Ryan Lindgren’s name sat on the Shattuck-St. Mary’s Sept. 2011 tryout roster sheet. 

Then-head coach John LaFontaine sifted through the players gunning for a spot on the high school’s top team and broke them out onto the ice.

But LaFontaine made a mistake –– one that arguably put Lindgren on the path to the NHL. 

“I’d get a tryout roster, and I just read it wrong. I thought it was a D, and I guess it was an F for forward,” LaFontaine told The Post.

“So for tryouts, I put him back at D. This is the kind of kid he is, he didn’t say anything. … It was just I guess a typo or I read it wrong on the sheet and never looked at it again. And now he’s in the NHL as a defenseman.”

Lindgren, who unbeknownst to LaFontaine, had skated as a forward up until this point, grinded through tryouts in a new position and made the first-tier squad as a freshman.

“The first day of practice [at Shattuck], I thought I was a forward and the coach came up to me and told me I was playing D this year,” Lindgren said, according to a story published by the U.S. National Development Program in 2014. “It was kind of a shock at first.”

Lindgren, a defenseman who hadn’t played D before, carved a place for himself nonetheless. 

“I really think it talks about not just his character, but how he was raised,” LaFontaine said. “Didn’t complain, didn’t say anything.”  

It’s that same character that has turned Lindgren into the heart and soul of the New York Rangers team the past five seasons. 

Since the fateful Feb. 2018 trade that sent Rick Nash to Boston and Lindgren –– along with a bundle of players and picks –– to New York, he has paid his rent at Madison Square Garden through blocked shots, bloodied faces and the occasional goal that everyone celebrates a bit louder, just because it’s Lindgren. 

“The way Lindy shows up, it makes you proud to be a teammate for someone like that who goes to battle,” Rangers teammate Tyler Motte told The Post in June 2022. 

“Maybe he’s not 100 percent every night, but he does everything for the team. That’s the mentality.”

It wasn’t until around Thanksgiving time in 2011, when Lindgren’s parents, Bob and Jennifer, approached LaFontaine at one of Shattuck-St. Mary’s tournaments, that the coach learned his misread might’ve just been a stroke of genius. 

“Both of them came up to me and said, ‘John, we just can’t thank you enough for putting Ryan back on D, I don’t know what you saw in him to do that, but, oh my gosh, he loves it, he thinks it’s the best thing ever,’” LaFontaine recalled. 

“I said, ‘Wait a minute, you mean he hasn’t played D his whole life?’ They said, ‘No, he’s been a forward his whole life.’” 

Rem Pitlick, a four-year veteran now playing center for the Canadiens, grew up in Minnesota and was teammates with Lindgren –– whom he calls “Lindgo” –– at Shattuck-St. Mary’s and the University of Minnesota years later.

Though Lindgren has now cemented a puck-eating and defensive-minded reputation, Pitlick still remembers him coming up as a flashy forward. 

“Everyone was like, ‘Oh, Ryan Lindgren is like this really offensively gifted guy, he gets a lot of points,’” Pitlick told The Post. “Lindgo was playing D because of coach LaFontaine, but he was known as this offensive guy.” 

Lindgren’s tenacity and edge on the backend grew at Shattuck-St. Mary’s as he settled into the position. 

“It was tough at first,” Lindgren said in 2014. “I wanted to join the play with the offense. I wasn’t worried about the defensive side of the play. Coach LaFontaine helped me out and taught me how to play defensively.”

Pitlick was a victim of Lindgren finding his now-signature mean streak. 

“I remember him and I would have battles in practice, and I was really small back then,” Pitlick said. “Ryan always played really hard on me in practice. I used to get mad at Ryan because he used to hit me so hard.” 

Shattuck-St. Mary’s went on to capture the 2014 Tier I Boys 18 and Under National Championship in Lindgren’s last season with the squad before he departed for the U.S. National Team Development Program in Michigan. 

“He has always had that courage,” LaFontaine said. “I describe him as a warrior because he’s not afraid of anything, will take on anybody.” 

Under then-head coach Danton Cole, Lindgren developed into a dependable and gutty defenseman in his two years at the program. 

Competing on the 2014-15 USNTDP Junior team with the likes of Charlie McAvoy, Auston Matthews, Clayton Keller and his now blueline-partner Adam Fox, Lindgren was surrounded by top-end talent. 

“I think with Ryan, his leadership qualities really came out early,” Cole told The Post. “He brought that compete level and willingness to work and get better and just stay after it.”

“Most players, it takes awhile to kind of see where they’re going to be, but I think with Ryan, right away — our guys were 16, we’re playing against 19- and 20-year-olds — and he was running guys over right from the first game.” 

Lindgren represented the U.S. in International Ice Hockey Federation competition three times, captaining the 2016 U.S. Under-18 Men’s National Team to a bronze medal before winning gold in 2017 with the U.S. National Junior Team and another bronze with the same squad in 2018. 

The lefty wasn’t scoring game-winning goals or crashing the net on every O-zone possession; instead, he provided shutdown support on the blue line. 

“In this world of analytics, sometimes it’s hard to measure players like that and what they exactly bring,” Cole said. 

“But I think most of the coaches know what they do. Guys play a little better when they are on the ice, guys raise their game and they feel good having guys like that there.” 

It’s that team-first mentality that landed the Minnesota kid on the Gophers’ roster in 2016.

“He is just a warrior type of player, and that is exactly what he was for us. That was his role,” then-head coach Don Lucia told The Post. 

It didn’t take long for Lindgren to prove himself at the University of Minnesota, a blueblood of college hockey. 

Lucia recalled one of the team’s first games during Lindgren’s freshman season against North Dakota where the youngster earned his stripes in the trenches.

“He went after … like three or four guys. He’s just a young freshman and that’s as big a rival as there is in college hockey and he went after it. He’s not afraid of anything,” Lucia said. 

Lindgren tacked on the assistant captaincy his sophomore campaign as he posted a career-high nine points (two goals, seven assists) and had the second-most blocks on the team with 51. 

After 67 cumulative games and two seasons in the Gophers’ maroon and gold, Lindgren inked an entry-level contract with the Rangers in March 2018. 

There’s always in jumping from college early, but it worked out for the young defenseman, who turned out to be exactly what the Blueshirts needed. 

“The hardest thing with younger defenseman is that they all think they have to be this offensive dynamo, and there’s very few spots at the next level,” Lucia said. 

“You can have a heck of a long career at the NHL level by being somebody that the coaches and teammates can count on in a defensive role, in a shutdown role.”

From the beginning, Lindgren put his head down, worked hard and morphed into whatever his team needed –– even if that meant quietly changing positions –– and it has earned him NHL longevity.

“He’s so respected because of his blue-collar mentality,” LaFontaine said. “Those kinds of guys don’t have to say anything. They’re leaders.”