{"id":362738,"date":"2025-12-22T00:19:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-22T00:19:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/362738\/"},"modified":"2025-12-22T00:19:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-22T00:19:08","slug":"metro-notes-helenius-leonard-foerster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/362738\/","title":{"rendered":"Metro Notes: Helenius, Leonard, Foerster"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Buffalo Sabres will not be sending top prospect and Team Finland star Konsta Helenius<\/a> to the 2026 World Championships, reports Finnish hockey outlet Kiekko Uutiset<\/a>. Helenius ranked second on Finland\u2019s World Juniors roster in scoring at last year\u2019s tournament. His command over the top center role was a crucial piece in Finland\u2019s run to a silver medal.<\/p>\n

But after a fourth-place finish at age 17, and a Silver Medal win at age 18, Helenius now won\u2019t have a chance to reach the summit this season. Instead, he\u2019ll stick in his role as a pillar of the Rocheester Americans\u2019 offense. Helenius leads all Americans forwards in scoring with 26 points in 27 games. It\u2019s a breakout year after he scored 35 points in 65 games as an AHL rookie last season, and could result in Helenius receiving his NHL debut sooner rather than later. With those hopes in sight, the Sabres will choose to keep Helenius close to home, while Team Finland will have to lean on Seattle Kraken prospect Julius Miettinen<\/a> to fill their top center role.<\/p>\n

Other notes from the Metropolitan Division:<\/p>\n

Washington Capitals forward Ryan Leonard<\/a> has not played since Dec. 5 due to an upper-body injury, but he\u2019s now considered only day-to-day and appears to be nearing a return to the lineup, per The Washington Post\u2019s Bailey Johnson<\/a>. Leonard, 20, is one of the key young forwards on the Capitals, and has 18 points in 29 games this season. The 2023 No. 8 overall pick was playing on Washington\u2019s third line<\/a> alongside Nic Dowd<\/a> and Ethen Frank<\/a> for the game in which he suffered his injury.
\nOn Dec. 17, the Philadelphia Flyers announced that forward Tyson Foerster<\/a> was set to miss five months after undergoing surgery, effectively ending his 2025-26 regular season. Yesterday, The Athletic\u2019s Kevin Kurz relayed word<\/a> from general manager Daniel Briere regarding Foerster\u2019s injury timeline. Briere noted that the original announcement of five months was more of a \u201crange\u201d than a specific timeline, noting that Foerster\u2019s actual recovery timeline \u201ccould be a little less\u201d or \u201ca little more\u201d and that the club does not know \u201cexactly for sure\u201d when Foerster will be able to return. That\u2019s not out of the ordinary given that teams can\u2019t fully predict the future in terms of how a player\u2019s body will respond to a recovery process, but it does provide at least a little bit of room for optimism that Foerster may not miss quite as much time as has been projected. The 23-year-old 2020 first-round pick scored 10 goals and 13 points in 21 games this season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Buffalo Sabres will not be sending top prospect and Team Finland star Konsta Helenius to the 2026…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":362739,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[178788,385,1789,178789,395,99,10155,1791],"class_list":["post-362738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-konsta-helenius","tag-nhl","tag-philadelphia-flyers","tag-ryan-leonard","tag-snapshots","tag-sports","tag-tyson-foerster","tag-washington-capitals"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=362738"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362738\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/362739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=362738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=362738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=362738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}