{"id":734514,"date":"2026-06-13T18:27:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-13T18:27:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/734514\/"},"modified":"2026-06-13T18:27:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-13T18:27:08","slug":"panthers-deal-forward-oliver-okuliar-to-penguins-for-defenceman-emil-pieniniemi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/734514\/","title":{"rendered":"Panthers deal forward Oliver Okuliar to Penguins for defenceman Emil Pieniniemi"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A pair of division rivals have begun their off-seasons with a trade.<\/p>\n<p>Okuliar, 26, has yet to play in the NHL after joining the Panthers organization as an undrafted free agent.<\/p>\n<p>He competed for Slovakia at the Milano-Cortina Olympics, notching one goal and one assist in six games. The centre spent one season with the Panthers&#8217; AHL affiliate, the Charlotte Checkers, in 2024-25, recording 19 goals and 22 assists.<\/p>\n<p>Okuliar then moved to the Swedish Hockey League this season, winning a title with Skelleftea AIK and posting 13 points (six goals, seven assists) in 15 post-season games.<\/p>\n<p>Pieniniemi, 21, was selected in the third round of the 2023 draft by the Penguins.<\/p>\n<p>The six-foot-three Finnish blue-liner made his AHL debut this season, putting up one goal and two assists in nine games while also appearing in two post-season contests.<\/p>\n<p>He is also yet to play in the NHL.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A pair of division rivals have begun their off-seasons with a trade. Okuliar, 26, has yet to play&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":734515,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":["post-734514","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\/734514","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=734514"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/734514\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/734515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=734514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=734514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=734514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}