SUNRISE, Fla. \u2013 Florida Panthers President of Hockey Operations and General Manager Bill Zito announced today that the club has agreed to terms with forward Samu Salminen on a two-year, entry-level contract.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Samu is a reliable playmaking forward who played a significant role on Denver\u2019s national championship team,” said Zito. “We are looking forward to his growth within our organization as he begins his professional career.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Salminen, 23, skated in 43 games with the University of Denver (NCAA) in 2025-26, compiling a career-high 11 goals and 29 points (11-18-29) while serving as an alternate captain to help the Pioneers secure both an NCHC title and a national championship. He led Denver with 376 faceoff wins (54%).\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
The 6-foot-2, 186-pound native of Helsinki, Finland has spent the last four seasons between Denver (2024-25 to 2025-26) and the University of Connecticut (2022-23 to 2023-24), amassing 91 points (37-54-91) over 149 total NCAA games. Prior to his North American career, Salminen played for Jokerit\u2019s U20 team for parts of four seasons (2019-20 to 2022-23), logging 94 points (36-58-94) across 85 games while serving as team captain in 2021-22.\u00a0<\/p>\n
On the international stage, Salminen represented Finland as captain at the 2021 IIHF U18 World Championship, leading the team with seven goals while totaling nine points (7-2-9) in seven tournament games.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Salminen was originally selected by the New Jersey Devils in the third round (68th overall) of the 2021 NHL Draft.\u00a0<\/p>\n
2026-27 Florida Panthers single game tickets are on sale now! To score tickets for Panthers home games throughout the campaign, click here<\/a>. For all the latest in Panthers news, concerts and events at Amerant Bank Arena & FTL War Memorial, sign up for ’93 Society newsletter<\/a> and receive information straight to your inbox. Visit FloridaPanthers.com<\/a> or SeatGeek.com<\/a> for all ticketing needs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SUNRISE, Fla. \u2013 Florida Panthers President of Hockey Operations and General Manager Bill Zito announced today that the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":405746,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":["post-405745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405745","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=405745"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405745\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/405746"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=405745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=405745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=405745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}