10 Finnish Prospects Closest to an NHL Debut – The Hockey Writers – NHL Prospects

Development camps wrapped up across the league this month, and they bring up a lot of conversations about when fans can expect to see those players hit the ice in an NHL game. As someone who focuses on the Finnish players around the league, I think this is a good time to look back at the scouting notes from each camp and see which Finns are expected to reach the NHL the soonest.

How I Rated Each Prospect

A drafted prospect who hasn’t signed an entry-level contract can’t dress for an NHL game. That’s the first filter. It’s also a tell. Every NHL club is capped at 50 contracts, so spending one on a prospect is a team saying out loud that it expects to need him. Leaving a prospect unsigned year after year says the opposite just as clearly. The two players below are still unsigned draft rights, and that’s the main reason they sit near the bottom of a list I’d otherwise have them much higher on.

A Liiga contract is a different animal. Here’s how it actually works. Tappara still had a year left on Benjamin Rautiainen when the Tampa Bay Lightning decided they wanted him for 2026-27, so Tampa Bay paid Tappara to buy that year out. The NHL club writes the check, the Finnish club agrees to let the player walk, and he’s free to sign. Had Tappara refused, Rautiainen would be spending this winter in Tampere. Most NHL teams won’t spend that kind of money on a prospect they haven’t already committed to, which is why a Liiga deal drags a player down this list.

After that, it’s roster math. A prospect needs a job to take, so the depth chart matters. So does waiver status, because a team can bury an exempt player in the minors and forget he exists, while everybody else forces a real decision in September.

Performance was my last checkpoint, and point totals were the part I tried not to look too hard at. I looked at usage instead. How many shifts a coach gives a 20-year-old, how often he lets him carry the puck, whether he trusts him at the dot. That’s an organization telling you what it actually thinks, and it’s usually louder than the scoresheet.

One more rule: zero NHL regular-season games. Preseason and rookie tournaments don’t count against a player, but a single regular-season shift does. Anyone who has already debuted has answered the question this list is asking, so there’s no reason to spend a slot on him. That’s what keeps Konsta Helenius and Lenni Hämeenaho off the board. Both would have ranked high. Both made their NHL debuts in 2025-26.

10. Petteri Rimpinen, G, Los Angeles Kings

Catches left. 6-0, 176. Born April 25, 2006, in Kirkkonummi. Fifth round, 152nd overall, 2025.

Nobody drafted Petteri Rimpinen in 2024. He went back to Kiekko-Espoo, took a Liiga starting job at 18, and won the Jarmo Wasama Trophy as the league’s best rookie, which is quite the achievement for a teenage goalie to do in a men’s professional hockey league. The Los Angeles Kings took him 152nd overall the next June.

His follow-up reads well. A 2.30 goals-against average (GAA), a .911 save percentage (SV%) over 40 games, four shutouts, and a .943 SV% across his final 12 starts.

Then look at what he faced. Kiekko-Espoo allowed 26 shots a night and surrendered the kind of chances a pro is supposed to stop. Measured against what those shots should have produced, Rimpinen finished roughly 17 goals underwater. He did the same thing the year before, and it got worse at the World Juniors.

He’s 20, and goalies take longer than anyone. He’s also unsigned, and Kiekko-Espoo has him for the 2026-27 season.

9. Aron Kiviharju, D, Minnesota Wild

Shoots left. 5-10, 181. Born Jan. 25, 2006, in Esbjerg, Denmark. Fourth round, 122nd overall, 2024.

Aron Kiviharju was tracking as a top-10 pick until he wrecked his knee in his draft year. He went 122nd.

Since then, he’s captained Finland at back-to-back World Juniors, led the Finnish side in ice time, and played top-four Liiga minutes for HIFK at 19. Watch him play, and you will notice how high his hockey IQ is. He lies to forecheckers with his eyes and shoulders, kills plays with an active stick, and moves the puck up the middle without ever looking rushed. In 14 junior international games, he scored zero goals and set up nine. Everything he does is distribution.

He’s the best defenseman on this list, and he’s ninth because the Minnesota Wild haven’t signed him and HIFK has him through 2026-27. Minnesota could buy him out. Nothing in my notes says they will before 2027-28.

8. Kalle Vaisanen, RW, Boston Bruins

Shoots right. 6-5, 200. Born Jan. 28, 2003, in Kotka. Fourth round, 106th overall, 2021.

The New York Rangers drafted a 6-foot-5 winger in 2021 and waited five years for something to happen. It didn’t.

Kalle Vaisanen managed four points in 51 games in his first full American Hockey League (AHL) season, and the deployment was uglier than the scoring. He played 12 shifts a night, touched the puck 25 times, and never took a penalty, which, on a frame that size, tells you plenty.

The Boston Bruins picked him up on July 1 as the smaller half of the Joonas Korpisalo trade. He goes to Providence in the last year of his entry-level deal, and he can be sent there without clearing waivers.

He ranks eighth because he’s signed and on this continent, and age- and performance-wise, I can see him being called up in the case of a roster gap. But just because a player struggled in the AHL does not mean a teenager doing well in Liiga is better than them, or more worthy of a call-up. The AHL is the second-highest hockey league for a reason. You are closest to the top, and just making it to that level is signal enough for your talent.

I am not sure I see much more than a bottom-six winger, but he has a shot for NHL time.

7. Rasmus Kumpulainen, C, Minnesota Wild

Shoots left. 6-4, 203. Born Aug. 8, 2005, in Lahti. Second round, 53rd overall, 2023.

Rasmus Kumpulainen spent 2025-26 in North America, and it went badly.

The AHL ate him alive. Two assists in his first 25 games with the Iowa Wild, 15 shifts and 43 puck touches a night, and the Minnesota Wild shipped him down to the ECHL two days before the new year.

That’s where he found something. His touches more than doubled, his scoring jumped past half a point a game, and his habits tightened up. He’s 6-foot-4 with real hands, and he’s signed through 2027-28.

He returns to the AHL this fall, buried behind Hunter Haight and Caedan Bankier. One clean season is all he needs.

6. Emil Pieniniemi, D, Florida Panthers

Shoots left. 6-2, 176. Born March 2, 2005, in Kuopio. Third round, 91st overall, 2023.

Emil Pieniniemi put up 60 points running a power play in Kingston, then refused to report to the ECHL and got suspended for it. The Pittsburgh Penguins traded him to the Florida Panthers this offseason.

He’s a genuine volume puck-mover. He touched the puck 114 times a game in the Ontario Hockey League (OHL) and 96 in the ECHL, the kind of number that means a coach is running the entire breakout through one defenseman. What he doesn’t do is shoot. His chance creation sits near zero at every level he’s played, and his AHL touches fell to 52 once the competition got real.

There’s an NHL role in there if the strength and the defensive detail arrive. There’s also no room in Florida. He gets a full AHL season, and he needs all of it.

5. Kasper Halttunen, RW, Ottawa Senators

Shoots right. 6-3, 205. Born June 7, 2005, in Helsinki. Second round, 36th overall, 2023.

Kasper Halttunen has the best shot on this list, a right-handed one-timer you build a power play around, and it produced 16 goals in his first AHL season.

Then look at how the San Jose Barracuda used him. He got 16 shifts a night and 56 puck touches. Emil Pieniniemi and Julius Miettinen were seeing 94 and 102. He scored on the chances he got, and he didn’t get many, which is what happens when a team loves one tool and distrusts the rest of the player.

So San Jose moved him. The Ottawa Senators took him in June alongside William Eklund for the ninth-overall pick, and he lands in Belleville.

Watch his shift count under a new staff. If it climbs, the rest of his game has caught up to the shot. I could see him being considered highly as a call-up.

4. Jesse Kiiskinen, RW, Detroit Red Wings

Shoots right. 6-1, 190. Born Aug. 23, 2005, in Hollola. Third round, 68th overall, 2023.

Two years ago, Jesse Kiiskinen posted the best under-20 season any Finn had managed in Liiga since Mikael Granlund. He recorded 44 points, and the Detroit Red Wings, who had traded for him a year earlier, looked very smart.

Then it went backwards. His scoring nearly halved, from 0.94 points per game to 0.51, and the collapse was entirely in playmaking. The goals held. The assists dropped by roughly two-thirds. He turned into a shooter who couldn’t create for anyone else, against a league he already knew.

Detroit sent him to Grand Rapids when the Liiga season ended, and he played three games there, which is noise. He turns pro full-time this fall.

If the assists come back over a real sample, the scorer survives. If they don’t, he’s a one-trick winger.

3. Julius Miettinen, C, Seattle Kraken

Shoots left. 6-3, 207. Born Jan. 20, 2006, in Helsinki. Second round, 40th overall, 2024.

Julius Miettinen won a Western Hockey League (WHL) championship and the playoff MVP this spring, the first Finn ever to take that award and only the second import after Leon Draisaitl. He put up 27 points in 18 games and dragged Everett to the Memorial Cup Final.

A year ago, Miettinen was a pass-first center with a modest goal total. Last season, his scoring more than doubled while the playmaking held, and his faceoff percentage climbed from 53 to 59. Players don’t get better at everything at once by accident.

The rest of the profile is the most complete on this list. Everett gave him 23 shifts and 102 puck touches a night, more than anyone here, and he finished at plus-1.14 per game. He took 21 draws a night and won most of them.

Sit with that last one. Coaches trust young centers at the dot before they trust them anywhere else, and Miettinen is 6-foot-3, wins his battles, and is already trusted there. That sort of faceoff success is why a prospect like Arttu Hyry found a place back on the Dallas Stars for the 2026-27 season. The player ranked first on this list takes three faceoffs every 100 games.

So why third? Because Miettinen has never played a professional game, and the Seattle Kraken are rebuilding and can afford to wait. He spends 2026-27 in Coachella Valley.

2. Emil Hemming, RW, Dallas Stars

Shoots right. 6-1, 205. Born June 27, 2006, in Vaasa. First round, 29th overall, 2024.

Last October, Emil Hemming joined a team that had all their prospects taken by an NHL team filled with injuries. He went scoreless in five AHL games with the Texas Stars, his shifts cut from 23 a night to 15, and his puck touches from 101 to 64, and the Stars sent him back to junior on Oct. 28. A first-round pick, stuck between levels.

He answered with 63 points in 46 games for the Barrie Colts, then 28 more in 21 playoff games.

Then the depth chart cracked open. The Stars moved Mavrik Bourque and Ilya Lyubushkin to the Nashville Predators on July 1 to clear cap room for Jason Robertson. That trade wasn’t about promoting a prospect. It still left a middle-six hole on a team that intends to contend.

I watched Hemming at development camp in Frisco, and he’s a strange player to scout because the thing he does best is refuse to do anything stupid. He reads the play, waits for the other guy to make the error, and takes what’s there. Some people see a passenger. They’re wrong.

The shot is an NHL weapon today, a quick release off either leg that would score on a functioning power play tomorrow. He’s 6-foot-1, 205 pounds, and he’ll hold a play through contact. His defensive habits sit ahead of most scoring wingers his age, a carryover from killing penalties in Liiga at 18.

What’s missing is pace. Stars director of amateur scouting Joe McDonnell frames the path as a hybrid, part Roope Hintz easing over from Europe, part Jason Robertson and Logan Stankoven jumping straight from junior. So he starts in Cedar Park.

1. Benjamin Rautiainen, C/LW, Tampa Bay Lightning

Shoots left. 6-0, 174. Born June 12, 2005, in Tampere. Fourth round, 108th overall, 2025.

Nobody drafted Rautiainen in 2024 either. All 32 teams looked at a Finn coming off 62 points in junior and passed. The Lightning took him 108th the following summer, the kind of pick nobody notices.

Then he led Liiga in scoring with 77 points in 59 games, a plus-24 rating, a championship, and the Lasse Oksanen Award as the league’s best player. He’s the first man past 70 points in Finland since 2007-08, and he passed Saku Koivu for the most points any player has ever produced in Liiga before turning 21. Joachim Blichfeld, the next-best scorer in the league, is seven years older than him.

Then the Lightning bought out the final year of his Tappara contract to sign him. Teams don’t spend that money to stash a player in Syracuse.

He’s a playmaker, and the shape of it is clean. His assist rate nearly doubled last season, his puck touches climbed from 62 a game to 93, and better than a third of his helpers were primary. That’s a man running a line, not riding one.

Two things stand between Rautiainen and an NHL sweater in October. He’s 174 pounds, and NHL defensemen will find that out in his first exhibition game. There’s nowhere to hide a small winger who wants the puck on the wall.

And he takes no faceoffs. Three per 100 games, despite the center listing. That matters more than it sounds, because the easiest job in hockey to hand a 21-year-old is fourth-line center, and Rautiainen can’t do it. He has to beat out Gage Goncalves for a scoring job outright, at 174 pounds, in three weeks of camp.

For a lot of these players, September brings another checkpoint. Before main camp opens, most clubs send their prospects to rookie tournaments, round-robin weekends where several teams bring their young guys to one rink and let them play. Those games are the first honest look a front office gets at how close a prospect is to NHL minutes, and whether he fits the way the team wants to play.