RALEIGH, N.C. – Eric Tulsky, General Manager of the National Hockey League\u2019s Carolina Hurricanes, today announced that the team has signed defenseman Juuso V\u00e4lim\u00e4ki to a one-year contract. The deal will pay V\u00e4lim\u00e4ki\u00a0$900,000 for the 2026-27 season.<\/p>\n
V\u00e4lim\u00e4ki, 27, was acquired by the Hurricanes on Jan. 5 in exchange for future considerations. The\u00a0Tampere, Finland native split the 2025-26 season between Tucson and Chicago in the American Hockey League (AHL), totaling 23 points (7g, 16a) in 27 regular-season games, and adding 14 points (5g, 9a) in 21 playoff games to help the Chicago Wolves reach the Calder Cup Final. Originally selected by the Calgary Flames in the first round, 16th\u00a0overall at the 2017 NHL Draft, V\u00e4lim\u00e4ki\u00a0has appeared in 271 career NHL games with Calgary, Arizona and Utah, totaling 72 points (11g, 61a). He has registered 55 points (13g, 42a) in 83 career AHL games with Stockton, Tucson and Chicago. Prior to turning professional, V\u00e4lim\u00e4ki\u00a0spent three seasons in the Western Hockey League (WHL) with Tri-City, tallying 138 points (40g, 98a) and 92 penalty minutes in 159 games. He was named to the WHL West Second All-Star Team in 2017 and 2018.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"RALEIGH, N.C. – Eric Tulsky, General Manager of the National Hockey League\u2019s Carolina Hurricanes, today announced that the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":724096,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":["post-724095","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\/724095","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=724095"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/724095\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/724096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=724095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=724095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=724095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}