When a lanky, 16-year-old David Reinbacher showed up with a crop of junior players to one of EHC Kloten’s pro team’s practices midway through the 2021-22 season, there wasn’t even a proper spot for him to sit in the locker room, so he took a seat on a chair by a pillar.
He was shy and didn’t say much, but he was listening, trying to fit in as a 16-year-old on a men’s team.
“Good kid, quiet, humble, very polite and very happy and excited to be with us at that point,” Jeff Tomlinson, then-coach of EHC Kloten, said 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 quiet anymore.”
Tomlinson decided the Kloten junior club wouldn’t be getting him back.
“We played him in a game and he was one of our best defensemen,” Tomlinson remembers.
Reinbacher was the best for a reason. In fact, a lot of things stood out about him: His patience. His poise. The consistency with which he plays.
If you ask Larry Mitchell, general manager of EHC Kloten, what stands out most, he’ll mention Reinbacher’s mobility as a 6-foot-2 defenseman, and that he’s more skilled with his stick than a lot of NHL players.
“I think he has the best stick out of any defenseman on our team and probably, you know, maybe even top 10 or 12 in our league,” Mitchell said. “As an 18-year-old kid, he has an uncanny ability to build plays and break up plays with his stick. He always leads with a stick when he’s trying to kill plays in the corner. He didn’t lose a lot of battles towards the end of the season when we got into the important games towards the end and the playoffs.”
If you ask Tomlinson, he’ll say what’s impressed him most is how he’s handled the attention that comes with being the top defensive prospect of the upcoming 2023 draft.
“With all the scouts in the stands — 23 scouts on any given night — and for him just to go about his business and keep, I would say, exceeding expectations, that was just shocking to me,” Tomlinson said.
Reinbacher was drafted by the Montreal Canadiens with the No. 5 pick in the 2023 NHL Draft, making him the highest-ever drafted Austrian defenseman and tying Thomas Vanek for the highest-drafted Austrian player in NHL history. Vanek was drafted at No. 5 in 2003 by the Buffalo Sabres.
If you ask Reinbacher how much that means to him, he’ll probably point to how important it’s been for him to stay humble throughout the entire process.
“I just like staying humble, getting a lane not too high and not too low,” Reinbacher said. “I just try to focus on myself.”
Carey Price forgot the Canadiens’ first round pick’s name (David Reinbacher) ????
“David…”
*awkward pause*
???? @BradyTrett | #NHLDraft pic.twitter.com/nNdhe6GxDU
— The Athletic (@TheAthletic) June 28, 2023
Reinbacher played as a youth in Switzerland before joining Kloten’s junior club at 15. He made his debut for Kloten’s pro ranks in 2021-22, appearing in 27 regular-season games and 14 playoff games, helping Kloten move up to the National League, the top tier in Swiss hockey.
He’d return for the entirety of the 2022-23 season as the team’s youngest player — and arguably its best blueliner. In what Reinbacher described as a “pretty special” year, he saw his time on ice grow from six minutes to over 20 a game, something he didn’t necessarily anticipate would happen.
And as his minutes continued to rise, so did his stock ahead of the NHL Draft in Nashville as a highly sought-after two-way defenseman.
Reinbacher describes himself as a breakout defenseman who tries to feed the offensive guys. He has a long stick, is calm with the puck and can play offense as well.
He knows when to make the pass to a teammate or when nobody’s there. He has the ability to hold on to the puck and wait for his teammates to get free, or to move his feet and hold on to the puck until someone gets open.
In the offensive zone, he’s good at getting pucks to the net and has been working hard on his shot, which will surely only continue to improve as he gets older and stronger. He has a confidence with the puck that shines through — a confidence Reinbacher says really strengthened over the course of last season.
While he isn’t an overly physical player, he isn’t afraid to mix in some physicality to win a puck battle and he won’t shy away from battles — something Mitchell says Reinbacher has continued to work at as his confidence has grown over his past pro season.
“When I first got here, you were able to give David a cross-check. You were able to give him a face wash after the whistle. By the end of the season, there was a lot more pushback,” said Mitchell.
It’s something Tomlinson has of course noticed as well, especially in contrast with the shy, polite 16-year-old whom he first met at practice last season.
“I really like his confidence level with the puck. He knows when to make it toe drag even. I’m not a big fan of guys making toe drags, wrestling off the ice in the neutral zone. But it seemed like when he did it, it was a good play. So, I just really loved the combination of his patience and his confidence to make a play under pressure,” said Tomlinson.
“It was fun to watch him come out of his shell more and more and more to the point where I would hear him talking in the locker room when I would be walking through there to go get a coffee. I would hear him kind of initiating a conversation. So that was fun because I knew he felt comfortable. He talks about being humble and all that. But you know what? He is one of the more humble kids I’ve ever coached.”
When Mitchell took over as GM of Kloten’s men’s team in November, he had of course already heard about “the hotshot Reinbacher kid.” When he finally watched him play, he was reminded of Tim Stützle, who played in Germany’s Deutsche Eishockey Liga (DEL) — where Mitchell, who was born in Germany, worked as a sporting director — before getting drafted to the Ottawa Senators.
“I had seen a lot of kids over the years who tried to get their feet wet playing amongst men and playing amongst pros. And some of them did it better than others,” said Mitchell. “I was working in the DEL when he came in and he might be the last guy other than David that had that type of an impact as a teenager playing in a men’s league. My first impression was, ‘Wow, this is really impressive that this kid’s able to perform against men in a top European level.”
Playing against senior opponents is one way Reinbacher likes to think his breakout season — 22 points in 46 games — has helped gear him toward the NHL.
“They all have a lot of experience. It’s so fast, like good skaters, good skills. So for me, I always wanted to play as soon as possible against grown men,” Reinbacher said.
Tomlinson also believes the speed and high offense of the Swiss league have helped Reinbacher get his feet moving and forced him to play a lot of one-on-one situations that will help him navigate the ability to make plays quickly under pressure at the NHL level, on the smaller ice surface.
“I think just in Switzerland, the culture of hockey there, it’s fast, it’s skilled, it’s got to be a little more exciting,” said Tomlinson. “And, you know, obviously it’s about winning too, and he showed that he could help the team win. And to be honest, he was the best at it on the back end for us.”
Reinbacher is No. 6 on Corey Pronman’s 2023 NHL Draft ranking of the top 142 prospects and No. 12 on Scott Wheeler’s ranking of the top 100. Though he chose not to fixate too much on projections, Reinbacher considered getting drafted in the first round on June 28 a goal, knowing how big of a milestone it would be for another Austrian hockey player to be selected so high, following in the footsteps of players before him like Thomas Vanek, Marco Rossi and Marco Kasper.
“The first round is huge. I would not know how to describe this situation. It means a lot, especially because I’m Austrian. Pretty honored to have this chance in June,” said Reinbacher ahead of the draft. “I guess we’re producing more and more good players. … And I would love that like probably 10 to 20 more players are getting drafted in the next 20 or 30 years. So it will be a huge thing for us that can produce also good NHL players.”
Leading up to the draft, he kept close the advice of Rossi, a friend of Reinbacher’s, who recently suited up with him at the 2023 IIHF World Championship and was drafted in the first round of the 2020 NHL Draft with the No. 9 pick by the Minnesota Wild.
“We talk about a lot of things that are coming towards me. So he helps me. He talks about it. He teaches me, (I’m) thankful that he talks that much. Like 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 single day. No matter how hard it is, enjoy it. Especially if you don’t mind that much. Just feel free. Enjoy. Play free.’”
And now that he’s been welcomed to the NHL by the Canadiens, he hopes to maintain that humility that’s been so important to him as he’s climbed the ranks in Switzerland — the humility that has impressed his coach so much the past two seasons.
“I tried to prod him a couple of times with comments like, ‘Hey there, superstar. There were 40 scouts in the rink last night to watch you.’ And he always answered with, ‘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 carried himself on the ice that, although he wouldn’t admit it, he probably knew that he belonged.”
(Photo: Bruce Bennett / Getty Images)
