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On Juuso Valimaki's goal of breaking camp with the Calgary Flames |
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Mark Giordano, T.J. Brodie, Noah Hanifin, Travis Hamonic, Michael Stone and, to a lesser extent, Brett Kulak appear locks to break camp with the Calgary Flames.
Should that be the case, there's likely only be one roster spot for Rasmus Andersson, Oliver Kylington, Juuso Valimaki and any late free agent signings or professional tryouts to fight over.
That might make it unlikely for
Juuso Valimaki to achieve his goal of making the team out of camp, however, it's hard to rule it out completely.
Playoffs included, the 19-year-old defender registered 33 goals and 124 points in 119 games over the last two seasons. Those are insane numbers.
A lot of that damage was done at even-strength, where Valimaki was actually a significantly more efficient producer than Ivan Provorov and Mikhail Sergachev were in their final seasons before making the jump to the NHL.
Valimaki's on-ice goal numbers aren't as impressive but don't read too much into that. In Valimaki's final year, he played for the WHL's 14th seed while Provorov and Sergachev played for stacked teams that made it to the Memorial Cup. The supporting casts weren't even remotely comparable. For Valimaki to post similar, if not better, numbers despite that is really impressive.
If he's not ready to push his way onto the roster this fall, he's certainly not far off.
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