Ivar Stenberg – Buffalo is circling a left winger whose tone is reserved—but whose decisions on the ice have turned heads across years, leagues, and tournaments.
BUFFALO, N.Y. — There’s a difference between how a hockey player talks about himself and how the sport talks about him. In Ivar Stenberg’s case, the gap is striking.
At the NHL Scouting Combine in early June. the 18-year-old Swede kept his answers measured. speaking English to reporters while describing a season that didn’t sound like the start of a hype campaign. “Some bad games. some good games. but overall. it [was] a good season. ” Stenberg said—one of his more expansive responses. but still calm. still controlled.
That restraint is almost part of the story. Viggo Björck, the more outgoing half of Stenberg’s close friendship, laughed when asked for a scouting report. In Björck’s view, Stenberg doesn’t need a sales pitch. “Nothing you guys don’t already know.”
What everyone has seen—at close range, and often more than once—is the way Stenberg makes plays look inevitable.
Björck knows it first-hand. He’s lined up against Stenberg in the Swedish Hockey League and alongside him at both the junior and senior versions of the world championship in 2026. Others, even those watching from farther away, have carried the same reaction. Canadian defenceman Keaton Verhoeff. a projected top-10 pick himself. pointed to a specific moment that captured why Stenberg’s name keeps rising.
“When he had that goal in the men’s worlds where he cuts back, cuts back again and rips it far side, that’s pretty special,” Verhoeff said.
The goal came during Sweden’s final preliminary contest in late May. With the team clinging to a 2-1 advantage over Slovakia midway through the game. Stenberg picked up a loose puck at his own blueline and raced up ice. After crossing into the Slovak zone. he maneuvered the puck to the middle of the sheet. then sliced sharply back against his momentum in the high slot. He whipped it home in one motion. Slovak defenceman Frantisek Gajdos—jukked right off his skate blades—slid helplessly along the ice. while the stick he lost drifted toward the opposite corner.
Plays like that don’t stay private in hockey. They travel.
The buzz around Stenberg has been building for more than a year and kicked into overdrive in the past six months as he asserted himself against top-level. grown-man competition in Sweden and at that world championship in Switzerland. Sportsnet’s Jason Bukala placed Stenberg at the No. 1 slot in his final ranking for Friday’s 2026 NHL Draft.
And yet even if he has to wait a team or two to hear his name called in Buffalo, the club that drafts him will be getting an outstanding left winger. The reason is simple: for every eye-popping moment, there’s a long list of less glamorous things he does to help teams win.
Frölunda’s draft history adds weight to that thought. The three highest picks from Frölunda’s senior team in the history of the draft are Rasmus Dahlin (first overall in 2018). Lucas Raymond (fourth overall in 2020). and Fredrik Sjöström (11th overall in 2001). Today, the 43-year-old Sjöström is Frölunda’s GM.
He doesn’t dodge the comparisons—he also isn’t trying to force them. Sjöström acknowledges it’s natural to compare Stenberg and Raymond, both talented wingers. But Sjöström says Stenberg didn’t immediately create the same kind of buzz when he landed at the club as a young teen.
“He was pretty small at the start,” Sjöström said. “Maybe he didn’t stand out compared to a Rasmus Dahlin at that age. You could tell he was good, but he was pretty small.”
It wasn’t long before the “pretty small” phase became a footnote.
While Stenberg’s time with Frölunda’s U-18 club began with the kind of gradual unfolding teams often hope for, his development accelerated in the years that followed. By 2024-25, he was tearing up the U-20 ranks. As a 17-year-old, he got himself promoted to the senior squad before Christmas.
“He was still wearing the cage,” veteran Frölunda defenceman Christian Folin said with a chuckle.
Now Stenberg is listed at six-feet tall, and the jump didn’t change what his game was built on—just how much responsibility coaches were willing to hand him.
The team was mindful about not loading him too quickly, but Stenberg kept proving he could handle more. Folin said Frölunda wanted to “almost keep him back a little bit,” not exposing him to the pro team too early. But practices told a different story.
“They didn’t want to expose him too early to the pro team,” Folin said. “But he was so good in practice that they didn’t really have a choice. You saw that early in practice; like, he would dominate. He would come in and he would get the puck and he would dominate and do things that… I don’t know. he was on a different level. I haven’t seen that kind of talent from [a guy that young] in Frölunda.”.
Still, the early production took time to catch up. Points were hard to come by and Stenberg finished with just one goal and two assists in 25 outings.
“You could tell he had a lot of upside, a lot of skill,” Sjöström said. “But the points weren’t coming.”
What followed didn’t erase that slow start—it reframed it.
Heading into the 2025 playoffs, Stenberg had done enough to keep his place in the lineup. When injuries created a bigger opportunity, he walked right through the door. In a dozen post-season outings, he found the net three times and kicked in three more assists.
“He did so well for us as a 17-year-old,” Sjöström said.
That performance sounded the siren for the very top of the 2026 draft.
Adam Andersson, a big Swedish winger who could go in the second round, has long admired Stenberg’s game. “He’s a very mature guy on the ice,” Andersson said. “Takes risks, but not [big] risks. He’s an incredible player. Fearless on the ice.”
Maturity is a word that keeps coming up, not because Stenberg talks like a veteran, but because his decisions make him look like one.
Sjöström says Stenberg seems to sense where everybody is on the ice. Folin focuses on the way Stenberg dictates the terms of play—how he can shield the puck, control it, and control the pace.
“The balance [he has] and being able to shield the puck, control the puck, control the pace of play,” Folin said. “That’s a lot of what you saw [from him] in the world championship; he speeds up the play, then he can also slow it down and make passes.”
At the WJC this past holiday season, American defenceman Chase Reid tested Stenberg directly—and came away convinced that Stenberg’s instincts are rare even among elite teenagers.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen anybody have the IQ that guy does,” Reid said. “Off the rush, he lays pucks into areas that most guys would never see. And he’s really good at slipping your triangle [the three points created by a defenceman’s skates and stick while defending].”
There’s no denying the skill package. But Frölunda’s pro-league environment—where coaches demand two-way accountability—has helped shape Stenberg into a player built for more than just highlight reels.
When he came up, Folin said they could tell Stenberg was super-skilled. What changed the picture was that he “bought into the team game” and did what was needed to stay in the lineup.
“It’s fun to see a guy with that kind of skill who does the work; who backchecks hard,” Folin said. “When he loses the puck, he makes sure he gets it back. When he would come back, he would block shots, he would finish a hit, he’d be up in your face.”
Folin also knows what that looks like off the ice. He said he shared a room on the road with Stenberg for more than a season, and once the reserved young man gets comfortable, his personality comes through.
“When you get to know him, he blossoms into a fantastic person.”
One place Stenberg is likely to feel at ease is around his older brother, Otto. Otto was a first-round pick of the St. Louis Blues in 2023 and played 32 games as an NHL rookie this past season. Stenberg plans to play as much golf as he can with Otto this off-season.
He’ll also be focused on the jump to the NHL in the fall—work he describes in the plain language of someone trying to improve, not impress. “Work on small details; stronger, faster, shoot a little bit more,” Stenberg said.
Next season won’t necessarily be all about the NHL. There’s every chance Stenberg could find himself back at Frölunda next year. continuing to refine his game against seasoned pros. But if he’s drafted in a situation that gets him into an NHL camp come September. he’s expected to arrive ready for the next level.
“He matches that and he excels above it,” Folin said. “He gets a new challenge, he accepts the challenge and he [basically] crushes it.”
In hockey, that kind of track record doesn’t need a slogan. It plays itself out.
Ivar Stenberg Buffalo 2026 NHL Draft Frölunda Swedish Hockey League world championship 2026 scouting combine