{"id":32373,"date":"2025-07-29T18:00:09","date_gmt":"2025-07-29T18:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/32373\/"},"modified":"2025-07-29T18:00:09","modified_gmt":"2025-07-29T18:00:09","slug":"longtime-nhl-defenseman-comes-out-of-retirement-after-nearly-four-years-to-sign-new-contract","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/32373\/","title":{"rendered":"Longtime NHL Defenseman Comes Out of Retirement After Nearly Four Years to Sign New Contract"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<p>PUBLICATION<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.houseofhockey.net\/collaborators\/tom-banks\" class=\"lediv\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Tom Banks<\/a><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t\tJuly 29, 2025\u00a0\u00a0(2:27 PM)<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t\t  <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/583077.webp.webp\" style=\"width:100%;\" border=\"0\" alt=\"Marku Nutivaara with the Florida Panthers.\" title=\"Marku Nutivaara with the Florida Panthers.\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Photo credit: Pro Hockey Rumours<\/p>\n<p>The Panthers have dominated the NHL lately, but before this they struggled, former blueliner Markus Nutivaara wore the jersey. Nutivaara is now coming out of retirement.<\/p>\n<p>Back in 2015, the Columbus Blue Jackets used a seventh-round pick on Finnish defenseman Markus Nutivaara, and over his career in the NHL, he played in a total of 275 games, his final two seasons coming for the Florida Panthers.<\/p>\n<p>Between 2017 and 2019, Nutivaara showed genuine potential, tallying 23 and 21 points in back-to-back seasons, but after posting just 11 assists in 31 games over two seasons for Florida, he walked away from the NHL and hockey altogether.<\/p>\n<p>A return to the Ice for the Former Seventh-Round Pick<\/p>\n<p>Now, a comeback is on the horizon, as Liiga team Karpat have <a href=\"https:\/\/karpat.fi\/markus-nutivaara-tekee-paluun-pelikentille-ja-karppapaitaan\/\" class=\"lien_marqueur\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">officially announced his signing<\/a>, with the 31-year old set to return to the ice in his homeland of Finland as of the 2025\/26 season.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s unclear if Nutivaara has ambitions on returning to the NHL one day or if he&#8217;s simply looking to play in his home country of Finland, but there&#8217;s no doubting that in his time in the NHL, he showed great potential and had the chance to be a depth player on a good team.<\/p>\n<p>With so many young players joining the NHL year after year, it becomes tougher and tougher to fight for a spot, but after the news of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.markerzone.com\/hockey\/stats\/nhl\/player\/Nicklas-Backstrom-5837\" class=\"lien_marqueur\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" title=\"Nicklas Backstrom profile and hockey stats\">Nicklas Backstrom<\/a> returning to Sweden, this is another potential feel-good story for a player returning home.<\/p>\n<p>Ultimately, Nutivaara had a short, solid NHL career after being selected in the seventh round, and while those dreams may be over, he&#8217;s now got the chance to shine in Finland in one of the most competitive leagues in the world after several years away from the game.<\/p>\n<p>Previously on HouseOfHockey<\/p>\n<p>POLL<\/p>\n<p>1 HOUR AGO\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0|\u00a0\u00a0\u00a021 ANSWERS<\/p>\n<p>Longtime NHL Defenseman Comes Out of Retirement After Nearly Four Years to Sign New Contract<\/p>\n<p>Will we ever see Nutivaara in the NHL again?<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PUBLICATION Tom Banks July 29, 2025\u00a0\u00a0(2:27 PM) Photo credit: Pro Hockey Rumours The Panthers have dominated the NHL&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":32374,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,747,458,24785,24786,24784,448,82],"class_list":["post-32373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-florida-panthers","tag-ice-hockey","tag-karpat","tag-liiga","tag-markus-nutivaara","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32373","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=32373"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32373\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}