Oskari Salminen is now a contracted player of JYP.
SaiPa, which plays in the ice hockey SM league, announced on Sunday that Oskari Salminen has used the option in his contract to move elsewhere.
JYP of Jyväskylä report now that it has signed a contract with the 25-year-old Salminen for the rest of the season.
Salminen, originally from Kotka, played the previous two seasons behind the guard in the AHL and ECHL rinks. In Finland, Salminen has previously represented KooKoo, Jukurei and SaiPa at the league level.
In the current season, Salminen played 15 matches in SaiPa, with a save percentage of 90.8 and an average of 2.51 goals conceded.
JYP’s director of sports Simo Mälki is satisfied with Salminen’s contract.
– When an opportunity arose to strengthen our goalkeeping department with a domestic top scorer, we saw it as reasonable at this point, Mälkiä says.
JYP’s team spends the national team break training in Jyväskylä, so Salminen can immediately get a feel for and get to know his new team.
In yesterday’s announcement SaiPa also said that when Salminen left and by Filip Lindberg when he is injured, the goalkeeping department is supplemented by a Latvian goalkeeper Gustavs Davis Grigals. According to the release, the Latvian’s contract is valid until the Christmas break, but SaiPa has the option to extend the contract until the end of the season.
Grigals was a contract player in the Nashville Predators organization last season. Last season, he played his AHL debut with the Milwaukee Admirals and 34 games in the ECHL with the Atlanta Gladiators with a save percentage of 90.
– After the confirmation of Oskari Salminen’s departure, we immediately started to map out alternatives and strive to find the best possible solution for SaiPa for the goalkeeper situation. From Nashville, we have heard a lot of positive feedback about Gustavs, Liiga-SaiPa’s sports director Harri Aho comment.
However, the Slovakian main league club HK Dukla Trencin, which Grigals represents this season, denied the deal on Sunday when they announced the lineup for today’s match.
– The information alleged in the media about our goalkeeper moving to Finland and SaiPa is a clear misunderstanding, because Dukla Trenc owns the player’s rights until the end of the season. We also informed SaiPa, the manager of the club, about this Mario Bliznak stated.