Anton Frondell 2025 NHL Draft Scouting Report

Vitals

Position: Center

Age on Draft Day: 18.14

Height, Weight: 6'1", 204 lbs

2024-25 Stats (Allsvenskan): 29 GP, 11 G, 14 A

Scouting Report

Anton Frondell may be a nondescript 6'1" in height, but when he's on the ice, he looks so much bigger. Some of that is attributable to his wide frame; 204 pounds is bulky for an 18-year-old at that height.

But it's always about how the Swede carries himself. He is not afraid to play a physical game. When he has the room and trajectory to line up a hit, he'll crunch opposing players into the glass.

His stoutness makes him very hard to move, whether that's when he's holding pucks or staking his claim to space around the net.

Frondell is a multi-faceted goalscorer. With above-average hands, he makes use of his ability to post up around the net to open himself up for deflections and backdoor tap-ins.

He also shows intuition on when exactly to time his move in order to make himself available for a teammate's pass before the defense and goalie adjust. He also weaponizes a heavy wrist shot. He routinely powers it past set goaltenders from distance, but he also does well to quickly execute catch-and-release shots while still keeping it on net.

To ease Frondell's transition to pro hockey, Djurgårdens slotted him on the wing for most of the season. However, he is naturally a center and shows good enough defensive instincts and discipline to justify a switch to a full-time center role.

The biggest questions surrounding Frondell are his speed and fitness. Too often, it looks like he has cement in his skates. To be fair, the robust forward is mobile enough in straight lines once he gets going, but he lacks initial thrust and agility. His turns are too wide. Though he left reason to worry about his endurance throughout a shift and towards the end of games this season, he excelled in many of the NHL combine's anaerobic fitness tests.

Frondell also has not yet shown a lot of creativity on the puck, whether that's rushing the puck, playmaking, beating defenders or making little moves to open up space for himself.

Both as matters of puck skills and mental processing, he grades out as average at best. His linemates at Djurgårdens carried the load in terms of driving play and setting up offensive zone time.

Draft Outlook

In a draft full of question marks early in the first round, Frondell brings plenty to the table. Entering last summer as a consensus top-five pick for 2025, he missed the first few months of the season with injuries and, when he returned, didn't play his best hockey. He was also one of the big disappointments at the U18 World Championships.

On the other hand, he played his best hockey in the second half of the season, including the Allsvenskan playoffs. In one span between late January and early March, he exploded with 21 points in 12 league games. The glass-half-full perspective is that he would have shown himself to be that type of player the whole season if he had a full year of health.

Frondell needs to work on his fitness and skating and add some dynamism to put himself in a position to capitalize consistently on his natural goal-scoring abilities. If he succeeds, then he's an NHL second-line center. If not, then his future is most likely as a two-way third-line center.

Bust potential seems low as his size and goal-scoring ability should be enough to justify a long NHL career, even if his development plateaus.

So, when will he get his name called? That all depends on how various teams weigh that cost/benefit analysis. If a team is a true believer, then he'll go fourth or fifth overall. Yet it is equally possible his present-time limitations make clubs squeamish enough to let him drop into early teens.

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