Roby Järventie

March 2020 – Järventie has finished his first regular season in Mestis, the second-highest men’s level in Finland. It was an extremely successful rookie season for the 17-year-old as he scored 23 goals and 38 points in 36 games. He averaged 15 minutes of ice time with about two minutes of that coming on the power play. Järventie has been a well-known prospect in Finland for a few years because he has always been one of the top players in his age group in Finland. Some were expecting him to be able to play at the Liiga level full-time this season but he wasn’t quite ready to play his style at that level, so playing in Mestis was the next best thing. His father Martti was a long-time professional hockey player in Europe.

Järventie is a modern power forward who uses his great size to protect the puck and drive to the net with the puck on his stick. But he doesn’t play a very physical brand of hockey. He is a goal-scoring winger who owns a great shot and decent playmaking abilities but he is a bit of a one-dimensional threat which is why he projects to become a complementary goal-scorer rather than someone who drives the offense himself. He also doesn’t play a well-rounded game, so if he’s not producing offensively, he’s not contributing much else either. But he has potential to become a 30-goal scorer at the NHL level if things break right. Combining that with his August birthday, projectable frame (6-2, 185) and very good skating ability, Järventie projects to get drafted in the second round of the 2020 NHL Entry Draft.  Jokke Nevalainen