ESPOO, Finland — Konsta Helenius has just finished playing his first game against his peers in a year, and despite an assist and game-highs in shots (seven) and ice time (22:44), he’s disappointed that he didn’t score on one of the “maybe 12 scoring chances” his coach Marko Kauppinen estimates he had.
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“I don’t know, I need to work (on) my goal scoring,” he says from inside Metro Areena postgame.
Moments after him, team captain Aron Kiviharju pushed back against that.
“Amazing hockey player. Great team player. He can carry this team,” Kiviharju says of Helenius. “He needs every one of us but as you probably saw today he’s able to make a lot of great things (happen) on the ice with and without the puck.”
Helenius, NHL Central Scouting’s No. 3-ranked international skater for the 2024 NHL Draft (he was No. 1 at midseason), is wrapping up a whirlwind month as Finland’s first-line center at U18 worlds. It follows a couple of weeks as the youngest player with the senior team in their selection camp for the men’s world championships. That followed a six-game first-round series as the youngest player with Jukurit in the Liiga playoffs.
It has been an “amazing month,” he says. But he’s not done yet. Between the U18 worlds in Espoo and Vantaa and then potentially the men’s worlds in Prague and Ostrava, he’s going to be one of the last players playing this spring. And he’s got two gold medals in his sights as a final impression for NHL scouts.
“Our goal is to win the tournament,” he adds plainly.
When Kauppinen is asked about what it means to get Helenius back for the tournament — and what he’s capable of being in it — he scoffs.
“Ah,” Kaupin says, shaking his head about Helenius, “he reads the game really well and his skating is really, really good at this level. You can see that he’s further along (than his peers). He was pretty sad he couldn’t score tonight … so hopefully he will get a couple next game.”
A day later, although Helenius was held goalless once more, he added another assist and five shots to his totals in a 7-0 win against Norway, bringing him to four points and 12 shots on goal through two games.
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When his long draft season is finally over, the only question that will be left won’t be whether he’ll go high at the draft in Vegas, but just how high?
That’s the question NHL scouts in Finland for the tournament are asking themselves, too. He’s a high pick, they all agree. Is he a top-10 one?
Finnish legend Olli Jokinen, who also happened to coach him the last two seasons, thinks he should be.
But scouts are split.
“Not for me, but I think he is off the board by 12,” says one NHL scouting director.
“Borderline if he’s chosen top 10 but he is on my list,” says another scout.
Now it’s up to him to prove the latter right and put a stamp on it.
On a late-March phone call, Olli Jokinen is re-living the playoff performance Helenius — his Jukurit team’s youngest player — just put on.
Jokinen, an NHL vet of more than 1,200 games, is in the midst of wrapping up his third season as Jukurit’s head coach in Liiga before departing for a new opportunity as the head coach of Timra IK in the SHL.
A night earlier, with his team down 3-0 in their first-round series with Karpat, the 17-year-old Helenius had a three-assist night (all primary) in a 5-2 win to extend the series.
It was a prime example, Jokinen said, of what has allowed the kid to play so far ahead of his peers for so long.
“He was the best player out there on the ice and generated a couple of goals just with a heavy forecheck generating turnovers and takeaways,” Jokinen says. “He can generate 5-7 takeaways per game which is something that Pavel Datsyuk was the last guy to be able to do as a center. Barkov is really good on that as well. So there’s a lot of similarities to those guys in the way Konsta plays.”
(Below is one of those assists off the forecheck.)
Jokinen got his hands on Helenius in November of 2022, nearly two full seasons ago. Then, at 16, he was already “the best player in the U20 league and he was playing players 3-4 years older.”
Through a connection with his agent, Todd Diamond of International Sports Advisors, they were able to work out a loan with his club team, Tappara, who are perennial title chasers with a higher payroll and more veteran team. Helenius played for Jukurit’s pro club right away, giving him in essence two full seasons against men before the NHL Draft.
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Also right away, Jokinen noticed that Helenius’ hockey sense was “NHL hockey sense — a top player’s hockey sense.”
“He reads the game really well and positions himself really well, and understands the game,” Jokinen says. “He has that understanding of the situation in the game and when to play it safe or take a risk. I think his hockey sense is the biggest thing.”
Despite being on the smaller side for a centerman (he’s now listed at 5-foot-11 and 180 pounds), he was also clearly capable of not just handling the responsibilities of the position but of doing it “really well.”
Over time, despite the size mismatches he was often playing against down the middle, Helenius just kept winning pucks, mastering how to use his stick and his body positioning.
“He knows how you play against bigger guys, and how to tie their sticks with good timing when he’s in stick battles. It’s not just one thing. It’s everything. And then on top of that the understanding and the hockey sense comes into play. He’s also very, very physical too. There’s not a ton of hits over here in the Finnish league but I would say that he’ll have 4-6 hits in a game as well,” Jokinen says. “So he plays the game the right way, a really hard way, almost more North American than the North American players in our games at times.”
He just kept getting better and better, too, which included working harder than everyone else with the team’s strength and conditioning coach to close the physical gap between him and the pros quickly.
“He wants to learn all the time and he’s a competitive kid. He always wants to win. He always wants to battle hard,” Jokinen says. “He’s a very, very well-liked player around the team, he always comes to the rink with a smile on. He’s just a good kid to be around and he’s very, very mature for his age.”
Because of that, he “really took a step to become one of the top guys not just on our team but in our league,” Jokinen says.
Though Jukurit went on to lose their first-round series against Karpat in six games this spring, Helenius finished with six points in those six games (second on the team) to bring his draft year totals to 42 points in 57 combined Liiga regular season and playoff games. His 36 regular season points were the fourth-most ever by an under-18 skater in Liiga, behind names like Barkov, Granlund and Kakko, and ahead of others like Laine, Lehkonen, Puljujarvi and Teravainen.
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A week after his season ended, he was invited to Finland’s selection camp for the men’s world championships, making his senior team debut in a two-game set against Latvia in which he had three assists (two of which were primary). The invite made him the first under-18 player to play for the men’s team since Laine and Kakko (the plan is for him to return to the men’s team to play at men’s worlds after U18s, too).
That last part, about the names of 17-year-olds to play for the senior team that he has joined, means something to Helenius, he admits.
“It means I played good this season,” he says.
But he also always felt this was coming, that he could follow the path he’s been on in his draft year.
“I expect that (of myself),” he says. “I had a good summer. I expected a good season.”
Jokinen says there have been other things — important but often overlooked things — that have come along as well.
Confidence. Improved English. When scouts asked to speak to him throughout the season, they’d often ask for Jokinen to join him for the conversations. As the year progressed, Helenius told him he didn’t need or want him there, and that he could do it himself.
“He’s got a good head on him,” Jokinen says. “And he doesn’t think about the draft or anything. In that way, he’s got a little bit of coolness about him. He doesn’t put any pressure on it. So he’ll be comfortable speaking and all of that.”
At year’s end, Jokinen was even prepared to project him beyond Liiga.
“I believe that six months from now when NHL training camps start that (his hockey sense) is going to give him an opportunity to play in the National Hockey League next year,” Jokinen says. “That gives him the opportunity to play and be a really, really good player in the NHL as well. I truly believe that he can make that step because of the way that he plays. (And) he can be a two-way guy too. A lot of the times, the younger players, especially the without-the-puck play, that’s something that they don’t even want to hear, they don’t even want to listen because it’s all about having the puck and watching the YouTube highlights. He really is committed to playing good defense.
“Konsta’s a different breed in that way.”
(Top photo: Mikko Kankainen / Jukurit)
