If you’ve followed the Blue Jackets’ drafting methods over the last few years, they’ve become known for a couple of things. One, they’re not shy about taking players who aren’t in their first year of eligibility. And two, they’re often looking at players that nobody else has a beat on. In the case of seventh round pick Oiva Keskinen, they hit both marks.
That isn’t to say this pick was completely unexpected in the traditional way. NHL’s Central Scouting did rank Keskinen, but he was really low (#125 amongst international skaters). He played this past season with Tappara U20 (Tampere), which should be a recognizable team if you watched the team play in Finland last November.
Oiva Keskinen (C), 6’0″, 180 pounds
Tappara U20 (Tampere, Finland)
7th round (#194 overall)
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Moi Oiva Keskinen!@mhl | #CBJ pic.twitter.com/4qQ7zUC7cF
— Columbus Blue Jackets (@BlueJacketsNHL) June 30, 2023
Like goaltender Melvin Strahl in round 5, this is a really tough player to get a pulse on. Finnish junior games are also really hard to catch here in North America, and it’s tough to find anyone putting out scouting reports second year eligible junior players in Europe.
Keskinen is listed as a center, and he scored at more than a point-per-game clip for his team in Finland this year. His 20 goals were second best on his team, and he added 21 assists for a productive 41 points in 38 games played. Tappara won their league title, which means Keskinen comes with a championship pedigree as well.
As with any seventh round pick, Keskinen is a crapshoot. But if any team knows what’s going on with Finnish prospects, it has to be Jarmo Kekalainen, Ville Siren, and the Blue Jacket scouting department. Clearly they see potential in this player, and they have had success with late round picks out of Finland before. Namely overagers – look no further than Markus Nutivaara, who was plucked from the seventh round in 2015.
Keskinen did not come over for development camp and will most likely remain in Finland this year, where we’ll keep a really close eye on his development.