The Lions’ World Cup forward goes in search of his NHL dream humbly, aiming for a place in the bottom chains of the Tampa Bay Lightning.
Ice hockey player Waltteri Merelä there were happy things to tell when he visited his childhood home at the end of last week. The winger from Ylöjärvi was finally able to tell his parents that the hoped-for NHL contract has come about and that the Tampa Bay Lightning’s training camp is waiting for him in the fall.
Mother of a player who won two league championships and one CHL championship in Tappara, played for years in the national volleyball team Mari Merelä admitted to being surprised.
– Mother said frankly that she didn’t think she would see this day, Merelä, 24, who was contacted after a round of golf from Tampere, laughed.
No NHL reservation
Merelä, who was part of Tappara’s absolute profile characters for two seasons and broke into the league with the Pelicans, was not a junior star of any kind and was left without an NHL reservation at the time.
– At the beginning of March, it started to look like I would get a rookie contract. In April, it already started to look very certain. Interest came from half a dozen clubs. This is a really hard thing, because it is by no means obvious that there would be people interested in a guy my age.
The elite of Tampa’s offensive equipment are such megastars as Steven Stamkos, Nikita Kucherov and Brayden Point. The club that won the Stanley Cup in 2004, 2020 and 2021 was interested in Merela in general, but in one thing in particular.
– I come from an organization that is the best in Finland. It seemed to interest them a lot.
Through the bottom chains
The right winger, who plays from Right, directly admits that the talk of playing in the top chains in such a tough club is a joke.
– Through the bottom chains, we start looking for a role. There are guaranteed to be better players than me so far in the top three. But I’m a versatile player. The role of the four chain fits well, and I’ve played a lot of underpowered.
The contract is a typical rookie paper: one year, a salary of $750,000-$900,000 in the NHL and 90 percent less in the AHL.
Tampa has never belonged to the NHL’s so-called Finnish clubs, but Merelä heard a lot of good things about the organization From Ben Thomas. The Tappara colleague spent fifty years in the Lightning, mainly at the AHL level.
Familiar coaching
The Florida club, which will announce the contract on Monday, expects the Finn to come to the camp in good shape. After returning from her vacation in Greece, Merelä, who was part of the World Cup home team in May, starts training hard.
The physical programs are drawn up by someone who has been a fitness coach in Tappara for a long time and now works at the Olympic Committee Tommy Pärmäkoski.
– I have developed well with Tommi’s programs. I go to the ice at the beginning of July Jori Lehterän and Ville Nieminen for organized shifts.