CRANBERRY, Pa. -- Oula Palve never thought he'd be here.
It's still just an exhibition game, but the Finnish forward is set to make his North American professional debut tonight when the Penguins play the Sabres at Penn State in their preseason opener.
The fact that Palve grew up a Penguins fan makes the experience all the more special.
"I'm pretty excited, I don't know really what exactly to look forward to," he told me after Monday's morning skate. "It's been quite awhile since my last game, so I'm just excited to get that going and wear the Penguins jersey."
Palve, 27, is a late bloomer. He didn't make his debut with Liiga, the top men's league in Finland, until the 2016-17 season, having played in the second-tier Mestis league since 2010. He continued to develop as a player in Liiga, and he said the Penguins began showing interest in signing him early last season. He finished the year with 57 points in 58 games and earned a one-year, two-way contract for this season.
"It took me awhile to get at this level. I'm 27 already," he said. "I played like five years in the Finnish minors, then kind of figured it out and had a few good seasons, and had the opportunity to come here. It's always been my dream. I kind of thought this would never happen for me because of how things went, but now I'm here and I'm happy."
Early last season, Elliotte Friedman reported that there were a few NHL teams scouting Palve at the Karjala Cup tournament. Multiple teams expressed interest in Palve, but he thought the Penguins presented the best opportunity for him.
"I think it was the best opportunity for me, the best fit," he said. "They were interested in me, and they said I would get an opportunity here. That's why I'm here."
In June, Penguins goaltending development coach Andy Chiodo spoke about why the Penguins were turning more to Finnish players in the draft and free agency.
“The Finns are known for structure, for discipline," Chiodo said. "They are well-coached. The coaching in Finland, they’re teachers. If you look at the academic school system in Finland, it’s actually one of the best in the world, and that translates into their coaching. The coaching is strong, the culture is strong, their work ethic is strong."
In Finland, Palve was praised for his stickhandling abilities and vision on the ice, as well as his skating, both in terms of speed and in tight corners. His shot is described as “accurate and fairly hard.” In describing his own game, Palve also points to his playmaking and defensive game as strengths.
"I like to make small passes in the offensive zone and try to create scoring chances for my linemates," he said. "I think my all-around game is also pretty good, that was lacking a few years ago. I think I have it now at a good level."
Palve has primarily played center in his career, and he will be playing center on the Penguins' fourth line tonight between Sam Miletic and Ryan Haggerty. Palve also worked with the team's second penalty-killing unit with John Marino, Sam Lafferty, and Kevin Czuczman during the morning skate.
Palve thinks tonight will provide a better opportunity for him to see how he has adjusted to the smaller North American ice surface, since the exhibition game is a better comparison to actual game action than the short training camp scrimmages were.
"I don't know if there's really a difference yet, because those two scrimmage games we had were so unorganized, everybody was just flying around," he said. "So I don't know if it was that. But I think I'm adjusting well to the smaller ice."
Palve, who is waivers-exempt for his one-year contract, is poised to begin the year in Wilkes-Barre/Scranton, where he'll likely be teammates with a few other Finns -- Kasper Bjorkqvist, and Palve's former teammates of almost two seasons, Niclas Almari and Emil Larmi. That's four Finns, or three more than Wilkes-Barre has ever had on its roster at one time. I asked Palve for his thoughts on the influx of Finns in the system this season, and he kept it simple.
"It's nice to have Finns here," he said. "It's nice."
THE ESSENTIALS
• Media notes
• Team statistics
• NHL scoreboard
THE SESSION
• The Penguins' non-game group practiced beforehand, with the NHL-roster players on one rink, and the prospects and other AHL players working on the second rink with Mike Vellucci.
• The non-game NHL group used the power-play unit of Kris Letang, Jake Guentzel, Evgeni Malkin, and Sidney Crosby, with Justin Schultz and Alex Galchenyuk alternating in the fifth spot. Another combination used was Crosby, Malkin, Guentzel, Schultz, and Patric Hornqvist.
• Nick Bjugstad, Erik Gudbranson, Marcus Pettersson, and Jared McCann were the first penalty-killing unit. David Warsofsky replaced Pettersson in some runs.
• Brandon Tanev, Brian Dumoulin, Pettersson, and Dominik Kahun worked as a second penalty killing unit.
• Among the players playing at Penn State tonight, the top power-play unit was Dominik Simon, Adam Johnson, Bryan Rust, Zach Aston-Reese, and Juuso Riikola. The second unit was Jack Johnson, Calen Addison, Samuel Poulin, Nathan Legare, and Andrew Agozzino.
• The top penalty-killing unit was Teddy Blueger, Haggerty, Marino, and Chad Ruhwedel. Marino, Palve, Lafferty, and Czuczman also worked as a unit.
• Simon is centering the Penguins' top line tonight in the preseason opener. I asked Mike Sullivan what he likes about Simon as a center, and if Simon could see time at center during the regular season.
"We're going to watch and see how he does over the course of the exhibition season, but he played center at the World Championship last year for the Czech national team. He played extremely well," Sullivan said. "I've had discussions with him about playing center, he's played center a lot of his life. So it's not something that he's not familiar with, so we thought we'd try him. He's a guy that distributes the puck extremely well, he's got a high hockey IQ, and those are usually prerequisites of being a good center-iceman. So we'll see how he does, but we thought we'd try it during the exhibition season."
THE OTHER SIDE
• The Sabres are running more of an NHL lineup tonight, including the seven offseason additions of Dylan Cozens, Jimmy Vesey, Curtis Lazar, Colin Miller, Henri Jokiharju and John Gilmour.
• Sabres coach Ralph Krueger spoke with reporters about the new rule allowing offensive teams to choose the circle where a faceoff is held after icings and at the start of power plays.
"We're going to be playing with that a little bit in the beginning today," Krueger said. "It's definitely a factor, let's be honest. Also, watching what the opposition power play does -- who you're going to have on your PK on the draws and how much sticks are going to make a difference.
"We're going to track the right versus right, left versus left — and so on and so forth — on the players a lot now versus in the old days when you might not have. You just looked at plain percentages. Now, I think it gets a little more baseball-like where you're looking at the right-handed hitter and the left-handed hitter. That's another dimension that's new for all coaches that we need to get very good at."
THE COMBINATIONS
• Here are the Penguins' expected lines and combinations
Zach Aston-Reese -- Dominik Simon -- Bryan Rust
Samuel Poulin -- Andrew Agozzino -- Nathan Legare
Adam Johnson -- Teddy Blueger -- Sam Lafferty
Sam Miletic -- Oula Palve -- Ryan Haggerty
Jack Johnson -- Juuso Riikola
Calen Addison -- Chad Ruhwedel
Kevin Czuczman -- John Marino
• And for the Sabres:
Jimmy Vesey -- Jack Eichel -- Conor Sheary
Jeff Skinner -- Evan Rodrigues -- Curtis Lazar
Remi Elie -- Dylan Cozens -- Tage Thompson
Zemgus Girgensons -- Johan Larsson -- Andrew Oglevie
Rasmus Dahlin -- Henri Jokiharju
Marco Scandella -- Colin Miller
John Gilmour -- Casey Nelson
THE SCHEDULE
Faceoff tonight is 7:08 at Pegula Ice Arena, where Dave Molinari will have your coverage. The Penguins are scheduled to have an off day on Tuesday.
THE COVERAGE
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