NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- There were 15 Finnish players among the 224 players drafted by NHL teams on Wednesday and Thursday in Nashville, Tenn.
Of the Finns selected, 20% of them were selected by Pittsburgh.
The Penguins took a Finnish defenseman, Emil Pieniniemi, with their third-round pick on Thursday. They had two picks in the seventh round -- 217th overall, acquired in the Jared McCann trade, and 223rd overall, acquired from the Panthers in a swap of seventh-round picks last summer. They used the picks to draft a pair of Finns -- winger Emil Jarventie and defenseman Kalle Kangas.
All three players played together on the Finnish national junior team that won the 2022 Hlinka Gretzky Cup.
Penguins director of amateur scouting Nick Pryor said Thursday that the Penguins didn't go into the draft looking to focus on Finns, and that there's not really anything different in regards to developing players that come from Finland. Using half of their draft picks on Finns is just "how it shook out," he said.
A seventh-round pick is always going to have a big, uphill battle to make it to the NHL. The hope is that a team can find a diamond in the rough. Jarventie and Kangas have their flaws like any other seventh-round picks, but each have some intriguing attributes that led the Penguins to them late in the draft.
Jarventie, 18, played all over last year -- 15 games in the top Finnish league with SaiPa, 19 games with KOOVEE in the second-tier professional league, and 21 games with Ilves in the U20 junior league.
Jarventie had no trouble producing at the junior level, with eight goals and 11 assists in 21 games. That production fell off significantly in the professional leagues when he was playing against grown men. He had one goal in his 15 games in the top league, and four goals and three assists in 19 games in the second league. One reason for that dropoff is that Jarventie needs to get stronger. He doesn't have much height at 5 foot 10, and he doesn't have the strength to compensate for that at 167 pounds.
Still, it was impressive that Jarventie broke into the top league in the time that he did at his age. Most ranking services had Jarventie way higher than the Penguins drafted him. TSN's Craig Button had him ranked No. 62. Draft Prospects Hockey ranked Jarventie No. 69. Flo Hockey ranked him No. 93, Smaht Scouting ranked him No. 96, and FC Hockey ranked him No. 100.
FC Hockey's scouting report on Jarventie calls him "an offensive winger with a lethal shot. He has had a pretty eventful season playing for several different teams, which has definitely affected his level of play. As an offensive guy, being slotted in on the fourth line for a struggling SaiPa team is definitely not the optimum situation. He wasn’t really able to showcase most of his strengths during this game, although there were a few occasions where you could see some flashes of the puck-handling and confidence that has made him a decent prospect."
The prospects website Dobber Prospects wrote that Jarventie is "an undersized but quick and electric winger. His feet are fast and he has a great motor, but his stride lacks power, and while his first steps are very quick, he doesn’t possess the greatest top speed. Jarventie has good hands – notably in tight spaces – but he often relies too much on his skill and still needs to learn when to simplify his game. He flashes great playmaking ability at times, but it is very inconsistent, and he also makes a lot of questionable decisions with the puck."
It's Jarventie's skill with the puck that stood out most to the Penguins.
"He's an undersized winger, offensive-minded," Pryor said. "He can really shoot the puck and is really good in the offensive zone. For him, it's going to be about rounding out the other parts of his game. But we felt that the point where we got him that it was good to take a chance on a guy that had offensive instincts and an offensive part of his game that we were really attracted to."
Jarventie's brother Roby is a forward who was a 2020 second-round pick of the Senators and played the last two seasons in the AHL. Their father Martti retired in 2016 after a 22-year professional career as a defenseman primarily in Finland. He spent one year in North America in which he played one game for the Canadiens and 59 games for Montreal's AHL affiliate.
One word that won't be used to describe Kangas is "undersized." Kangas, 18, is already a huge defenseman at 6 foot 4 and 205 pounds.
Kangas has yet to play professional hockey at any level in Finland. He spent last season in the Jokerit system at the U20 junior level, where he recorded one goal, eight assists, 40 penalty minutes and a plus-15 rating in 42 games.
The few rankings that had Kangas on them varied wildly. Draft Prospects Hockey ranked him No. 165, and FC Hockey ranked him No. 230.
"Kalle Kangas is a big defenseman, extremely hard to play against," Pryor said. "His skating is going to need to improve. He can move the puck, he's hard to play against. So he's one of those guys that makes it harder on the other team."
Pryor said that there's a chance that both Jarventie and Kangas will attend Penguins development camp this week, set to be held July 1-3 at the Lemieux Complex. Neither player traveled to Nashville for the draft, so there are logistical challenges in bringing them all the way over from Finland on such short notice.
