in straight lines, the first thing everybody sees when they watch Lin is “elite-level skating” and “that he plays with his head up,” according to Burgess. (Lin also used “explosive” as the one word to describe his game in a survey ahead of the CHL USA Prospects Challenge this week.)
When scouts match those things with his 5-foot-11, 177-pound listing, Burgess said their instinct is usually to draw comparisons to defensemen like Quinn Hughes (after whom Lin says he models his game), Cale Makar and the Hutson brothers.
Those aren’t the first names Burgess goes to, though.
“I see Ryan as more of almost like a Drew Doughty, where Drew Doughty is very effective offensively and can put up numbers from the back end and score and make a play, but he’ll also throw a big hit, and he can be used in every situation,” Burgess said.
That last part, Lin’s physicality, Burgess believes has flown under the radar. And it’s among the things — along with his skating, his ability to surf and kill plays and his high-end stick details — that make him, for Burgess, “one of the best, if not the best defender in the (WHL).”
“When you trust your skating, and you have a great stick, you have a great IQ of when to close, when to pin, and when to maybe contain a little more, and then you’re not afraid, and you’re very willing to be physical, it makes him such a good defender,” Burgess said.
And that’s without getting to the offense, where Burgess describes Lin as smooth with a good point shot and an impressive “awareness of when and where to jump.”
Despite his highly productive statistical track record, Lin is also trying to expand his offensive game and open up more this season, something scouts wanted to see. Where that’s easy — often too easy — for young players, those around Lin say it’s harder for him because of how much he values his defensive responsibilities — and how many minutes he plays.
“If we can get his minutes at 22-23 minutes some nights, then he’s going to have more in the tank to join the rush and not be worried about going full-throttle for a shift,” Burgess said.
Lin describes himself as a “puck-moving two-way defenseman (who) can play in any situation and competes the hardest out there.”
Despite having anywhere from 20-50 scouts at all of his games, Giants general manager Hnat Domenichelli said Lin has handled it all in stride.
“He’s one of those modern-day NHL defensemen. High skill. High IQ. High compete. Skates real well. Has good edges. Gives an honest effort every night,” Domenichelli said. “You can’t ask for much more than that.”
Lin has 28 points in 24 games for the Vancouver Giants. (Rob Wilton / WHL)
Sumeet Wareh only coached Lin for part of a season. He was playing for the U15 team at the Delta Hockey Academy, and Wareh’s U17 team called him up because they needed help.
Lin stepped onto the team, turned around their season and led them to the final as an underager.
Since then, he and Wareh have also occasionally worked together on the ice.
Wareh describes Lin as an “unbelievable skater” whose biggest separator is the combination of his ability to play defense and then transition to offense by always making the next right play.
He says Lin is “not Gavin McKenna or Landon DuPont, where they stand out because they utilize their skill set to take the game out of structure.” Everything Lin does is “within your structure as a coach.”
Jordan MacKenzie, Lin’s strength and conditioning coach “since forever,” has seen that firsthand in his gym. According to MacKenzie, Lin has had a “pro feel to him” since he was young, and understood even when he was in Grade 8 what it was going to take to get to where he is now.
“We knew coming into the WHL that his brain was going to be able to keep him away from everybody, and he was going to be able to operate any way he wanted,” MacKenzie said. “But we also knew that as he developed into a high-end player, that teams were going to start targeting him a little bit, and we’ve seen that this year, where teams are just trying to blow him up.”
As Lin has added weight, it has helped him play a more physical brand of hockey.
“I think a sneaky component of Ryan’s game has been his ability to withstand punishment and also deliver it,” MacKenzie said. “He’s kind of got that sneaky reverse hit that people don’t realize he has in his toolbox.”
Lin is also “still one of the quickest players we have in our offseason program,” according to MacKenzie.
“That next step would be that long-distance separation speed, but as a defenseman, that’s not something you want to put a ton of emphasis,” he said. “His power has gotten better. His shot has gotten exponentially better. But his elusiveness is really what makes him that elite-level player.”
Lin is described as a great skater who’s developing the physical side of his game. (Rob Wilton / WHL)
A little more than a year before he arrived in Calgary for the CHL USA Prospects Challenge, Mathieu Turcotte, Lin’s head coach with Canada White at the World Under-17 Hockey Challenge, stood on the ice at Progressive Auto Sales Arena in Sarnia after winning gold and lauded the play of his then-16-year-old defenseman.
“He can do everything. He defends so well. He’s got a great stick. His mobility is elite,” Turcotte said. “He’s really an all-around elite defenseman. Usually, you see guys that are elite at one thing and are a little average at other things. To me, I don’t know one thing he’s not elite at right now, to be honest.”
Nearby, Lin’s mom, Karen, tapped on the glass and mimed for her son to catch her phone and take a selfie.
Lin, a gold medal around his neck, spun on his skates and held the camera out, his mom, grandparents and some relatives from Ontario crowding into the shot.
“It has kind of been a wild journey,” he said as he did. “I love them so much.”
That journey started in Richmond, British Columbia, as the middle child of two teachers (specifically, a school principal and a high school math teacher) and a second-generation Canadian (Lin’s dad, Weily, is Taiwanese-Canadian, and his grandfather, Yoko, grew up in Japan before immigrating to Canada).
He began skating at the Richmond Olympic Oval and grew up playing roller hockey by sliding his street shoes inside his older brother Teo’s far-too-big roller blades.
When he talks about the people who’ve shaped him along the way, he lists his dad, his U15 coach and former NHLer Kris Beech, and MacKenzie. But he says his biggest influence has to be Yogi Svejkovsky.
Svejkovsky, now an assistant coach with the Flyers, has “seen him literally from his first steps” on the ice. Lin started in his learn-to-skate program at 4, and then Svejkovsky coached him until he left for Delta. In the early years, though his dad never played hockey himself, Weily helped out on the ice as well, making sure the kids were listening and “creating a learning environment.”
Lin also played on Svejkovsky’s spring teams with the BC Bears program he built before the Canucks gave him his first NHL job as an assistant coach after more than a decade as a skills coach and assistant with the Giants.
Svejkovsky guesses he had Lin on the ice 100 times a year growing up. He recommended Lin play for Beech, his old assistant coach and friend, at Delta. And when Lin was considering the college route, Svejkovsky said that if he could land with the local Giants — the team Lin grew up watching at the Pacific Coliseum — under another friend, then-head coach Adam Maglio, he should go there. The Giants later drafted Lin with the No. 6 pick in the 2023 WHL draft.
On a phone call after a recent Flyers practice, Svejkovsky said of Lin, “Ryan’s very unique to me, he’s very close to my heart.”
In the 17 years he spent building the BC Bears, Svejkovsky coached many players who went on to play in the NHL, from Justin Sourdif to Arshdeep Bains. Lin, though, “is special out of those players.”
“The skating was what really separated him, but I think outside of that it was the competitiveness,” Svejkovsky said. “He just plays really hard, and he loves the competition.”
The only thing he needed was to grow.
“I knew how good he was going to be — I had no doubt — but it helps if you have a little bit of size with that, too,” Svejkovsky said.
Now that it’s happened, Svejkovsky says everything “seems to be lining up pretty good for him.” Asked about the possibility of the Flyers’ pick lining up with Lin’s range on draft day, Svejkovsky said he’d fight for him if it did.
“Trust me, trust me, trust me, I would,” he said, laughing. “If there’s one guy I would put the hand in the fire for, that would be this guy.
“I just hope we’re not going to be that high again! He’s too good, that’s the problem!”
— With additional reporting from Sarnia, Ontario