Kraken Took Slice Of Powerhouse Finnish Hockey Pie 

HELSINKI, Finland – Kraken forward Kaapo Kakko feels the key to his country’s outsized hockey success starts with the elite training players receive from youth levels on up. 

“I think from the start, there are a lot of good coaches,” Finland native Kakko said after the Kraken’s debut practice here at Veikkaus Arena ahead of this week’s NHL Global Series games Thursday and Saturday against the Carolina Hurricanes. “There are a lot of lot of young kids playing the game. I mean, it's also the biggest sport in Finland, so that's something. When I was growing up, I was always watching the game, so I wanted to play.  

“Like I said, there’s a lot of kids playing, and then a lot of good coaches. I guess that's the that's the reason.” 

And getting those eager young players paired with the best coaches didn’t happen by accident. The hockey-loving country of only 5.7 million people overhauled its youth hockey approach in 2009 to shift from systems-based play to focusing on individual skills coaching and getting young players to train, eat and care for themselves more like professional athletes.  

The results have since made relatively tiny Finland a powerhouse across numerous world tournaments, while a wave of elite Finnish talent has been drafted into the NHL including Aleksander Barkov, Sebastian Aho, Miro Heiskanen, Mikko Rantanen and Patrik Laine. Finnish players in the NHL jumped from 11 in 1990-91 to 51 last season.  

The Kraken have capitalized on the Finnish talent influx, arriving here Sunday with a roster that includes Finnish born forwards Kakko and Jani Nyman, along with defenseman Ville Ottavainen and extra netminder Nikke Kokko. Throw in the team’s additional Finnish prospects not on this trip in record-setting local professional goalie Kim Saarinen, fellow domestic pro netminder Visa Vedenpaa and former Everett Silvertips power forward Julius Miettinen, now with AHL Coachella Valley, and the Kraken do appear to be mining a precious Nordic resource.

Kraken amateur scouting director Robert Kron insists the team did not set out to deliberately stock the roster with players from one of the planet’s more improved hockey nations. 

“We try not to prioritize one or region or the other,” Czech Republic native Kron said. “But we do feel we have a great coverage here, and you know myself knowing the region very well and knowing a lot of people. So, it kind of happens that we ended up having luck with the Finnish guys and they were on our draft board when our picks came up. And so we were happy to take them and so far so good.” 

That extends beyond the draft to trades and waiver pickups. The Kraken acquired Kakko via trade from the New York Rangers for defenseman Will Borgen in December 2024 while they also landed forward Eeli Tolvanen from Nashville off waivers in December 2022 until he left as a free agent last summer.

“Everything comes into play,” Kron said. “We have the books on everybody that gets drafted. So, with Kakko, he was the second overall pick (in 2019) by the Rangers. And then with the knowledge that we have in the organization on our staff from when he played in the junior level and then his draft eligible years, you try to see if a player like this can now still be productive.  

“And he looks like he might have found his footing on our team.”

Kakko is tied for second on the team in points with 13, coming off two of the best seasons of his NHL career since the trade. 

Nyman, a second round Kraken pick from 2022, played 40 games with them the past two seasons and another three this season since a call-up from AHL Coachella Valley. Ottavainen, a fourth round pick from 2021, played one game with the Kraken two seasons ago but made the team out of training camp this season and has since played 10 more times for them. 

Kokko made four Kraken appearances the past two seasons and was Coachella Valley’s No. 1 netminder this season ahead of being added to this trip. Saarinen, taken in the third round in 2024, set a record for a 19-year-old in the Liiga top Finnish pro league last season with a .916 save percentage and on Saturday made 40 saves to help Finland defeat the Czech Republic 2-1 in a key shootout match at the much-watched NOCCO Hockey Games tournament.  

Vedenpaa, a sixth round pick from 2023, is also a now in his second season tending goal in Finland’s top pro league.  

Miettinen, a second rounder from 2024, played a major role for Everett last season in reaching the Memorial Cup championship game last season and has two goals, six assists in a dozen AHL games thus far.

The Kraken inherited plenty of European experience when Kron was named amateur scouting director in 2020, two years before the team began NHL play. Retired Finnish goalie Sasu Hovi has been a scout for the team in this country since then while three others are from neighboring Sweden, including Pelle Eklund, Marcus Fingal and supervisor of European scouting Axel Alavaara. 

“We do feel we have a great coverage here,” Kron said. “And then, there’s also myself knowing the region very well and knowing a lot of people.” 

And Kron has witnessed firsthand some of the remarkable Finnish hockey progress made since the country’s 2009 shift in approach. 

“They kind of went to a model that Sweden used to have, where the federation got involved with the club teams,” Kron said. “And in these (youth) academies that they have, they follow the same development program for the young kids, and they were able to develop a lot of young players.” 

That change came about after a 2009 summit where the Finnish Ice Hockey Association convened top coaches, agents, scouts, team leaders, general managers and more for a brainstorming session on overhauling the country’s player development following several dismal international results. The driving force behind this meeting was Erkka Westerlund, then serving as head coach of the Finnish national team and known simply as “The Professor” in the nation’s hockey circles.  

With his urging, Finland proceeded to hire full-time coaches for all the boys’ national teams that follow players throughout the year even when they are back with their respective club squads. Now, after a national team tournament, the coach goes on the road to visit players and their club coaches so they can all identify and pursue areas for improvement.  

The national coaches can also visit with Finnish players on club teams in neighboring Sweden or do video calls with those playing in North America. For the club teams involved, having national coaches visit them and their players regularly also generated a feeling that they all had a stake in the country’s hockey success.  

Finland thereafter quickly became a power at the IIHF World Junior Championship (U20), winning gold in 2014, 2016 and 2019, silver in 2022 and 2025 and bronze in 2021. It also medaled in the majority of U18 World Championships since 2009.  

The Finns further won gold at other prestigious, but non “best-on-best” world tournaments including the IIHF World Hockey Championships in 2011, 2019, 2022 and 2026 and the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing. Last February, at the Winter Olympics in Milan featuring full NHL player participation, a Finnish squad that included Kakko took home bronze. ​

It hasn’t all been perfect. 

There have been concerns domestically in recent years that the country’s talent development progress was stalling out amid ongoing debate about whether young prospects are better off playing limited minutes in the country’s domestic pro leagues or heading to North America to join major junior and NCAA squads. Only four Finns were taken in the opening round of NHL Drafts from 2021-2025, including zero first rounders in 2021, 2023 or 2025 and no top-five selections since Kakko at No. 2 overall in 2019.  

But things improved at this year’s draft in Buffalo with three Finns taken in the opening round and 11 overall. That and several strong individual starts by young Finnish players this season have raised optimism for next year’s draft even while discussions continue about how best to maintain the country’s momentum generated the prior decade. 

For Kakko and other Finns wearing Kraken practice jerseys at Monday’s team workout, simply being on the ice with an NHL team is a lifelong dream realized. To have a chance to do it in their home country is a bonus they’d never imagined possible, which is why, to close out Monday’s practice, Kakko, Nyman, Ottavainen and Kokko were chosen to be in the middle of a circle of Kraken players to lead them in an on-ice stretch session.  

“I think we all knew that was how it was going to go,” Kakko said. “Being from Finland, it was all Finns in the middle. That’s kind of what everybody wanted to do. It was special. It was fun.”