The summer of 2025 was the most normal for Lenni H\u00e4meenaho of the past three years. And yet, in some ways, it was the most daunting.<\/p>\n
This was the first summer in the past three where H\u00e4meenaho could focus solely on himself and his game, with no other distractions.<\/p>\n
Back in 2023, his summer was anything but ordinary. Fresh off his first pro season with \u00c4ss\u00e4t in the Finnish Liiga, H\u00e4meenaho flew to Las Vegas for the NHL Draft, where the New Jersey Devils selected him in the second round, 58th overall. What followed was a blur: interviews, his first visit to New Jersey, development camp, and only then a late return to Finland in mid-July, just weeks before his next Liiga season began.<\/p>\n
The summer of 2024 brought its own unique challenge. Instead of development camp in New Jersey, H\u00e4meenaho reported for mandatory Finnish military service. Hockey had to share space with his military service.<\/p>\n
But the summer of 2025 was refreshingly simple. For the first time in years, H\u00e4meenaho had no distractions. It was all hockey.<\/p>\n
It was also the first summer where the 20-year-old would be preparing to move to North America, with a chance to crack the Devils’ roster or embrace the learning curve with the Utica Comets in the American Hockey League.<\/p>\n
Either way, Lenni is here, and he’s had the most simple summer to prepare.<\/p>\n
“It was also different (because) I wasn’t training with my team in Finland,” he said. “I was training just with other guys in Helsinki. It was so good. It was like a new summer, it was better than the last two.”<\/p>\n
And simple should not be conflated with relaxed or unfocused. His summer was simple because there was no extra; it was just about hockey and preparation.<\/p>\n
Lenni has been on quite the trajectory.<\/p>\n
It all started with his best year yet in Liiga play. His whole year with Assat was superb, playing on one of the best lines in Liiga during the 2024-25 season. H\u00e4meenaho teamed up with 37-year-old Jan-Mikael J\u00e4rvinen and 25-year-old Eemil Erholtz, to be the top three producers on Assat, with H\u00e4meenaho and J\u00e4rvinen both finishing in Liiga’s Top 15 for points (J\u00e4rvinen, 10th with 54 pts, Hameenaho, 15th with 51 pts).<\/p>\n
“I think it was good, good learning before I came here,” H\u00e4meenaho said of his Liiga years of experience before making the jump to North America. “Every year was like better, and every year I got more mature and get more power, and was feeling like more better on and off the ice. I think every year was good learning and getting more mature.”<\/p>\n
Playing, too, with J\u00e4rvinen was a bit of a thrill for H\u00e4meenaho. J\u00e4rvinen may not be a name we are familiar with in North America, but his prestige certainly carries weight in Finland.<\/p>\n
“He was obviously really big, big impact,” H\u00e4meenaho said. “An older guy, older center. He’s a really nice guy. He was a captain of our team, and he’s been so good. When I was a little kid, I was watching him. Him and Patrick Laine. It was really cool to play with him. It was the best center, best (player) I have ever had.”<\/p>\n
“Obviously, at first he was little bit weird,” H\u00e4meenaho said of playing with J\u00e4rvinen. “But he’s (such) a nice guy. We had straight up, chemistry right away, with our other winger too. He’s also such a nice guy. I think we really supported together really well. Like each of us on the ice we all had our strengths and weakness and we support(ed) eachother.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The summer of 2025 was the most normal for Lenni H\u00e4meenaho of the past three years. And yet,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":137937,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":["post-137936","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137936","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137936"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137936\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/137937"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}