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On his second day into the job, Don Sweeney has made his first move as general manager of the Boston Bruins. And it comes with the signing of 6-foot-2 Finnish forward Joonas Kemppainen to a one-year, two-way contract worth $700,000.
The 27-year-old Kemppainen has spent the last five seasons with Karpat of the Finnish Elite League, and most recently recorded 11 goals and 32 points in 59 games for the club this past season. He followed that regular season up with 10 goals and 24 points (tops in the league) in 19 playoff games for the club. Kemppainen then followed that unbelievably successful postseason up with three goals and nine points in eight games for Finland at this year’s World Championships in the Czech Republic.
Kemppainen is a center with a big frame, and really opened some eyes during his playoff run and subsequent stretch of success at World Championships.
It’s a low-risk, high-reward gamble for the Bruins, and could definitely be looked at as a move that gives the Black and Gold an insurance policy for when Carl Soderberg, a mainstay on Boston’s third line for the past two seasons, leaves the club this summer as an unrestricted free agent. The Bruins could of course bring Soderberg back to the Hub, and have until the end of June to have one-on-one negotiations with the big-bodied Swede, but the general consensus seems to be that No. 34 has played his way out of Boston by way of this past season’s 13-goal, 44-point performance.
That’s because a popular belief among those close to the Soderberg camp seems to indicate that he’ll be a huge get in a market thin on centers (a popular number I’ve heard thrown out there on multiple occasions has been $4.5-5.5 million per year for the next four to five years, a contract the Bruins would without question fail to match), and that the Bruins don’t have or want to spend the resources in either dollars of years to keep him in town when they have players like Ryan Spooner and Alexander Khokhlachev set to break into the NHL on a full-time basis sooner rather than later.
And even if the B’s did have interest in bringing Soderback back into the mix, which they still do from a player perspective versus the dollar perspective, this will be the 29-year-old’s first and only chance to cash in on a big NHL payday, so the idea of a significant discount from either side is a tough sell.
Enter Kemppainen.
It’s a one-year deal, so the window for the Kajaani, Fin. native to learn the B’s system isn’t as open as Soderberg’s was after he came over. But a full training camp will give him the chance to open some eyes on a Boston roster that has very few spots locked down heading into next season, especially on their bottom six, where Kemppainen could make a potentially sneaky impact like Soderberg did.
Asking Kemppainen to come over and be Soderberg is a tall task, but at that money, it's without question worth a shot. And at the very worst, it's a player they give an extended look at through the month of September and for a quick minute on the farm in Providence.
During his nine seasons in Finland, Kemppainen totaled 62 goals and 99 assists for 161 points in 464 regular season games with a combined plus-41 rating. And in 65 postseason appearances in the Finnish Elite League over his career, he has tallied 13 goals and 20 assists for 33 points with a plus-19 rating.
Ty Anderson has been covering the Boston Bruins for HockeyBuzz.com since 2010, is a member of the Pro Hockey Writers Association's Boston Chapter, and can be contacted on Twitter, or emailed at Ty.AndersonHB[at]gmail.com