Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Panthers excited for prospect Heponiemi
When the Florida Panthers selected forward Aleksi Heponiemi with the No. 40 pick in last year’s draft, he was an undersized Finnish forward with garish numbers. A year later, the numbers are a bit flashier, his size is similar, but Heponiemi’s career is entering a transition.
The 5-foot-10, 141-pound 19-year-old will no longer be playing against fellow teenagers in the Western Hockey League in Canada. Instead, he’ll play against men, a jump in competition that will challenge his growth as a player.
Heponiemi will play for Karpat in Finland’s Liiga, the same league that produced Panthers star center Aleksander Barkov and currently houses Florida forwards Henrik Haapala and Sebastian Repo. He makes the move after posting a remarkable season for Swift Current in the WHL, when he finished third in the league with 118 points, despite playing 15 fewer games than the league leader.
Heponiemi led the WHL with 90 assists and won the league’s Sportsman of the Year award as Swift Current advanced to the Memorial Cup. To Panthers director of player personnel Bryan McCabe, though, it was the right time to test the European professional leagues.
“I think he’s accomplished a lot in junior and I think he’s ready for the next challenge of playing in a men’s league against men,” McCabe said. “It’ll give us a good opportunity to see where he’s at. He’s a small player, but he doesn’t really play small. It’ll be interesting to see how his body holds up playing against 25-, 30-year-old men.”
Heponiemi’s size has always been the knock on him. He’s an elite passer with gifted vision, but he’s also never cracked a roster weighing at least 150 pounds. In Swift Current, former coach Manny Viveiros praised Heponiemi’s play-making ability despite his small size.
In today’s NHL — a league trending more toward skill and speed — smaller players can survive. They just aren’t the norm. Calgary’s Johnny Gaudreau (5-foot-9, 157 pounds) is the best example, though the Panthers currently employ smaller forwards in Denis Malgin (5-foot-9, 177 pounds) and Vincent Trocheck (5-foot-10, 182 pounds).
McCabe said, though, that Heponiemi’s size doesn’t deter his style of play.
“He doesn’t shy away from contact,” McCabe said. “I was at a couple games this year watching him, a big rivalry game against Moose Jaw, playoff atmosphere, first place on the line and he got in the thick of it, went to the hard areas, didn’t shy away from it. It was nice to see. He plays with a little chip on his shoulder, which is a good thing. He’s a skill player, but he’s got a little pushback to him.”
In Karpat, Heponiemi will join the reigning Liiga champions, a team that accumulated the most points in the regular season and beat Tappara in the final. Karpat’s average age was 26.3 years old, and only one player across Liiga last year (Jerry Turkulainen) was lighter than Heponiemi.
Heponiemi previously said he would like to weigh around 170 or 180 pounds, and McCabe said Heponiemi’s focused nature eased concerns about when the additional muscle would arrive.
“You can’t have a kid go put on 15 pounds in a summer because he’ll need a bucket around his neck to carry the puck in,” McCabe said. “Those skill players, you don’t want them bulking up and then they lose their sense of feel and hands for the puck. Put on five pounds a summer for the next couple years would be great for him.”