CRANBERRY, Pa. -- When the Penguins held their annual prospect development camp at the end of June, I wrote about one tall, slender, left-handed, puck-moving defensive prospect from Finland who will be playing in the Finnish Elite League next season -- Niclas Almari.
Today, we'll take a look at the other one.
Antti Palojarvi (pronounced ANT-tih PAL-loh-yarr-vih) was the Penguins' sixth-round pick (186th overall) in 2017. Like Almari and many other young Finnish players, Palojarvi is growing his game in his home country, where there is an opportunity to play in the top men's league.
Palojarvi, 19, has spent the past two seasons playing for the Finnish club Lukko's junior U20 team. The team as a whole had a poor 2017-18 season, finishing with a 20-23-10 record, and Palojarvi had the lowest plus/minus of any player on the team at minus-23. Still, Palojarvi found some success throughout the season, recording two goals and 10 assists in 44 games in the low-scoring league, while spending time on Lukko's first defensive pairing and power play unit.
Palojarvi has represented Finland on its junior national team in three of the last four seasons, playing in the four-game Five Nations Tournaments. In total, he's played 26 international games in that span, scoring two goals and four assists.
He hopes that next season he will be able to take the next step and make the jump to Finland's top men's league.
"Of course, I think I can play next year in Finnish Elite League," he told me at the Penguins' development camp. "But we'll see what happens."
The 6-foot-1, 176 pound Finn says that his greatest strengths are "skating, moving on the blue line, taking shots to the net," the type of puck-moving defenseman the Penguins like having in their system.
Marco Bombino, a reporter covering Finnish junior hockey, describes Palojarvi as a player who "skates well with the puck, has good footwork and makes a solid first pass out of the zone. He could still produce more offensively as he has the ability to do so. With his puck moving abilities, skating and athleticism, he could end up being a nice haul for the Penguins in the long run, even though he’s a raw prospect and the club will need to be patient."
When Palojarvi was drafted, Penguins head European scout (now director of amateur scouting) Patrik Allvin echoed similar sentiments about Palojarvi's trajectory.
"Antti's more of a puck-moving defenseman, probably needs a couple of extra years," Allvin said in 2017. "I think he's in a good situation up in Lukko in northern Finland there. Was on the national team a little bit, but obviously the Finns have a very strong D corps. So it will be tough for him to get on the World Junior team next year, but I think he's still in the mix there. I would definitely say a little bit of a longer-term prospect."
For next season, Palojarvi wants to focus on getting stronger and putting on more weight, as well as really focusing on the defensive side of his game. "How to get the forward off the puck, those kinds of things," he said. "That's the biggest thing."
He's still years away from playing full-time in North America, but he's not concerned about adjusting to the game here when the time comes.
"(The ice) is smaller of course, little bit different to play here than in Europe. But it's always the same hockey."
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