RHD Aleksi Heimosalmi, 5'11" 170lbs (Assat U20, Finland): Here's a pretty polarizing player, but I kinda like him (thought I already did a write-up on him). First of all, he's one of the youngest players in the draft, and prior to the U-18 tourney, he wasn't really on anyone's radar. Most Finnish players see time in the Liiga or Mestis in their draft years, but Heimo has only made it as far as the U18 League there. This year, he put up 21pts in 35 games for Assat, but his big coming-out party was the World U-18 tournament, where he was named the best Defenseman in the entire tourney with 2 goals and 8pts in 7 games, tying Corson Cuelemans.
Heimo is a highly cerebral, competitive, two-way guy, who plays in all situations. Defensively, he can deftly separate man from puck with his active stick, and smart positioning. He can corral opponents to the boards, protects his goalie well, and when he has the puck, few can pry it off of him. Smart, heads up, and knows where to be. His transitional game is quite good, and was on full display in the tourney-he gets the puck, and one way or another, it in the other zone. High IQ and vision, great passer and shooter.
Heimosalmi is a smooth skater, but definitely not the fastest. He has deceptive quickness to get around opponents, and get to loose pucks, but he has work to do. Despite this, he never seems to get beat, and has an awful lot of rushes through the neutral zone-but it's heavy.
This is a guy who you might call high risk/high reward. Many are picking him to go in the third round, but I'm not sure I would use that pick on him. If he has this type of production with sub-par skating, imagine what he could do if he fixed it?
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