{"id":776243,"date":"2026-07-02T20:40:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-02T20:40:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/776243\/"},"modified":"2026-07-02T20:40:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-02T20:40:08","slug":"senators-agree-to-contract-extension-with-leevi-merilainen-for-the-2026-27-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/776243\/","title":{"rendered":"Senators agree to contract extension with Leevi Meril\u00e4inen for the 2026-27 season"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>OTTAWA\u00a0\u2013\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/senators.nhl.com\/index.html\" title=\"http:\/\/senators.nhl.com\/index.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Ottawa Senators<\/a>\u00a0general manager and president of hockey operations Steve Staios announced today the club has signed goaltender Leevi Meril\u00e4inen to a one-year contract extension for the 2026-27 NHL season. The one-way contract carries an AAV of $1.1 million.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Meril\u00e4inen, 23, appeared in 20 regular season games for the Senators in the 2025-26 season. He posted an 8-10-1 record with a 3.51 GAA and .860 save percentage in those contests. With the Belleville Senators in the AHL, in 19 games, he posted an 8-8-1 record with a 2.77 goals-against average and a .909 save percentage.<\/p>\n<p>Selected by Ottawa in the third round (71st\u00a0overall) in the 2020 NHL Draft, Meril\u00e4inen has appeared in 34 career NHL games. In 84 career games in the AHL, Meril\u00e4inen\u00a0has compiled\u00a0a 39-29-6 record with a 2.59 GAA and a .911 save percentage.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Visit the Senators website:\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.ottawasenators.com\/\" title=\"http:\/\/www.ottawasenators.com\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">www.ottawasenators.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Engage with\u00a0the Senators on X:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.twitter.com\/senators\" title=\"http:\/\/www.twitter.com\/senators\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">@Senators<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Like the Senators on Facebook:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/ottawasenators\" title=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/ottawasenators\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">www.facebook.com\/ottawasenators<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Follow the Senators on Instagram:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/instagram.com\/senators\" title=\"http:\/\/instagram.com\/senators\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">senators<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&#8211; end &#8211;<\/p>\n<p>  <script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><script async src=\"\/\/www.instagram.com\/embed.js\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"OTTAWA\u00a0\u2013\u00a0Ottawa Senators\u00a0general manager and president of hockey operations Steve Staios announced today the club has signed goaltender Leevi&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":776244,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194295],"tags":[49,48,20739],"class_list":["post-776243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ottawa","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-ottawa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776243","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=776243"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776243\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/776244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=776243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=776243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=776243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}