Welcome to the ‘training camp hopeful’ series the 2025 summer. Over the next few weeks I’ll look at players who are not clearly on the roster, but could find the NHL through various means this fall. It is an important part of what should be a fascinating season.
Atro Leppänen Q. and A.
What do the Oilers have here? Hell if I know. I’m hoping for Reijo Ruotsalainen reincarnated. Leppanen is an exceptional offensive player who happens to play defense. I’m not sure if he can play defense, though.
What is his scouting report? Corey Pronman at The Athletic gave the best one I’ve seen (here) and says “good skater with decent hockey sense and a big point shot. His defending and compete aren’t massive selling points, though.” Pronman is hard marker on skating, so his assessment is encouraging.
How does he make the lineup? Maybe he’s a LH who can play right side? Other than that, trade or injury. I’ll say this: If Leppanen is shooting lights out in Bakersfield, and the Oilers can’t use him, another NHL team may come calling for a trade. Leppanen has value if he can post offense.
You’re trading him?!!!?!! Look, the Oilers have Mattias Ekholm, Darnell Nurse, Jake Walman and Brett Kulak who are lefthanded. Evan Bouchard, Ty Emberson and Troy Stecher are righthanded. If the Oilers could move Leppanen for a RH upgrade? Music!
What is his NHL equivalency? I don’t want to tell you.
What the hell? Why not? You’ll get all riled up and try to trade Ekholm.
Ekholm Wreckholm, what’s his NHLE? Per 82 games, it’s 13-26-39.
Holy crap! Trade Ekholm! You can’t trade Ekholm. Leppanen will never apply for the job Ekholm plays. Leppanen is an unknown in terms of how productive he could be in the NHL next season. Based on scouting reports, third pair LH side and the No. 2 power play would seem a good landing spot. That’s miles from Ekholm.
What are his projections? I have Leppanen playing 60 AHL games, scoring 13-27-40. I have Leppanen playing 10 NHL games, going 1-1-2.
Way too low! How bad is the defense? We are extremely limited in math availability in his case. Leppanen was plus-8 for Sport Vaasa in the Liiga. That was the top plus minus among defensemen on the team.
He’s going to play, man. You’re looking past an impact player here. I don’t think I am. My suggestion is see what he can do in preseason, and if he’s blocked (he will be unless there’s injuries) then send him to the Condors. He should thrive there, make a decision after 20+ games.
Okay, final question: Could this be a Bowman Euro home run? I think the answer is yes. Let’s call it a double into the gap. But we need to see him.
On the Lowdown today, we’ll have Jason Gregor and talk Oilers, Elks, Jays, MMA and more. Noon to 2pm, Sports 1440.
Five ways Edmonton Oilers can extend Connor McDavid contention window
https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6505143/2025/07/21/oilers-goalie-connor-mcdavid-stats/
If leppanan is a player, perhaps we can move someone else for a RHD. Hate to move EK, as he’d probably be a good cheap sign for a 3 LHD on his next contract. Kulak might fetch us a decent RHD though.
Most dangerous slapshot by a Oiler defenceman. 1)Souray 2)Siltanen 3)Bouchard 4) Coffey 5) Pronger 6) Reijo 7)Niinama 8) Mironov 9) Bergeron
Depending on what you mean by “dangerous”, Boris Mironov could be much higher.
Haha.
I can’t remember Ninama having a slapper. Maybe it’s my memory.
Bergeron clearly has the most underrated slapper in that case.
His ability to get it away even on bad passes was superb.
And Dave Manson needs to be on this list. If you can score on NHL goalies clean from the neutral zone, you should be on that list.
Souray missed too much. Love the shot, but he needed to lock in or shoot from closer.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jyzLujfadSY if you haven’t seen it.
Watching these highlights he scores most of his goals from inside the dots.
He seemed to be on LD mostly but some RD
Almost all goals wrist shots.
It does look like he can skate.
Just for shats and gaggles… Nurse to Dallas for an extended Robertson? Thoughts?
Dallas does not need a left shot D. They need someone who can play the right side. Heiskanen is already playing the right side as a left shot D.
Dallas has the strongest complement of left shot D in the NHL.
Plus, Harley is about to be paid.
Thanks. Not as familiar with Dallas D hierarchy. Just a fleeting thought after seeing an article about possible landing spots for Robertson. I suppose it might also leave us as the Leafs West, with a fortune in forwards but no money for D… as they were for a number of years. That said the Oilers were supposedly in on the Rantanen action just last year, so who knows?
Does leppanen see PP 1 does Akey see PP2 is Carrick or Dineen still in the mix on the PP2??? I can’t believe Reijo only played 26 regular season games scoring only 6 times with that booming shot he actually played more playoff games at 43. He was such a good distributor of the puck and Sather bringing him back for a encore Cup was genius.
For a second there, I thought ATRONIMICAL was an adjective. Then I thought it was a musical cue, so I went looking for a Finnish heavy metal band. I’ve now resolved to lay off the daytime spliff.
This fellow is pretty level headed and a good person to follow on X for Oilers fans. Maybe he is here as well?
Mathew Panchyshyn
@mathewjdp
During the 2012-2013 season, Erik Karlsson participated in the Liiga elite league due to the lockout, amassing 34 points in 30 games. In the preceding NHL season, he achieved 78 points in 81 games, and in the subsequent season, he garnered 74 points in 82 games.
The next defenseman to approach this level of performance in Liiga was Atro Leppanen this year, with 63 points in 60 games.
It can be challenging to accurately predict how a player’s performance will translate between different leagues. I am not suggesting that Leppanen is destined to become a star in the NHL. However, I believe he possesses the potential to become an NHL player, and that is a topic worthy of discussion.
Leppanen not only led his team in points 63 he also led in goals 21. I dare anyone to find a D man in any league that has done this? Bouchard had the most points in London in I believe his draft year but not the most goals.
… a big point shot. His defending and compete aren’t massive selling points, though.”
Sounds like the Finnish Evan Bouchard. That’s good right?
The only people that suggests Bouchard does not compete either i) do not in fact watch Bouchard play; or ii) do not understand hockey.
I enjoy checking out a new signings teammates and rivals for Oiler connections, just for a little context. Not much there, but looks like Miroslav Svoboda is still stopping pucks in a backup role.
Of course, this signing, of a distant bell more likely than not to “not make it”, has zero impact on Ekholm (or really anything D-group assessment at the NHL level) but this does bring up a conversation on what we should expect from Ekholm this coming season.
He’s 35 and coming off significant injury. One should expect age-related regression to start with and then add on the fact that coming back from significant injury later in a career often sees a player never regain pre-injury levels.
I’m not ready to “Sekera” Ek but I am intrigued on how this season goes.
Of course, first instinct is Ekholm/Bouchard (along with Nurse/Walman who were exceptional in 100 regular season minutes).
I also have some time to explore Kulak/Bouchard who were 7-1 goals and 61% expected goals in over 150 playoff minutes – that cannot be ignored and, if Ekholm needs to be scaled back a bit, that pairing makes sense to me based off of past results.
Stan Bowman needs to be a bit ruthless with the roster over the next 1-2 years.
This means taking a hard look at 15.25M worth of defensemen and determining if we can win without them. In the case of both Nurse and Ekholm we’ve seen their peak and are likely now witnessing the decline. Getting walked by Marchand in Game 5 was a sad moment for The Viking.
It may come to be that the Oilers are better off with $6M cleared off the books to add an impact winger or an upgrade in goal.
I’m not opposed however to re-signing Ekholm in the summer of ’26 to a Jake Allen-type contract.
I have little doubt that Ekholm is in to age-regression years but, at the same time, I am not going to put any stock in to his play in the post-season and getting walked – he was clearly FAR from 100% with massive limited mobility.
The bigger errors were made off ice with the combined decisions to (a) play him to start with and (b) not fade him down to third pairing based on reduced abilities.
We don’t know what level of Ekholm we’ll have this season but I am confident it will be much better than the player we saw in the playoffs.
I have alot of time to try Kulak/Bouchard, based on supernova playoff results in a real sample (150 games) and fading Ekholm to the third pair (Nurse/Walman locked for now) depending on where he’s at.
But is he worth the cap hit? With Nurse – Walman – Kulak (and Leppanen) on the left side, what level of play are we going to get out of Ekholm and does it merit $6M?
IMO it’s unwise to go into the playoffs 4 or 5 deep at LD if you’re still uncertain in goal and still lacking dependable secondary scoring.
I have Walman on the right side with Nurse.
I don’t know what level of play we are going to get out of Ekholm and if it warrants $6MM – I’ll let you know in November.
For all we know Ekholm returns nearly just as good as he ever has.
I mentioned on numerous occasions the last several years on re-upping Ekholm at a cap friendly deal as Vikings seem to age more gracefully. Now it’s wait and see as he looked good returning from injury but once the adrenaline wore off he was a liability in the final. Hindsight is 50/50 but coach K.K put to much weight on him. I’m hoping his play in the final was injury related if not we need to prop him up and trade him if we are not resigning him as he will have value.
I’ve never been on board with presuming they should re-sign Ekholm and, in fact, on the day of trade, I worried the contract term was too long………
Ekholm was terrible in the playoffs but that was not Ekholm “returning form injury”, that was Ekholm playing through injury.
I am very anxious to see where his game will be in October – I’m certain better than it was in June but perhaps not where its been in the past.
To the conversation a few days ago on NHLe, does anything thing there is a reasonable chance this player comes close to those numbers in the NHL (even if given equivalent opportunities as he’s had in Liiga)?
There’s a reason a lot of basic statistical analysis must look at outliers very critically.
— It’s been touched on before : a challenge is with NHLE is that in almost all cases they aren’t given an “equivalent” opportunity
— That’s where I think scouting and just hockey in general misses the boat. Since forever: the #6 D for instance was a star at one point then moves down. The skills of being a PP1 stud in junior and role of #6 D are vastly different.
— It’s interesting to me that to use a different example but same concept most 4c were at one time stud Cs.
— Convention is never to draft and develop a 4c with the requisite skills : rather 4Cs are just players they get “passed” if you follow
The big club with newbies Howard-Savoie-Tomasek-Magpie with Bakersfield adding Samanski-Leppanen-Regula-Hutson-Jarventie-Akey-Clattenburg. I don’t know how Bowman did it so fast but we actually have a big club getting younger and more skilled with also a promising team in Bakersfield. The Hawks could of won 5-6 Cups if not for his supporting cast having to much sucess which led to cap problems.
The trick is to keep the pipeline flowing. Not all of these players will work out. Hopefully they either make the big club or be valuable enough to add supplemental pieces (or greater) in their prime.
They are a few years away from reaching a Carolina level where they can get Guentzel for crayons.
Holland would straight up bet on a player usually a veteran where as Bowman collects a stable of youngins. If 2-3 pop he more than covers his bet. Samanski-Hutson-Leppanen-Jarventi-Howard-Savoie-Podkolzin-Regula. The more darts the better I just wish he would get more reliable goaltending which I think he will shortly. The Bowman team is shaping up more and more in his vision as a puck fast moving skilled group from top to bottom.
Producing offence is one thing … defending it against NHL level competition is another.
There’s a reason why these older Euro D-men don’t succeed when they come over to North America. The NHLE is deceiving. He needs at least one year in the AHL to get used to the smaller ice surface, faster pace of play and systems.
If Leppanen plays a single game in the NHL next season, then something will have gone very wrong for the Oilers, when there are 4 legit LHD pros on the NHL roster.
We won’t know until we know.
I guess I should have prefaced this by stating that my comment on Leppanen connects to yesterday’s thread about Lavoie.
Unless the offence that a player brings is an extreme outlier in terms of production (e.g. Panarin level, or Bouchard level), a player has to be able to defend well enough to earn a coaches trust in order to stick in the NHL long enough to realize their NHLE.
McLeod succeeded because he demonstrated very good defensive awareness early on and was not a defensive liability; Eventually, he earned more playing time and offensive opportunity. Lavoie, who’s shooting ability is very good but not elite, and who doesn’t use his large frame to hit or intimidate enough to overcome his mediocre skating, hasn’t stuck in the NHL under several coaches for two successful organizations, because he has been liability in his own zone (1-7 goals in the NHL).
I’ve never seen Leppanen play, so indeed we’ll see if he is another Rafalski or another Auvitu. But unless his pace and puck moving ability are elite, he’s unlikely to play a minute for the Oilers this season, unless there are some significant injury woes.
I think that shows how far the organization has come since 2017 … back then, the organizational depth was so thin, that these Euro free agents would be pressed into the lineup right away and immediately proceed to fail at the NHL level, rather than be given an opportunity to first succeed at the AHL level. Now guys like Leppanen and Tomasek will have to blow the doors off to play NHL games.
I expect some training camp trades to flesh out the roster, as we have too many players waiver eligible and i don’t think Bowman will lose them for nothing.
Philp and Regula i actually expect to start in NHL as they are waiver eligible and mot likely to be claimed.
Seems like we need to move at least 1 forward and 1 defensemen. the forward probably only happens if Savoie and Howard make the big club (bye bye Janmark or Kapanen. More likely Janmark as he was not Bowman’s signing).
And on D, moving Kulak just makes a ton of sense, unless Ekholm wants too much money on an extension, and they move him to get value and get a RH version of him back.
Walman-Bouchard
Nurse – upgrade
Kulak – Emberson
All depends on the upgrade. Right now Walman on RD with Nurse and a healthy Ekholm is huge, but we are leftorium again and could use some balance.
Regula’s last two seasons were spent in the AHL (i.e. not an established NHL player) and he missed all of last season with a knee injury.
I would think its unlikely that any team is claiming him and keeping him on their roster.
Philp is likely on the team.
Tomasek is waivers exempt (although expected to make the team).
Unless Janmark shows more than he generally does, well, he really should be waiver fodder – at his bloated (by $500K) cap hit.
Each of Lazar, Kapanen, Janmark could be exposed – the latter two have contract that likely keep them from being claimed – both overpaid by $300K-$500K.
If Hyman is out for 3+ weeks to start the season, it will save a couple spots.
I think the D is set and don’t seem them moving Kulak at all before the season.
I actually really really like the D with
Ekholm/Bouchard
Nurse/Walman
Kulak/Emberson (Stech)
and, if Ekholm is not near the player we know,
Kulak/Bouchard
Nurse/Walman
Ekholm/Emberson (Stech)
The Kulak/Bouchard playoff results and the Nurse/Walman regular season results are too impressive to ignore.
This organization is just always trying to fill the hole Yohann Auvitu left.
Would be interesting to see him on a pairing with Regula for the Condors.
I see even 10 NHL games as aggressive but we don’t know what we don’t know.
We do have 4 NHL left shot D with Walman likely to move to the right to play with Nurse.
If a LD went down, I could see Walman going back to his natural side with Regula getting the call up.
I am curious why you think Walman will move to 2RHD?
The coaching staff chose to play Kulak at 2RHD over Walman in the playoffs. And Kulak played 3.5 minutes more per game 5v5 in the playoffs than Walman.
Sure Coffey is gone but the Knobber obviously had a say in the D deployment and prefers Kulak over Walman at RHD/in general.
Kulak’s 5v5 toi was second highest for Oilers dmen in the playoffs.
I see Walman as the best option to move to RD.
Yes, the coaching staff played Kulak there over Walman and I’ve opined for 6 weeks now that was a mistake based on results (and certain regular season results that were not run with). Also, that coach is no longer the d-coach, right? I do not think that Knob was going to interfere with Coffey’s deployment.
Nurse/Walman were 8-2 goals and 72% expected goals in 105 minutes in the regular season – that is a main reason that I lock that pairing in to start.
This is not a bash on Kulak but it seems Walman is better on the right side and I also have a ton of time for Kulak/Bouchard based off of 7-1 goals and 61% expected goals in 150 playoff minutes.
I know, I know, NST goal share and expected goal share for pairs is not conclusive evidence of anything (except the actual goal share is real – doesn’t give us the process/background without more digging) but I think both those pairings need to be explored based on recent results.
Oh I agree that Walman is the best option for 2RHD.
But the fact remains, Walman’s TOI was the lowest out of the big six and the coaching staff heavily favoured Kulak over Walman. It will be interesting to see how/if that deployment changes this season.
The coach making those decisions is no longer coaching.
The TOI you provide are indeed facts but (1) the decision maker is no longer the decision maker and (2) in my opinion, it didn’t work and I see, from my couch, a potential better option that I hope they give some opportunity to.