Buffalo, N.Y. (WGR Sports Radio 550) –\u00a0The American Hockey League can be a very tough place to play, especially for younger players, and those younger players from Europe playing in North American for the first time.<\/p>\n
2024 first-round pick Konsta Helenius was taken 14th\u00a0overall by the Buffalo Sabres, and played this past season with the Rochester Americans as an 18-year-old coming over from Finland.<\/p>\n
His head coach in Rochester, Mike Leone, felt the AHL was a huge adjustment for Helenius, at first.<\/p>\n
“I think the speed of the game, when you\u2019re playing European hockey it\u2019s a bigger ice surface. Then you go to Syracuse 12 times, there\u2019s nowhere to hide out there. You go to Utica, and the division that we play in, you\u2019re going through the ringer,” said Leone following Wednesday’s practice at Harborcenter. “It\u2019s really physical, and even little things like getting his shot off at the start of the year, he was taking too much time.”<\/p>\n
In 65 games with the Amerks, Helenius scored 14 goals and added 21 assists for 35 points. Many of those points came after Feb. 21 when he notched eight goals and eight assists for 16 points in 22 games.<\/p>\n
Take that 22-game pace over 65 games and Helenius would have finished his season in Rochester with 24 goals and 24 assists for 48 points.<\/p>\n
Leone was very impressed with the improvement from Helenius toward the end of his year.<\/p>\n
“With any 18-year-old player, there\u2019s a lot of ups and downs. But I think if you look at the growth towards the end of the year, we moved him to the wing and kind of freed him up a bit,” Leone said. “It\u2019s hard with faceoffs, but by the end of the year, he was, arguably, our best player in that last series against Laval.<\/p>\n
One thing Leone loves about Helenius’ game is his swagger on the ice.<\/p>\n
“He\u2019s very confident in a good way, and he took huge strides,” he said. “To have close to 40 points as an 18-year-old was really impressive, and I think he matured a lot, just as far as becoming a pro.”<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Leone can see the work that Helenius put in during the summer while in Finland.<\/p>\n
“He looks great, he looks quicker. I think that was one of the things that he wanted to work on,” Leone said. “With less time and space, coming from Europe, I think being quicker and being first to the puck to give him more time to create, because he\u2019s a really smart player. And he has a big lower half, so he\u2019s able to protect the puck. I\u2019m excited to see him at this camp as well.”<\/p>\n
When he got to the Sabres Prospects Challenge last season after being drafted, Helenius admits he didn\u2019t know what to expect. In his three games played, he had no goals and two assists.<\/p>\n
“It wasn\u2019t easy. It\u2019s a much different game here than back in Europe. Smaller ice, and you have less time. It wasn\u2019t easy,” said Helenius on Wednesday. “But during the season, we worked on that and tried to do different things. So it was much easier by the end of the season.”<\/p>\n
In eight playoff games, Helenius had three goals and three assists for six points, which was only two points behind Jiri Kulich.<\/p>\n
Helenius described some of the work he put in to his training this summer.<\/p>\n
“Every summer, I want to be more explosive, faster and stronger. And during the season too, not only summer,” he said.<\/p>\n
The now 19-year-old takes pride in being a two-way center, and says by playing good defense, he gets the puck more.<\/p>\n
Helenius has one goal this season, and it’s to play in the NHL. That means he has to get better every practice, every day. However, he still has growing to do, and feels he will get stronger as he grows.<\/p>\n
He still isn\u2019t afraid to get into the battle.<\/p>\n
“I\u2019m not the biggest guy, but I like to play physical,” Helenius said.<\/p>\n
With Josh Norris, Jiri Kulich and Ryan McLeod as Buffalo\u2019s top-three centers, and Tage Thompson also available if needed, there\u2019s no room for Helenius in Buffalo, which I believe is a good thing.<\/p>\n
The Sabres botched identifying and signing its core players, and did a horrendous job in development.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s no accident that Kulich played 148 regular season and playoff games with the Amerks, and of the core, he has, by far, done the best job developing. In 62 games with Buffalo, Kulich had 15 goals and 24 points.<\/p>\n
Once head coach Lindy Ruff switched him to center and kept him there, the 21-year-old netted eight goals and seven assists for 15 points in 28 games. That would be 44 points in 82 games.<\/p>\n
Kulich and Norris will be counted on to make up for the 27 goals from winger JJ Peterka that were traded to the Utah Mammoth.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s no point rushing guys like Helenius, Noah Ostlund, Radim Mrtka, Nikita Novikov or Vsevolod Komarov to the NHL. I\u2019d put Devon Levi in that category too. Buffalo already tried that and it didn\u2019t work, and it may have ruined a whole group of prospects.<\/p>\n
After two practices on Wednesday and Thursday, the prospects will play in the Sabres Prospects Challenge, starting Friday at Harborcenter against the New Jersey Devils.<\/p>\n
Join Brian Koziol, Josh Schmit and myself for a 7:05 p.m. faceoff on WGR Sports Radio 550.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Buffalo, N.Y. (WGR Sports Radio 550) –\u00a0The American Hockey League can be a very tough place to play,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":137032,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[49,48,75,341],"class_list":["post-137031","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137031","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137031"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137031\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/137032"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}