Jesse Puljujärvi, who signed a one-and-a-half-year contract with Pittsburgh, is returning to the NHL with a clean slate, writes Urheilu’s NHL reporter Tommi Seppälä.
Tommi Seppälä NHL reporter
Three million was too much. That much Jesse Puljujärvi earned on his last Edmonton deal. Alla had a promising season of 14 goals and 36 power points, but the three million player from Tornio was not.
When the ballast brought by the small (4th) booking number was added to the equation, the difficulties of previous years, the ever-present media pressure in Edmonton, there was simply too much on the tray.
Physical troubles (hips) sank Jesse Puljujärvi 1.0 for good.
Money always plays a role in the NHL world. Of course, each player takes with them every dollar that is hit on the table, but every dollar bill and coin has two sides: on the other side there are expectations. There you can also find resale difficulties in a difficult situation in the case of an overly expensive contract. If things go south, so to speak, trading and thus getting a new start can become really difficult.
My contract sucks is a former Vancouver goalkeeper Roberto Luongo Words left in NHL folklore.
Against this background, Puljujärvi made a good deal on Sunday. A one-and-a-half-year contract with the Pittsburgh Penguins increases the Finn’s pocketbook by $800,000 per season. So we are moving close to the NHL minimum wage.
In the case of Puljujärvi, the table could now be said to be clean. Let’s forget the small reservation number, the high expectations for the player of the scoring chains and all the slag from Edmonton in the past years and why not from Carolina last spring. Below are new hips and a new contract.
After everything, Puljujärvi will now have a completely new start to his NHL career – in the name of raw realism, it must be said that the opportunity may also be the last.
Jesse Puljujärvi is not expected to be a star player in the score chain
The contract puts expectations into perspective, perhaps also for the player himself and his close circle. Pittsburgh is not looking for a solution player in Jesse Puljujärvi, and Puljujärvi probably wouldn’t be. But Puljujärvi is an NHL level player. A player worth a million in two bottom chains. As an energetic player at work, Puljujärvi could be really useful for his own team.
You don’t expect magic with the puck from Lake Puljujärvi. And that doesn’t remove the fact that Puljujärvi could occasionally be used as a driller in top chains as well.
It is special in itself, but typical for the star cult league, that Jesse Puljujärvi only enters the NHL season for the first time at the age of 25 with moderate and, above all, realistic expectations. There is a lot of hockey wisdom in Pittsburgh from the club management, coaching management and players.
It’s okay to ask, how many other players in the NHL suffer from symptoms due to wearing boots a size or two too big, and thus too high expectations and the subsequent criticism and anxiety?
The NHL is an ice-cold sports business with results, where there is no room for emotion. Although the players are admired and considered as some kind of mythical super-characters, under their armor of equipment these are also very ordinary people.
Mentally, NHL players are always in a huge pressure cooker. In this context, money, i.e. the value of the contract, and the expectations set through it, play a huge role.
Many people have symptoms with this, and I strongly believe that Puljujärvi has also done this in the past.
That’s why the starting points with Pittsburgh are excellent. Everything points to the fact that now, for the first time in his career, Puljujärvi has a real chance to play hockey in the NHL in a way that would also allow him to enjoy playing.
A few conversations with Puljujärvi over the last few months have given a strong indication that the slag that had built up between the ears has been removed during the long break. The expectations of the player himself are moderate and realistic – is Puljujärvi finally finding himself as a player?
This can really be the case now that both the club and the player are on the same page in terms of what to get from the next NHL gig.
That’s the balance that should be aimed for in many other player contracts as well. Everyone would win.