When lanky 16-year-old David Reinbacher showed up in the middle of the 2021/22 season with a bevy of youngsters for a training session with the EHC Kloten professional team, there wasn’t even a proper place for him in the locker, so he took a chair next to a pillar .
He was shy and didn’t say much, but he listened and tried to fit into a men’s team as a 16-year-old.
“Good boy, calm, humble, very polite and very happy and excited to be with us at this point,” said EHC Kloten coach Jeff Tomlinson of his first impression of Reinbacher. “I said, ‘Look, I want to see him play.’ And then he got on the ice and he wasn’t so calm anymore.”
Tomlinson decided the Kloten youth club would not bring him back.
“We played him in a game and he was one of our best defenders,” Tomlinson recalled.
Reinbacher wasn’t the best for nothing. In fact, many things stood out about him: His patience. his attitude. The consistency with which he plays.
If you ask EHC Kloten general manager Larry Mitchell what stands out most, he’ll mention Reinbacher’s mobility as a six-foot-tall defender and that he’s more skilled with his stick than many other NHL players.
“I think he has the best performance of any defender on our team and he’s probably, you know, maybe in the top 10 or 12 in our league,” Mitchell said. “As an 18-year-old boy, he has an uncanny ability to set up and break plays with his racquet. He always leads with a stick when trying to kill plays in the corner. He didn’t lose many battles towards the end of the season when we got into the important games and the playoffs towards the end.”
If you ask Tomlinson, he’ll say what impressed him most was how he handled the attention that comes with being the pick of the picks in the upcoming 2023 draft.
“With all the scouts in the stands – 23 scouts each night – and just going about his business and, I would say, exceeding expectations, that was just shocking to me,” said Tomlinson.
Reinbacher was drafted No. 5 by the Montreal Canadiens in the 2023 NHL Draft, making him the most-drafted Austrian defenseman of all time and making Thomas Vanek the most-drafted Austrian player in NHL history. Vanek was drafted fifth overall by the Buffalo Sabers in 2003.
If you ask Reinbacher how much this means to him, he’ll likely point out how important it was for him to remain humble throughout the process.
“I just like staying humble and getting a lead that’s not too high and not too low,” said Reinbacher. “I’m just trying to focus on myself.”
Reinbacher played in Switzerland as a youth before joining the Kloten junior club at the age of 15. He made his debut for the Kloten professional team in 2021/22, played 27 regular season games and 14 playoff games and helped Kloten rise to the National League top flight in Swiss ice hockey.
He would return as the team’s youngest player for the entire 2022-23 season – and arguably the best blueliner. In a year that Reinbacher described as “pretty special,” he saw his time on the ice soar from six minutes to over 20 minutes per game, something he wasn’t exactly expecting.
And as his minutes of action continued to increase, so did his potential as a highly sought-after two-way defenseman ahead of the Nashville NHL Draft.
Reinbacher describes himself as a breakout defender trying to feed the offensive players. He has a long racquet, is calm with the puck and can also play offensively.
He knows when he has to pass to a teammate or when nobody is there. He has the ability to hold the puck and wait for his teammates to get free, or move his feet and hold the puck until someone opens it.
In the offensive zone, he’s good at putting pucks in the net and has been working hard on his shot, which is sure to improve as he gets older and stronger. He has a confidence with the puck that shines through — a confidence that Reinbacher says has really boosted over the course of the last season.
While he’s not a particularly physical player, he doesn’t shy away from using some physicality to win a puck fight, nor does he shy away from fights – something Mitchell says Reinbacher continued to work on during his His last professional season has grown in self-confidence.
“When I got here, you could cross-check David. You could wash his face after the final whistle. There was a lot more headwind at the end of the season,” Mitchell said.
Tomlinson noticed that too, of course, especially in contrast to the shy, suave 16-year-old he first met in training last season.
“I really like his confidence towards the puck. He knows when to get it right. I’m not a big fan of guys doing toe drags and wrestling off the ice in the neutral zone. But when he did, it seemed like it was a fair stretch. I really liked the combination of his patience and his confidence to play under pressure,” said Tomlinson.
“It was fun watching him come out of his shell more and more, to the point where I could hear him talking in the locker room when I walked through there to get a coffee. I heard him start a conversation. That was fun because I knew he was comfortable. He talks about being humble and so on. But, you know what? He’s one of the more humble kids I’ve ever coached.”
When Mitchell took over as GM of the Kloten men’s team in November, he had of course already heard of the “hot Reinbacher kid”. When he finally saw him play, he remembered Tim Stützle, who played in the Deutsche Eishockey Liga (DEL) – where German-born Mitchell worked as athletic director – before he was drafted to the Ottawa Senators.
“I’ve seen a lot of kids over the years trying to get their feet wet among men and professionals. And some of them have done better than others,” Mitchell said. “I was working in the DEL when he came and he was perhaps the last person besides David to have had such an impact as a teenager in a men’s league. My first impression was: “Wow, it’s really impressive that this boy is able to compete against men at the top European level.”
Reinbacher believes his breakthrough season — 22 points in 46 games — has helped him prepare for the NHL when he plays against top-tier opponents.
“You all have a lot of experience. It’s as fast as good skaters, good skills. That’s why I always wanted to play against adult men as soon as possible,” said Reinbacher.
Tomlinson also believes the Swiss Liga’s speed and high offense helped Reinbacher gain momentum and forced him into many one-on-one situations that will help him master the ability to come under pressure to play fast at the NHL level, on the smaller rink.
“I think, especially in Switzerland, the culture of ice hockey is fast, it’s skillful, it has to be a little more exciting,” said Tomlinson. “And of course it’s also about winning and he has shown that he can help the team win. And to be honest he was the best for us on the backend.”
Reinbacher is ranked #6 in Corey Pronman’s 2023 NHL draft ranking of the top 142 candidates and #12 in Scott Wheeler’s ranking of the top 100. Though he chose not to focus too much on predictions, Reinbacher considered being in the first Round of getting drafted June 28th was a goal, knowing how big a milestone it would be if another Austrian ice hockey player was picked so high up and followed in the footsteps of players before him like Thomas Vanek, Marco Rossi and Marco Kasper.
“The first round is huge. I don’t know how to describe this situation. It means a lot to me, especially because I’m Austrian. It’s a great honor to get this chance in June,” Reinbacher said before the draft. “I think we’re bringing out more and more good players. …And I would love it if there were probably 10-20 more players drafted in the next 20 or 30 years. So it’s going to be a big thing for us to also produce good NHL players.”
Leading up to the draft, he closely followed the advice of Rossi, a friend of Reinbacher’s who recently endorsed him at the 2023 IIHF World Championship and was selected as the No. 9 in the first round of the 2020 NHL Draft by the Minnesota Wild.
“We talk about a lot of things that are coming my way. So he helps me. He’s talking about it. He teaches me (I’m) thankful that he talks so much. I would say, ‘Teach me what to do or how to handle the situation,'” Reinbacher said of Rossi. “And he said, ‘Just enjoy the moment every day.’ No matter how hard it is, enjoy it. Especially if you don’t mind. Just feel free. Enjoy. Play for free.'”
And now that he’s been welcomed into the NHL by the Canadiens, he’s hoping to retain the humility that was so important to his promotion in Switzerland – the humility that has so impressed his coach over the past two seasons.
“I’ve tried goading him a few times with comments like ‘Hey, Superstar.’ “Last night there were 40 scouts at the rink watching you.” And he always replied, “I’m not a superstar.” “I’m just a kid trying to play in this league,” Tomlinson recalled. “But you could tell by the way he moved on the ice that, while he wouldn’t admit it, he probably knew he belonged.”
(Photo: Bruce Bennett / Getty Images)