SUNRISE, Fla.\u00a0–\u00a0Florida Panthers\u00a0President of Hockey Operations and General Manager Bill Zito announced today that the club has\u00a0acquired\u00a0defenseman\u00a0Emil Pieniniemi\u00a0from the Pittsburgh Penguins in exchange for the rights to forward Oliver Okuliar.<\/p>\n
Pieniniemi, 21, skated in\u00a0nine\u00a0games with the American Hockey League (AHL)\u00a0Wilkes-Barre\/Scranton Penguins\u00a0throughout the 2025-26 campaign, registering three points (1-2-3). He appeared in two postseason contests with Wilkes-Barre\/Scranton, notching an assist.\u00a0Pieniniemi\u00a0also\u00a0amassed 11 points (6-5-11) over\u00a026 games with the ECHL Wheeling Nailers.\u00a0He\u00a0paced all Wheeling defensemen in points\u00a0(1-7-8)\u00a0throughout\u00a015\u00a0Kelly Cup playoff games.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
The 6-foot-2,\u00a0176-pound native of Kuopio, Finland\u00a0previously appeared in\u00a039 games with\u00a0Karpat\u00a0of the Finnish professional league (Liiga) from 2022-23 to 2023-24. He earned\u00a0the\u00a0Liiga\u00a0bronze medal with\u00a0Karpat\u00a0in\u00a0his second season with the club.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
On the international stage,\u00a0Pieniniemi\u00a0represented Finland at the 2023 IIHF U18 World Championship\u00a0and the\u00a02024 IIHF U20 World Championship\u00a0before earning\u00a0a\u00a0silver\u00a0medal\u00a0at\u00a0the 2025 IIHF U20 World Championship.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Pieniniemi\u00a0was originally selected by the Penguins in the third\u00a0round (91st overall) in the 2023 NHL Draft.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SUNRISE, Fla.\u00a0–\u00a0Florida Panthers\u00a0President of Hockey Operations and General Manager Bill Zito announced today that the club has\u00a0acquired\u00a0defenseman\u00a0Emil Pieniniemi\u00a0from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":734443,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":["post-734442","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\/734442","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=734442"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/734442\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/734443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=734442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=734442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=734442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}