Urho Vaakanainen attended his first Red Sox game last Wednesday, the type of team-building event that’s commonplace during the annual prospect development camp.
The Bruins' 19-year-old defenseman enjoyed spending time with his teammates but wasn’t a big fan of what he was watching. Vaakanainen much preferred the Finish baseball that’s played in his native country, where the field is smaller, the pitchers stand closer to the batter, and the games don’t teeter on the four-hour mark.
“I gotta say, it’s pretty boring,” Vaakanainen mused last Thursday the day after the game. “Well, there were a lot of home runs.”
While Vaakanainen settles into his new surroundings in Boston, nobody will force him to another Red Sox game.
He will have to transition to the North American style of hockey, though, after spending his career in Finland. Vaakanainen, the Bruins first-round pick in 2017, signed a three-way entry-level deal earlier in June and will likely start the season in Providence.
That won’t stop him from making a heavy push to make the big-league roster when training camp starts in September, an opportunity that Vaakanainen began in earnest last week at Bruins development camp.
“I think he’s looking forward to the opportunity and looks very comfortable on the ice in terms of his own confidence level,” general manager Don Sweeney said Friday.
“But he needs to understand how much more competitive things will get between now and training camp and he’ll start in rookie camp and everybody goes through that. He’s coming over for the first time.”
It’s challenging to break into the NHL as a 19-year-old. Consider the case of Bruins center prospect Jack Studnicka, who will return to the OHL in Canada if he does not make the roster out of training camp. Providence is still not an option for Studnicka until he turns 20.
The difference for a player such as Vaakanainen is that he’s been playing in Finland against men 3-4 years older, something he’s been doing since he began skating.
“Well, they’re stronger, a lot stronger than I was and if you’re a very good player you can adjust to that,” Vaakanainen said. “It wasn’t a problem for me. When you’re young, you just play.”
At 6-1, 185-pounds, Vaakanainen is a particularly skilled skater and he carried the puck with confidence in development camp. That’s a skill set that should bode well as he transitions to the North American sheet of ice, which is roughly 15-feet less wide than the European rinks Vaakanainen is accustomed to.
His skating ability will allow him to withstand the physical aspects of the game in tighter spaces, but he understands he still has work to do.
Members of the Bruins organization want to see Vaakanainen return with a hungry edge in September. During development camp players are far from their peak conditioning in June.
“I think he can be creative,” Bruins director of development Jamie Langenbrunner said. “I think he’s played a safe game to survive, playing with men since he was 17, but when given the opportunity he’ll do it. He’s gaining that confidence in himself. Again, the encouragement he’s going to get from, whether it be [Kevin Dean] and [Bruce Cassidy] here during Training Camp or Jay [Leach] or whoever, he’s going to be encouraged to be active. I think that confidence will play to him. He can recover if he needs to. That encouragement will get him out of that shell pretty quickly I think.”
During 43 games with SaiPa in Liiga, the top Finnish league, Vaakanainen had four goals and seven assists. A more telling indicator of his potential for success was the amount of ice team he chewed up, logging at least 23 minutes a game. In one game, he logged as many as 32.
“I felt pretty good, actually,” Vaakanainen said.
After all, that’s the way Vaakanainen likes it, constantly on the move, playing a sport that doesn’t feature as much standing around as the Red Sox game he took in last week.
_____________________
_____________________