Ottawa Senators defenseman Nik Matinpalo is coming off a rookie NHL season that can best be described as unexpected.
At this time last summer, Matinpalo was a 25-year-old Finnish pro who had gone undrafted in the NHL, and had just completed his first year of pro hockey in North America. That included 67 games for the Belleville Senators, scoring 14 points, and four games with no points for Ottawa.
Very few people thought he was in line to be an NHL regular last season.
But after starting the year with Belleville again, playing in 24 games for the AHL club, he was able to overtake the injured Jacob Bernard-Docker and Travis Hamonic on the Ottawa depth chart. He went on to play 41 NHL games plus all six Stanley Cup Playoff games for the Senators.
He also represented Team Finland in the NHL's Four Nations Face-Off event in February and at the World Hockey Championships in May. To cap off his turnaround season, Matinpalo signed a two-year, one-way contract with Ottawa, just a few days after the club was eliminated.
The deal will pay him $875,000 for each of the next two years, and because the contract was taken care of so quickly after the season, it looked from the outside like an NHL job was all but assured.
Ottawa Senators AHL Team Signs Owen Sound Attack's Top ScorerThe Belleville Senators announced Tuesday the signing of Landen Hookey to a two-year American Hockey League contract.
Despite giving Matinpalo that two-year contract and a bit of security, the Senators didn’t mince words during exit meetings, making it clear that nothing is guaranteed this fall.
"Yeah, they said that I need to train hard," Matinpalo said on Thursday on the Coming in Hot podcast. "And when I come into training camp, I need to think like I'm not on the team. I need to boost myself to be better every day this summer. So yeah, I think that was the biggest message to me."
That's some tough love. But in hindsight, they may have been preparing him for what was about to happen because Matinpalo's clear path back to his NHL job has been quickly littered with new obstacles.
The club brought back right-shot defenseman Lassi Thomson, a former Sens first-rounder and fellow Finn. Then they went out and acquired LA Kings right-shot defenseman Jordan Spence in a draft-day trade. And of course, their first-round pick from last year, Carter Yakemchuk, is another right-shot who's hungry to reach the NHL as soon as possible, especially after being the team’s final cut last season.
That certainly changes things, especially if Nick Jensen is healthy and ready to start the season.
Outdueling those players may prove to be a tougher challenge than last season’s leapfrogging of two players whose NHL stock has fallen sharply over the past couple of years. But Matinpalo will trust his own game and try to stay in the headspace that worked for him last year, when he didn’t let the stage get too big.
"Yeah, I think I'm not that young anymore. Like, maybe this is the last chance for me to play in the NHL. So maybe that was the one thing. Like, I'm just gonna trust my game and do whatever takes to play."
Matinpalo’s real life has already surpassed his dream, which was about as modest as it gets for an NHL prospect.
"Everybody always thinks they can play (in the NHL). But when you go to training camp, you see there's like 15 D-men already. So I'm not really thinking I'm gonna play in the NHL. But of course, that was the motivation, like, I want to play one game in the NHL. Or that's it. Maybe I wasn't thinking about that too much. But that was the dream, playing that one game."
Times change, and so can goals and dreams.
Matinpalo says he still has a lot of developing to do, and the two-year contract affords him more time to improve. But given his spectacular learning curve from last season, one suspects he might be right back in the thick of things at camp this fall.
You can listen to Matinpalo's full interviewhere.
By Steve Warne
The Hockey News Ottawa
Image Credit: Rick Osentoski-Imagn Images
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