The guys it most commonly happens to are the players that step into the AHL in their draft +1 or 2 season. Players that get that extra year of growth typically fare better, physically speaking. Lind should have been sent back to Junior - this should be his rookie pro season. If he doesn’t look physically over matched this year, it bodes well for his projection moving up levels. Time will tell on that front, but so far, so good.
Would be curious to see an updated number on his size. He could be walking around at 195lbs right now...
Examples who struggled in the AHL in their draft+2 and then turned out great?
Like, let's look at the players taken between picks 20 and 50 in 2017 who were playing pro hockey in their draft+2 season :
20. Robert Thomas - NHL regular in his draft+2 season.
21. Filip Chytil - 31 points in 46 AHL games in his draft+1, NHL regular in draft+2.
22. Kailer Yamamot0 - 18 points in 27 games in his draft +2. Played 26 NHL games in first two seasons after being drafted.
24. Kristian Vesalainen - 13 points in 22 games in the AHL in his draft+2 (while basically a year younger than Lind) plus 5 NHL games.
25. Ryan Poehling - played in NCAA in draft+2, but scored a hat trick in his NHL debut.
29. Henri Jokiharju - 17 points in 30 games in the AHL, played half the season in the NHL.
30. Eeli Tolvanen - 35 points in 58 games in the AHL in his draft+2 after shredding KHL in his draft+1.
31. Klim Kostin - 24 points in AHL in his draft+2.
34. Nic Hague - 32 points in the AHL as a rookie defender, in NHL in draft+3.
45. Alex Texier - 7 points in 7 AHL games, recalled for NHL playoffs.
50. Max Comtois - 7 points in 10 NHL games.
Plus Formenton and Anderson-Dolan who made NHL teams to start the season before going back to junior.
So basically, out of 11 guys in his draft range playing pro hockey, Lind did the worst by a wide margin and only one other guy (Kostin) really struggled. Let's not try and pretend his season was normal for a pick in his range playing pro hockey, no matter whether it was draft+2 or draft+3.