The Other Stars: Looking ahead at the 2025 NHL Draft, plus Emil Hemming and Aram Minnetian at the World Juniors

A prospect report. Sort of.

First off, apologies for the lack of prospect reports lately.

I have a relatively good excuse: there’s been a lot less hockey, and a bunch of holidays. And right now, prospects get to shine because now is the 2025 World Juniors. Many future NHLers have made their mark at the World Juniors. Mika Zibanejad, and John Carlson, for example. Sometimes the games are simply elegant madness, like Finland vs. Russia in 2016.

This year has already had some doozies. Canada losing to Latvia was Junior hockey’s version of Appalachian State vs. Michigan. And yes, I’ll cop to my utterly thorough schadenfraude, given Canada’s bizarre lineup decisions (leaving off Zayne Parekh, and Beckett Sennecke), and mind-numbing coaching (Oliver Bonk playing a completely different position on the power play, even to his own confessed confusion). Finland’s win over Team USA. Czechia becoming the top country all of a sudden. For a hockey nerd, it’s tiramisu for the sports soul.

Most Stars fans don’t care about this, of course, so apologies if the above two paragraphs wasted your time. Instead you’re probably looking for an update on what to expect from the 2025 draft. Let’s start with the bad news: no, 6’4 smooth skating right-shot defender and son of Vern, Blake Fiddler, will not be available by the time the Stars are picking. Fiddler will be a top-20 or top-15 pick. Oddly enough, not much has changed since we did our early look at the 2025 draft.

However, one name that has emerged, and would likely be available in the last half of the first round, is Czech defender Radim Mrtka. He’s 6’5, and a right shot. He’s also a project. While not a smooth skater by any means, he boasts a lot of different talents for a big man, including offense. In fact, since transitioning from the Czechia professional league to the WHL’s Seattle Thunderbirds, he has nine points in 11 games, which is pretty darn impressive — especially given the usual excuses for European players switching to the smaller ice.

He’s an extremely mercurial defender, but the foundation is impressive: a big right-shot defender with offensive tools he utilizes, but with something of a mysterious ceiling in all three zones.

If you’re Dallas, Mrtka is everything Stars fans have been asking for since…well it’s been awhile. Dallas did their best to shotgun draft right-handed defenders in 2022 and then never really looked back. I was, frankly, shocked in the last draft when they ignored the slew of them that were available. But let’s talk about the few reps for the WJ they do have.

Team Finland: Emil Hemming

I’ve written a lot about Hemming, in November as well as December. And I’ve collected a lot of footage over the course of many prospect reports on him. At the end of the year, I’ll be sure to put together some sort of mixtape. So far I’ve settled on these broad strokes: Hemming is a decent shooting specialist who is quick rather than fast, struggling to be good at the things he’s supposed to be good at (shooting) while developing talents he’s supposed to lack (playmaking and positioning).

For some fans, that might look like an indictment. Especially when you look at Andrew Basha, who went to Calgary at 41st overall (currently with 29 points in 23 games). Or Nikita Artamov, who went 50th overall to Carolina (27 points through 39 games in a professional league, the KHL). Or Ryder Ritchie, who also went in the second round to Minnesota (same amount of points in nine less games). All players we previewed here at the Stars Stack before the draft. And indeed, the criticism is intentional. But it’s also early in his career, and for what it’s worth, he made the cut to represent Team Finland, which is an accomplishment in and of itself.

However, through three games, he’s pointless, averaging over 13 minutes a game. He’s also looked pretty muted in general whether it was versus USA, Germany, or Canada. This is not a player who’s unlucky. This is a player simply not doing much to stand out. My focus, as I’ve said, is what Hemming does in the second half of the season. Whether he produces or not is not as interesting as whether he’s developing. The development, to his credit, is there. But it’s been very slow development, and unfortunately, the World Juniors has been just another example of that.¹ He’ll have a chance at redemption today versus Latvia.

Team USA: Aram Minnetian

Although Minnetian didn’t dress in USA’s loss to Finland (he came out for Edmonton defensive prospect, Trey Augustin), he’s played decent minutes for them in his two appearances. Nothing much stood out, but that’s sort of his strength. He plays a no-nonsense, well-rounded defensive game in all three zones. As Dallas’ only right-shot defender with actual NHL promise, Minnetian’s development will be crucial if he can develop even further.

AHL: Arttu Hyry heats up

The Finnish forward is now riding a nine-game point streak, punctuated last game by a hat trick versus Manitoba. I haven’t talked much about Hyry, in part because there wasn’t much to talk about. Justin Hryckowian and Antonio Stranges took over Texas’ offense, leaving everyone else in cameo roles in the boxscore. But there’s a lot to like about Hyry, who plays a two-way game while threatening with a very heavy shot.

Like Stranges, I find his game more interesting than Hryckowian. That’s not to say Hryckowian didn’t earn his callup; just that I think impact and fit are more relevant than who’s leading the team in points (which wasn’t even the case, as Stranges has been leading the team for some time), and maturity. Hryckowian is a mature player, but I don’t see his game linking well with players like Colin Blackwell, and Sam Steel.

But that’s just me. The forwards in Cedar Park likely won’t factor into the NHL lineup beyond Hryckowian since Dallas might want to start looking elsewhere if they want to actively upgrade their depth. Speaking of!

Jesse Puljujarvi went on waivers yesterday.

A lot of people like him, and you know what? So do I! Seemed like Pittsburgh fans liked him to; it just so happened their head coach didn’t agree. The thing about Puljujarvi is that he developed the parts of his game that were lacking (defense), but in the process, lost the things he was supposed to be good at. A defensively responsible, extremely hard-working right winger who can cycle the puck extremely well sounds perfect for this Dallas team, and not just because they get to expand their Finnish Mafia.

1. To be fair, Finland has been an extremely anemic team when it comes to offense.