{"id":430931,"date":"2026-08-12T18:28:07","date_gmt":"2026-08-12T18:28:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/430931\/"},"modified":"2026-08-12T18:28:07","modified_gmt":"2026-08-12T18:28:07","slug":"ahl-bakersfield-signs-eemil-vinni-pro-hockey-rumors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/430931\/","title":{"rendered":"AHL Bakersfield Signs Eemil Vinni \u2013 Pro Hockey Rumors"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Edmonton Oilers have added more goaltending depth to their organization. According to an announcement<\/a> from the Oilers, the AHL\u2019s Bakersfield Condors have signed netminder Eemil Vinni<\/a> to a contract for the 2026-27 season.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s an intriguing addition to Edmonton\u2019s depth chart, at the very least. The Oilers drafted Vinni with the 64th overall pick of the 2024 NHL Draft, and he\u2019s been playing in his native Finland since. Still, Vinni has hardly enough experience in the Finnish Liiga to speak of, having appeared in just three games since the 2022-23 season.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not to say he hasn\u2019t been playing at all. For the past three years, Vinni, 20, has been relegated to the Finnish Mestis league, the country\u2019s second-highest professional league. Despite showing flashes of being a very well-rounded netminder for his age, his on-ice production has been far from consistent.<\/p>\n

During his draft season, Vinni played for the Mestis\u2019 JoKP, finishing with a 17-9-10 record in 37 games with a .892 SV% and 2.72 GAA. Although he made Team Finland\u2019s roster for the 2023-24 IIHF World Junior Championships, he didn\u2019t feature in any games.<\/p>\n

The following year, Vinni bounced around quite a bit, limiting his ability to gain any traction. He played seven games for HIFK in the U20 SM-sarja, one game for Kiekko-Vantaa in Mestis, and one game for HIFK in Liiga. This past season, it was spent entirely in the Mestis league, with middling results.<\/p>\n

In the first chunk of the season, again on JoKP, Vinni managed an 8-5-4 record in 17 games with an .884 SV% and 2.99 GAA. Not only was he not improving, but he was also performing worse two years after being drafted despite playing in the same league. However, the Oilers loaned Vinni to the Ketter\u00e4, and he finished the season with a much better 2-1-1 record in four games with a .951 SV% and 1.23 GAA. He continued that strong play into the postseason, registering a 4-2-0 record in six games with a .943 SV% and 1.52 GAA.<\/p>\n

Regardless of the strong play to end the 2025-26 season, Vinni\u2019s promotion to the North American professional circuit appears premature. Dominating in 10 games to end his season is far from a large enough sample size, and it wasn\u2019t even in the highest league of his home country. In the Oilers\u2019 defense, Vinni\u2019s new contract is a two-way deal, meaning he can spend a decent chunk of the 2026-27 season with the ECHL\u2019s Fort Wayne Komets.<\/p>\n

However, the Finnish Liiga is generally considered a more talented league than the ECHL. It may have been more prudent for Edmonton to facilitate a move to Finland\u2019s highest league before having Vinni test his mettle on the other side of the Atlantic. Goalies take longer to develop, so it wouldn\u2019t have prolonged his eventual promotion much longer anyway.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Edmonton Oilers have added more goaltending depth to their organization. According to an announcement from the Oilers,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":430932,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[3853,151,153,152,2070,171283,2722],"class_list":["post-430931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bakersfield","tag-ahl","tag-bakersfield","tag-bakersfield-headlines","tag-bakersfield-news","tag-edmonton-oilers","tag-eemil-vinni","tag-transactions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=430931"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430931\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/430932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=430931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=430931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=430931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}