Mikko Rantanen<\/a> joined the Stars’ Finnish contingent after being acquired in a trade with the Carolina Hurricanes on March 7 and is doing his part to help Hemming join that contingent, training with him this summer.<\/p>\n“I was pumped that we got more Finns that can help me out,” Hemming said during Dallas’ development camp this month. “I think he\u2019s going to help me out. … I\u2019m super pumped about it.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s an unreal person, on and off the ice. I just really love the mentality when he\u2019s training. He\u2019s training every day hard and trying to improve himself. That\u2019s one thing I\u2019m going to take from him. I want to learn and be a better player every day. I want to improve every day. That\u2019s my mentality.\u201d<\/p>\n
At first, Hemming struggled adapting to the North American game, but he came into his own during the WJC and elevated his play during the OHL postseason.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a pretty rough start for me, new league, new play style,” he said. “I think after the World Juniors I pretty much flipped and went better. In the playoffs, I was in the best shape and playing my best game.\u201d<\/p>\n
Prior to the WJC, Hemming scored five goals in 30 OHL games. After the tournament, he scored 13 goals in 30 games.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was going to be a transition, there\u2019s no question,” Stars director of player personnel Rich Peverley said. “He went from playing pro [to] junior. There was the comfort level, being away from home, North America — there was a lot of things there that you totally understand.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hemming is now setting his sights on the NHL, focusing on shooting pucks quicker, putting shots on net and getting more explosive in his skating stride.<\/p>\n
But there is no rush to get there, at least from the Dallas side.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou watch him, he\u2019s uber-talented,” Peverley said. “He\u2019s got a great shot, he\u2019s skilled, he\u2019s got good size. It\u2019s the habits away from the rink that he\u2019s going to need to continue to work on, but he\u2019s in a good spot.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor him, I think he has a chance to become an NHL hockey player, but it\u2019s going to be up to him doing all the little things and being patient with the process.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DALLAS — Given their propensity for players born in Finland, it was not a great surprise as to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25130,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":["post-25129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25129"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25129\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}