Opportunity knocks
Injury allows Finn to fill in role on D
Finnish defenseman Juuso Riikola will get a chance after injuries.
Juuso Riikola wasn’t necessarily a man without a country last season, but he was indeed a man without a countryman.
“Last year, I was kind of alone without any Finns,” Riikola said Monday, maybe half-joking but also somewhat revealing at the same time.
A hockey locker room is like a tour of nations, with different accents and languages spoken around every corner. There are Russians such as Evgeni Malkin, French-speaking Canadians like Kris Letang, Swedes like Marcus Pettersson.
But in the summer of 2019, when the Penguins dealt Olli Maatta — a player who somewhat comically listed the dictionary as his favorite book because he still was working to learn English when he was drafted — it left Riikola as the lone Finnish player on the roster.
So when Kasperi Kapanen finally joined the Penguins for the first time Monday for a full team skate, few players were as happy to see him as Riikola, who has known the newest Penguins forward for about a decade.
“You can talk with all the guys [in] English,” Riikola said. “But still, I think there is a difference between speaking English and Finnish.”
This week, his old buddy’s arrival coincided with something else: Tilaisuus.
If you’re not fluent in Finnish, that means opportunity. And it presented itself when the Penguins placed defenseman Mike Matheson on injured reserve with an upper body injury he suffered Friday in a game against the Philadelphia Flyers.
Riikola, the next lefty on the depth chart, recorded 14:31 of ice time Sunday in a 4-3 victory against the Washington Capitals. He tallied four hits, a plus-1 rating while also bringing his cannon of a shot to the second power play unit. While Riikola’s advanced metrics have mostly been positive in his career, the Capitals generated about 60% of the expected goals at 5-on-5 play while Riikola was on the ice, according to Natural Stat Trick.
“It’s exciting to get in the lineup,” Riikola said.
“What you’re trying to do every day in practice, you can bring it to the game. Sometimes when you don’t play in a while, it’s a little bit harder.”
Now the question is: Can Riikola turn this early playing time into extended playing time?
As the eighth defenseman on the depth chart, he appeared in 36 games last season when numerous injures swept through the locker room. But in many of those he was somewhat out of position. Of his first 11 games, four were at forward and six at right defense.
Riikola said he feels more comfortable with the North American game after a few seasons in the organization.
“I know every situation what we’re trying to do,” he said. “I think that helps a lot. The game is not about thinking. It’s more about reacting.”
Riikola’s physical skills — namely his mobility, passing and that big-time shot — make one wonder if maybe there’s more there. But at 27 years old, he’s also not exactly a young prospect anymore with a lot of time to seize that chance.
Coach Mike Sullivan said that Riikola’s mobility, in particular, can help the Penguins in a number of areas, whether that’s getting back to pucks quickly, beating the first forechecker himself on a breakout or catching the rush as a part of the second wave.
“Our hope here is that Juuso will take another step,” Sullivan said. “He’s got another year pro in the NHL under his belt.
“I think he’s very familiar with his surroundings at this point, his coaching staff, his teammates. He knows how we’re trying to play and the details associated with that.
“Now it’s just a matter of taking his game to another level. We think he’s capable of that.”
Roster moves
With Kapanen in the fold and Matheson out, the Penguins reshuffled a number of pieces in their organization.
Forward Sam Lafferty was moved from the active NHL roster to the taxi squad. He previously had been skating on the fourth line. In his place, Evan Rodrigues slid from the top line to Teddy Blueger’s left wing on a line that also features Colton Scevoiur.
Meanwhile, left-handed defenseman Kevin Czuczman was called up from Wilkes-Barre/Scranton to join the taxi squad. Forwards Anthony Angello and Frederick Gaudreau were assigned from the taxi squad to Wilkes-Barre/Scranton.
The Penguins did not, however, move any players from the taxi squad to the NHL roster to give them eight defensemen. Instead, they rotated all seven healthy blue-liners at practice.
Ruhwedel a ‘great pro’
When the Penguins signed Cody Ceci this offseason to a one-year, $1.25 million deal, it was a low-risk, low-cost decision. That’s especially true considering the faith they have in Chad Ruhwedel. He has stepped in to play in each of the past two games on the bottom pair in place of Ceci.
“He’s a great pro first and foremost,” Sullivan said of Ruhwedel. “The way he goes about his business staying ready when he’s not in the lineup is something that we see on a daily basis that others don’t have the privilege of seeing.
“When he gets in the lineup, there’s a certain level of simplicity to his game that I think helps his partners. He plays within himself. He knows what he is and what his strengths are and he knows what the expectations are of him when he goes into the lineup. He does it very effectively.”