BUFFALO -- The past two years haven’t been easy for Buffalo Sabres goalie prospect Topias Leinonen. But now healthy and with a new opportunity ahead, he’s ready to take the next step.
Injuries and a lack of playing time when healthy have hampered the development path of the 20-year-old; he has been limited to 59 games (regular season and playoffs), including international play, since being selected by the Sabres in the second round (No. 41) of the 2022 NHL Draft.
Of the 40 games he played in 2022-23, 23 were with the JYP Under-20 team in Finland. Last season, he appeared in a total of 19 games: 11 with JYP U-20 (four regular season, seven in the playoffs), six with JYP’s men’s team in Liiga, Finland's top professional league, and two with KeuPa HT in Mestis, the country's second-highest league.
“He’s handled it well,” Buffalo goaltending development coach Seamus Kotyk said. “Kind of a juggling act, but he got through it. And now we’re happy and optimistic that his new team in Sweden is the right fit, and exactly what he needs.”
This season, Leinonen (6-foot-5, 227 pounds) will take his talents to Mora, a team in Allsvenskan, the second-highest league in Sweden. There he’ll have an opportunity to earn the No. 1 spot, battling another young goalie for the role.
“I think that's a good choice for me,” he said during Sabres development camp in July. “I want to play a lot, and that's important right now.”
It marked Leinonen’s third development camp with Buffalo but the first he was able to fully participate in from start to finish. For some in the organization, it was the first time they could see him in action.
In his first camp in 2022, he was injured on the first day, and last summer he had a stress fracture in his ankle that kept him off the ice for the entire duration.
Leinonen’s injury struggles are reminiscent of what fellow Finland-born Sabres goalie Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen endured early in his career after being drafted. The pair, who also have similar physiques, have spoken a few times, including during development camp when Buffalo had Luukkonen appear via Zoom to speak to all the goalies in attendance.
One of the topics Luukkonen touched on, among other things, was dealing with adversity.
“Good for me to hear what's he thinking and things like that,” Leinonen said. “… That's good for me and I hope I can talk with him (more).”
Leinonen said Luukkonen is one of several goalies he’s enjoyed watching, along with Thatcher Demko of the Vancouver Canucks and Pekka Rinne, formerly of the Nashville Predators. Leinonen grew up watching his father, Tero, who had a lengthy pro career as a goalie, primarily in Finland, and is the reason he plays the position.
With limited games to watch, the Sabres have had to also rely on evaluating Leinonen at practice to get a feel for where his development level is. And despite the bumps in the road, they’ve seen progress.
“He was getting quicker,” Kotyk said. “I would see that his body was just looking different at times. There was just a lot of different things that I would see that might be hard to measure from a statistical standpoint, but that's literally where I was trying to measure his growth.”
Size and mobility have stood out the most in Leinonen's game, which is what Buffalo is looking for from a goalie with his frame.
“He has that ability to have that stubbornness in the mind to be good,” Kotyk said. “Now it's just trying to refine all the details and clean his game up.”
That includes finding consistency, improving his physical conditioning, and working on his movement in the crease.
Now with Mora, the door is open for Leinonen.
“They see optimism when they look at him, similar to us," Kotyk said. “But they also know he needs a lot of coaching and to take a bigger step with his off-ice that will help his on-ice.
“That's how I feel they see it. That's what I want for him this year. Everyone knows, there's no hiding it -- he has to play hockey this year, and he has to play games.”
