SM league star striker, World Cup lion Waltteri Merelä is going to find his fortune in Tampa Bay Lightning. The sporting challenge is rock hard in a top club.
A winger who excelled in Tampere’s Tappara last and second season Walter Merelä24, did not hide his desire to continue his hockey career in the NHL, even if the contract with Tappara still covered the 2023-2024 season.
Now Merelä has got what she wanted. According to Urheilu, he has signed a rookie contract with the Tampa Bay Lightning.
The sporting challenge is tough, as the Lightning is the Stanley Cup champion for the 2020 and 2021 seasons and the losing side in the final.
Lightning will inform about Merelä’s contract at the beginning of the week.
One game in the World Cup
The head coach Jukka Jalonen Merelä, who was selected for the World Cup team and played one match in the home games, excelled in both European and league games. He attracted a lot of interest in North America during the season.
Rookie contract offers came from several clubs, but it is known that Merelä and his representatives only had serious negotiations with Tampa.
Merelä’s contract is a basic one-year two-way rookie paper. In rookie contracts, a player’s seasonal earnings in the NHL are typically 750,000–900,000 US dollars, and in the AHL, about 10 percent of this.
Sidelined for a long time
Merelä, who learned puck in Ylöjärvi, is a 188-centimeter and 90-kilogram player who also knows how to use his physique. The puck player who plays on the right has mostly played as a right winger, but he is also no stranger to the left wing or the center field. In the last league season, Merelä got a skate cut on his wrist that required surgery in November and was on the sidelines for more than two months.
In Lightning’s current lineup, a star player has been named as the right winger Nikita Kucherov as well as a veteran Corey Perry.
Over the years, there haven’t been many profile Finnish players seen in Tampa. Valtteri Filppula played a remarkable career in the club.
In addition to him, Lightning has been represented by e.g. Jussi A river, Sean Bergenheim, Juha Ylönen and Antero Niittymäki.