Farm club: Tampere (Finland) Tappara
GM: Jukka Tuominen (4th GM in team’s history)
Coach: Brent Sutter (replaced Doug Weight after Season 9) (Weight replaced Barry Trotz after Season 7)
Last season: 6th overall; In playoffs, lost to Minsk in Round 1.
Ins and Outs
(Season 9 to Season 10)
Out: Boone Jenner (trade), Jack Johnson (trade), Paul Stastny (free agent), James Neal (trade), Ryan Kesler (free agent), Jason Spezza (free agent), Martin Hanzal (free agent), Cody Franson (free agent), Anders Lindback (free agent), Stephen Johns (free agent)
In: Blake Wheeler (free agent), Kyle Okposo (free agent), Jake Gardiner (free agent), Ben Bishop (free agent), Patrik Berglund (free agent), James Wisniewski (free agent), Stephen Gionta (free agent), Zach Sill (free agent), Joonas Kemppainen (free agent), Jesperi Kotkaniemi (draft), Noah Dobson (draft), Joe Veleno (draft), Bode Wilde (draft)
In Place
(Key players signed past Season 10)
Brendan Gallagher, LW; Brock Boeser, RW; Kyle Connor, LW; Matt Dumba, D; Nerius Alisauskas, D
Three Questions
1. The fans must be pretty happy after last year, eh? You would think so. They just seem a little less thrilled than you would think. The Jokerit, under the guidance of General Manager Jukka Tuominen, had their best season ever, reaching the 100-point plateau for the first time and placing 6th in the league – also a team record – before the Hussars bounced them out of the first round of the playoffs. But the smiles on Helsinki fans’ faces seem a little forced. To find out why the joy is muffled, you have to drill down through the team stats … to the last column. Penalty minutes are way down. In fact, the per game average has dropped from 15.88 in Season 3 under Trevor Grimm to 10.56 under Tuominen. That’s more than a major penalty per game! Is winning really worth seeing fewer illegal acts? The jury is still out at Hartwall Arena. A by-product of less penalty box time is the fact shots against are down compared to the Grimm Era, but still, some fans long for the days when Steve Downie would jump on someone’s back and Brad Marchand would jab someone’s privates with his stick for no reason at all. Helsinki Hockey 2.0 is taking shape under Tuominen and the fans are just going to have to get used to it.
2. How will last year’s rookie sensations do? In Season 9, Helsinki amazed the hockey world with a sumptuous group of rookies that included Brock Boeser, Kyle Connor, Alex Debrincat, Brandon Montour and Sam Bennett. Imagine that. The fans in Helsinki must have immediately fallen in love with GM Tuominen. The Finnish GM also selected Finns first in the last two drafts to practically cement the love affair with the fans of Finland. Henri Jokiharju and Jesperi Kotkaniemi are likely to get their attributes in April and while the defenseman Jokiharju probably won’t get the offensive attributes Tuominen was hoping for, they both look like good picks. But the young Jokerit rookies from last year will be punching each other’s arms in the back seat this season while some new veterans handle the driving. Tuominen did his best Paja Jansson imitation and sent 7 veteran forwards, 2 defensemen and a goalie packing in order to bring in some big-name free agents. Second-year Jokerit Nicklas Backstrom starts the season centering for second-year Jokerit Brendan Gallagher and longtime Jokerit Alexander Radulov, while the second line is the Free Agent Connection of Patrik Berglund, Kyle Okposo and Blake Wheeler. Last year’s rookies will get a reduced role, at least in the beginning of the season.
3. Who is going to stop the other teams’ guys? The Jokerit don’t have a proven number one goalie. Ben Bishop has been around for a long time, but he hasn’t played more than 22 games in any of the last four seasons. And he gets hurt more than Erik Forssell’s feelings. Stanislav Galimov is the other goalie on the roster, but the 24-year-old played in just 12 games last year and 19 in his rookie season, so all of Helsinki will get nervous when the puck is in their zone. They’ll have to count on their defensemen to take some of the load off the goalies. They could really use a Viktor Antipin, the Oslo defenseman who’s like a second goalie some nights. The best defensive defensemen on the team are Nerius Alisauskas and Jared Cowen. Given the goaltending question, those two blueliners could be the key to the Jokerit season. Matt Dumba and Jake Gardiner will be called upon to penalty kill and it would be great if those two consistently play well defensively. All six of Helsinki’s defensemen can play offense, so the plan might simply be to get the “goals for” average higher than the “goals against” average, no matter how high that may be.
History
Season Place PTS PP % PK % SPG SAPG GPG GAPG PIM
Season 9 6 100 17.5 81.1 31.73 28.33 3.95 3.41 10.56
Season 8 14 85 20.3 80.5 31.82 28.95 3.50 3.68 12.96
Season 7 9 97 16.4 84.1 31.87 28.38 3.27 2.91 14.34
Season 6 9 91 14.6 85.7 29.96 29.48 3.18 2.98 12.87
Season 5 8 99 20.4 81.3 30.41 30.80 3.22 3.00 12.54
Season 4 13 83 18.8 83.3 29.43 32.65 2.96 3.13 13.60
Season 3 9 91 17.9 87.3 29.17 32.76 2.90 2.91 15.88
Season 2 14 89 17.5 82.9 30.43 31.93 3.01 2.99 14.48
Season 1 17 84 21.7 80.8 30.01 33.09 3.15 3.49 9.63
Top Draft picks
Season 1: John Tavares, C, current age 30. Games played: 735; points: 940; +22
Season 2: Nerius Alisauskas, D, age 26. GP 623, Pts 271, +73
Season 3: Cody Eakin, C, age 28, GP 498, Pts 208, +32
Season 4: Sam Bennett, C, age 23. GP 69, Pts 10, +12
Season 5: Adrian Kempe, LW, age 22.
Season 6: Mitch Marner, C, age 22. GP 158, Pts 88, +19
Season 7: Tyler Jost, C/LW, age 20. GP 1, Pts 0,
0 plus-minus rating
Season 8: Ryan Hartman, LW, age 24. GP 7, Pts 3, 0 plus-minus rating
Season 9: Henri Jokiharju, D, age 19.
Season 10: Jesperi Kotkaniemi, C, age 18.
Trade History
Season 1 (picks without years listed are from initial draft)
Traded Round 4 pick (used to draft Stephen Weiss) to Copenhagen for Round 5 pick (used to draft Paul Stastny) and Round 12 pick (Marc Staal)
Traded John Tavares, Ilya Bryzgalov, 2013 Round 2 pick (Jakub Kovar) and $5 million to Edinburgh for Henrik Lundqvist
Traded Jamie McGinn to Milan for Nik Antropov, 2013 Round 2 pick (traded later) (Olexander Podbyedonostsev) and 2013 Round 3 pick (Matthew Dumba)
Traded Jakub Silfverberg and 2013 Round 2 pick (Olexander Podbyedonostsev) to Dublin for Boone Jenner
Season 2
Traded Alexander Burmistrov to Minsk for Brayden Scheen and Kyle Clifford
Traded Martin St. Louis and 2015 Round 3 (Jakub Vrana) to St. Petersburg for Jarome Iginla
*Colton Gillies was once Helsinki property but is with Paris now. Not sure if trade was involved.
Sorry Trevor, I seem to be missing some trades from this period.
Season 3
Traded Nick Spaling to Minsk for 2015 Round 3 pick (Brandon Montour)
Traded Sven Baertschi to Minsk for 2014 Rd 2 pick (Hunter Shinkaruk)
Season 4
Traded Kyle Clifford and Gareth Roberts to Frankfurt for Travis Zajac
Season 5
Traded Jacob Trouba to Zurich for Alexander Radulov
Traded Wojtek Wolski to Oslo for 2016 Round 3 pick (later traded to Stockholm-Ryan Gunderson)
Traded 2016 Round 1 (Later traded to Gothenburg – Olli Palola) pick to Moscow for Nicolas Ehlers
Traded 2016 Round 2 pick (Connor Bleackley) and 2016 Round 3 pick (Ryan Gunderson) to Stockholm for Nikita Scherbak
Signed Stanislav Galimov (free agent)
Signed Peter Budaj (free agent)
Signed Patryk Wajda (free agent)
Signed Marc-Andre Bergeron (free agent)
Season 6
Traded 2017 Round 3 pick (Johan Larsson) to Stockholm for Pavel Datsyuk
Traded Derek Roy and Carlo Colaiacovo to Madrid for Nick Holden
After Season 6 started:
Traded Mitch Marner to Moscow for Brock Boeser
Season 8
Traded Eliezer Sherbatov to Berlin for Alex Debrincat
Season 9
Traded Brayden Schenn and Nikolaj Ehlers to Stockholm for Brendan Gallagher
Traded 2022 Round 3 pick to Lisbon for Ryan Kesler
Traded Cody Eakin to Dublin for 2021 Round 2 pick (Joe Veleno)
Season 10
Traded Boone Jenner and a 2021 Round 3 pick to Moscow for 2021 Round 1 pick (later traded to Stockholm (Ryan Merkley))
Traded Jack Johnson to Geneva for 2021 Round 2 pick (Bode Wilde)
Traded 2021 Round 1 pick (from Moscow) (Ryan Merkley) and 2021 Round 2 pick (Veini Vehvilainen) to Stockholm for 2021 Round 1 pick (Jesperi Kotkaniemi)
Traded James Neal to Geneva for 2022 Round 3 pick
