Similar to McGroarty, Koivunen was called up late in the 2024-25 season and notched seven assists in eight games with Pittsburgh, while being named to the AHL\u2019s All-Rookie team with 56 points in 63 games.<\/p>\n
With bigger expectations heading into this season, Koivunen made the team out of camp, but wasn\u2019t able to sustain the requisite level of play.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think Ville, to me, had a great opportunity at the beginning of the year and I think he would be the first to say he didn\u2019t make the most of it,\u201d Dubas said. \u201cHe went down to the minors, found himself, came back up, and we felt objectively his speed improved, his power improved, his strength improved \u2013 he had improved and was creating more.\u201d<\/p>\n
At the time of his recall back to the big club, Koivunen ranked second in the entire American Hockey League with 11 points (4G-7A) in six games. On Dec. 4 against Tampa Bay, in his 24th career game, Koivunen scored his first NHL goal.<\/p>\n
He did find another goal on Jan. 4 in Columbus, but overall, the puck luck just wasn\u2019t there for the forward. He spent the next couple of months in WBS, finishing second on the team in scoring with 41 points (13G-28A) in 34 games, before seeing more time at the NHL level to finish the year.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the end of the season, he was up, and he\u2019s now one of the few guys \u2013 Sid is Sid, but (Koivunen), without being pushed, he\u2019s in here on off-days. He\u2019s finding himself,\u201d Dubas said. \u201cYou always wish these things were linear. A year ago, he had the great finish and he found it, but they\u2019re all different.\u201d<\/p>\n
What Dubas, Assistant GM Jason Spezza, and the rest of the organization have liked from Koivunen during the AHL playoffs is how he handled more physical opponents like the Hershey Bears.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s a player who we think has a very bright future and for us, behind the scenes, really responded well during the year to being challenged to push and become more at his best,\u201d Dubas said. \u201cHe is a deeply competitive player on the ice.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Similar to McGroarty, Koivunen was called up late in the 2024-25 season and notched seven assists in eight…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":641776,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":["post-641775","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641775","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=641775"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641775\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/641776"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=641775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=641775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=641775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}