Milos Roman – Centre – 5’11 187lbs – 17 Years Old – Vancouver Giants in the WHL – 6gp 2g 3a 5p
If you have heard Roman’s name before, you probably watched a game featuring Slovakia in the WJC last year or played GTA 4. Roman was one of only a handful of 2018 prospects to make their national squad. Obviously Slovakia is a less onerous team to break through on than Sweden in terms of Dahlin being the other headliner, but it’s still quite the achievement. Especially because he was pretty much Slovakia’s best forward on a team that really couldn’t generate a lot of offense. To put this into perspective, they scored just 6 goals all tournament and Roman had one of those. Though it was against Latvia. He led the team in +/- being one of only two Slovaks to be in the positive. He’s one of the better prospects to come out of Slovakia in recent years, but that isn’t exactly a ringing endorsement. The last Slovak to go in the first round was Marko Dano who has yet to really establish himself as an NHLer despite some promising early flashes. Then you really need to go all the way back to 2009 to when Richard Panik and Tomas Tatar were both drafted to find bonafied established Slovakian NHLers. Regardless, Roman is considered a top prospect in the 2018 Draft and is around the late first currently.
Roman is a very dedicated two-way player that brings his all on the forecheck. He’s the type of player coaches like and can be comfortable putting him out against opponent’s top lines. He’ll block shots and plays smart in the passing lanes. Offensively, he needs to bring more consistency to really take the next level. He’s a smart player and makes some good plays, but he tends to rush things. That’s something I really noticed in last year’s Ivan Hlinka and wrote about during coverage of that tournament. He needs to slow his game down a bit. He also needs to improve his first step to gain more explosiveness in his skating. While this may seem like a lot of negative, it’s because he isn’t as polished a prospect as the others I’ve been writing about. He has a lot of positives and a lot of questions. I’m really curious to see what he can do at this WJC with the expectations of being the Slovaks top centreman. Overall Roman is a solid player and one to watch, but not an electrifying “can’t miss… forward. With the Vancouver Giants being a mediocre team, it will be up to him to generate most of the offense. Hopefully his “okay… start is just getting used to the new ice surface.
NHL Comparable : Adam Henrique