The Finnish Mafia grew a little bit bigger this summer.
In signing defenseman Jani Hakanpää to a three-year contract worth $1.5 million annually, the Stars added another Finn to their previous quartet and did so with a 6-5 and 218-pounder that will bring physicality to the blue line.
Hakanpää, 29, split last season between Anaheim and Carolina, finishing the year with the Hurricanes after he was dealt at the trade deadline. He has played only two NHL seasons, having spent the previous six playing in Finland’s Liiga.
Hakanpää figures to occupy the third defensive pairing alongside Andrej Sekera, and here’s more on what the Stars can expect from Hakanpää in the next three seasons.
Will hit anything with the puck
Almost no one in the NHL delivers as many hits as Hakanpää does. Seriously. Last year, Hakanpää was third in the league with 215 hits, behind only Florida’s Radko Gudas (250) and Ottawa’s Brady Tkachuk (248). The Stars’ leader last year? New Seattle defenseman Jamie Oleksiak with 148.
When the Kraken signed Oleksiak over the summer, the Stars wanted to replace his physicality and Hakanpää fits the mold.
“Losing Big Rig hurt our size, hurt our physicality back there,” Stars coach Rick Bowness said. “Getting Jani helps us an awful lot to fill that void.”
While Hakanpää will try to deliver hits all over the ice, he is most effective in the corners and along the boards, where the puck is secondary to him. Against Tampa Bay in the second round of the playoffs, he was effective in stapling Lightning forwards to the boards when they were close enough.
The physical play wasn’t always successful in creating a change of possession, but it did slow down play enough for Carolina’s reinforcements to arrive in the defensive zone. When he’s playing his best hockey, Hakanpää is ending plays quickly and physically along the boards.
“That’s what we want to do,” Bowness said. “We want to end plays as quickly as we can. We don’t want to let the opposition gain behind our net. The only way to do that is to close quickly and end plays. He’s able to do that.
“You try to outnumber the opposition as quick as you can. The only way you can do it is someone ends the play and stops it and puts it up on the board. That’s where he’s going to be very effective for us.”
On the penalty kill, his willingness to challenge plays can be both a positive and a negative. Hakanpää will undoubtedly see time on the PK, as Dallas now has five regular defensemen capable of killing penalties: Hakanpää, Sekera, Miro Heiskanen, Esa Lindell and Ryan Suter.
Here, he closes out Yanni Gourde, forcing a turnover and getting a clear.
Here, he pins Alex Killorn, but the Hurricanes don’t win the puck and Brayden Point beats Hakanpää to the net for a goal.
“In that corner, he’s a big body and he’ll be a big part of our penalty kill,” Bowness said.
Doesn’t get involved often, but he’s aggressive when he does
Hakanpää is not going to put up gaudy offensive numbers. That’s never been his game in the NHL or AHL, and it won’t be his duty in Dallas. Still, Bowness likes to get his defensemen involved in the offense, both in the offensive zone and on the rush.
In the playoffs, Hakanpää didn’t record a point. In the regular season, he had two goals and two assists in 57 games (because of the midseason trade, he played more games than any other player in the NHL).
Hakanpää still does try to get involved, though, and does so by chasing pucks below the dots at times, and beneath the goal line. With proper communication, it’s a skill that could lead to odd-man rushes the other way, but Dallas’ veteran forwards should know to cover for Hakanpää as he activates from the blue line.
Mixed results when defending in space
There is no question Hakanpää is effective along the boards. When he’s in space? That’s a different story.
He can be good in space, whether using his length to cut off plays, his positioning to angle players into the boards or his physicality to deliver an open-ice hit. That’s all in his bag of tricks when it comes to defending players in space, particularly what he does to defend Nikita Kucherov in one of the clips below.
Other times, he can look slow in tight quarters, with players like Tyler Johnson losing Hakanpää easily twice, once in-zone around the net and once in transition.
Hakanpää might not draw the top assignments in Dallas, meaning he probably won’t have to regularly match up with players like Nathan MacKinnon, Patrick Kane, Alex DeBrincat and Kirill Kaprizov. That responsibility will likely fall to Heiskanen and whoever is his partner.
But he’ll still get those assignments occasionally, and defending in space will be key when he does.
Sometimes lackadaisical with the puck
It didn’t happen much because Hakanpää doesn’t play with the puck on his stick a ton, but he was guilty of a pair of turnovers in his own end that led to Lightning chances in the middle of the ice.
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