BUFFALO – The last two years haven’t been easy for Buffalo Sabres goaltender prospect Topias Leinonen. But he’s healthy now, and with a new opportunity in front of him, he feels ready to take the next step.
Injuries and a lack of ice time when healthy have slowed the 20-year-old’s development. He has been limited to 59 games (regular season and playoffs), including international action, since being selected by the Sabres in the second round (41st overall) of the 2022 draft.
Of the 40 games he played in 2022-23, he played 23 with JYP’s U20 team in Finland. Last season, he played in a total of 19 games: 11 with JYP’s U20 team (four in the regular season, seven in the playoffs), six with JYP’s senior team in Liiga, Finland’s top professional league, and two with KeuPa HT in Mestis, the country’s second-best league.
“He did great,” Buffalo goaltending development coach Seamus Kotyk said. “It’s tough to juggle all that, but he did it. We’re now happy and optimistic that he’s going to fit in well with his new team in Sweden. It’s exactly what he needed.”
This season, Leinonen (6-foot-5, 227 pounds) will play for Mora, a team in Allsvenskan, Sweden’s second-best league. There, he’ll have a chance to win the No. 1 goalie job, as he battles another young goalie for the title.
“I think it’s a good choice for me,” he said at the Sabres’ development camp in July. “I want to play a lot of games, that’s what’s important right now.”
Leinonen was attending his third development camp in Buffalo, but this was his first time playing from start to finish. It was the first time some in the organization saw him in action.
In his first camp of 2022, he was injured on the first day. Last summer, he suffered a stress fracture in his ankle that kept him off the ice for the entire duration of camp.
Leinonen’s injury struggles are somewhat reminiscent of the early career of another Finnish goalie in the Sabres organization, Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen. The two netminders, who are similar in size, have spoken a few times, including during development camp when Buffalo had Luukkonen address the goalies on site via Zoom.
One of the topics Luukkonen discussed was how to deal with adversity.
“It was good for me to hear what he had to say about it,” Leinonen admitted. “I hope I have other opportunities to talk to him.”
Leinonen said Luukkonen is one of the goalies he enjoys watching the most, along with Thatcher Demko of the Vancouver Canucks and Pekka Rinne, formerly of the Nashville Predators. Leinonen grew up watching his father, Tero, who had a long professional career as a goalie, mostly in Finland, and that’s why he chose the position.
With a small sample size to watch him play, Sabres officials had to evaluate Leinonen in practice to see where he was in his development. Despite the few hurdles he had to overcome, they saw progress.
“He’s getting sharper and sharper,” Kotyk said. “I could see his body looking different at times. There were a couple of different things I could see that are hard to measure statistically, but that’s what I was trying to measure to see how he’s progressing.”
His size and mobility are the assets that stand out the most in Leinonen’s game, and that’s exactly what Buffalo wants to see from a goalie of his stature.
“He has this ability to be completely stubborn in order to be good,” Kotyk said. “Now we just have to refine some of the details of his game.”
Among these details, we find consistency, better physical condition, and continuous work on his movements in his semi-circle.
With Mora, the door will be wide open for Leinonen.
“The team is optimistic about him, and we are the same way,” Kotyk said. “They also know he really needs to be coached well to take a big step off the ice that will help him on the ice.
“I think they see it the same way. That’s what I wish for him this season. Everyone knows it, it’s not a secret, he has to play a lot of games this year.”
