Veini Vehvilainen: Columbus Blue Jackets’ Unspoken Prospect Goaltender
The Columbus Blue Jackets’ best goaltending prospect may be the most recent one.
The focus of the Columbus Blue Jackets’ goaltending prospects has been Elvis Merzlikins, Joonas Korpisalo and in some cases Daniil Tarasov. The best option for the long term however may be 2018 sixth round pick Veini Vehvilainen.
The 21-year old is currently leading Liiga with a 1.25 goals against average and a .944 save percentage through 15 games.
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It’s a surprise that he went so slow off the draft board last season, as he’s had great stats annually with Karpat. Last season he won the championship with Karpat and won the Urpo Ylonen award for best Liiga goaltender.
Last month he won the Liiga player of the month as well. (All award information from Eliteprospects.com).
Unfortunately for the Blue Jackets, there’s potential for another Elvis Merzlikins type of situation where the player refuses to come over until he knows for a fact he has a shot at the NHL job. He’s currently signed with Karpat through 2019-2020, meaning Columbus won’t see him for at least a couple years.
Vehvilainen and Merzlikins will be the future of the Blue Jackets once both of them make the jump over to North America, but the question remains of which one will beat out the other for the starting job.
Both have very high potential to succeed at the NHL level, but it goes without saying that one will certainly be better than the other in the long run.
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It’ll likely be a while before Vehvilainen makes the jump to the North American game, however if he even comes close to his performance in Finland then he’ll certainly be a multiple time Vezina Trophy winner for the Columbus Blue Jackets. While we don’t know for sure what the future holds for Veini Vehvilainen, it certainly seems bright.