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NHL Draft: Dallas Stars Select Roope Hintz 49th Overall

The Dallas Stars have selected Roope Hintz from Ilves in the Liiga with the 49th pick in the 2015 NHL Draft.

Roope Hintz is a left wing/centre who has been playing the majority of the last season in the Liiga with Ilves.

Regular Season Team GP G A P +/- PIMs
2013-2014 Ilves U20 29 18 20 38 4 16
2013-2014 Ilves 7 0 0 0 -1 2
2014-2015 Ilves 42 5 12 17 8 10
Post Season
2014-2015 Ilves 2 0 0 0 0 0

Roope Hintz is a player that I’ve been talking about a lot over the past few weeks. You can see what I’ve written about him before here and here.

Roope Hintz is an intelligent two way forward who has a very calm and mature game for his age. Despite his size, 6-foot-2, 190 pounds, he’s a pretty good skater though it definitely could do with some work.

Using his big body he often parks himself right in front of the goalie and causes absolute havoc for opposition goalies and defenders. He also knows how to use his body to punish other players.

Offensively he has impressive playmaking ability, he knows where everything is going and can get the pass away or make the play to get a scoring opportunity.

In many ways he is more of a North American type forward rather than a European one.

He’s had an impressive season with Ilves, considering his age, and will likely continue to take steps forward.

On the downside it’s not completely certain that Hintz will project to be a top six forward in the NHL. His frame and his game point towards him having the potential to be a solid third liner. Whether he becomes a top six forward will depend upon who his offensive game develops.

He does a lot of the little things right and in time he could become a good NHL player.

At 49th overall he has been drafted by the Dallas Stars a little higher than most scouting organisations have ranked him.

What do they say about him?

Last Word On Sports

Roope Hintz has shown the versatility to play both centre and wing. He is a very intelligent player, as he sees passing lanes when he has the puck and sets up teammates with tape-to-tape passes at just the right moment. Hintz also does well without the puck, finding open spaces in the defence and getting himself into good scoring areas. He protects the puck well in the cycle game, using his size, long stick and good stickhandling ability to ward off defenders. He could stand to add more upper body strength though so that he can improve in board battles, and in front of the opponent’s net. Hintz has a very good wrist shot, but he must learn to use it more often and not always defer to passing. He does do a good job of driving the net, and has good hands to score in tight to the goal with dekes, rebounds and deflections.

Talking Points