Vehvilainen Shining Early For Cleveland Monsters

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Coming into the new season, all of the attention for the Columbus Blue Jackets organization has been focused on the battle for their number-one goaltending position at the NHL level. With Sergei Bobrovsky moving on to South Florida. Joonas Korpisalo and newcomer Elvis Merzlikins are battling to see who will get the majority of starts in Columbus.

The spillover effect of this battle has been felt with the Cleveland Monsters. They had their own goaltending situation developing.

Matiss Kivlenieks is back for a second season and your likely number one starter, but it’s the newcomer that has stolen the early headlines for the Monsters -- in terms of performance.

Enter Veini Vehvilainen.

All he has done thus far in his first professional season in North America is play well. Outside of one start where he allowed six goals to the Syracuse Crunch, Vehvilainen has given the Monsters a chance to win his other starts and that's all you can ask from a goalie.

Overall, Vehvilainen has just four wins in ten starts, but that’s not because of his play in net. He has the fifth best goals-against average in the AHL at 2.13 and the 13th-best save percentage at .920.

Not counting that Syracuse game, Vehvilainen has allowed just 15 goals in the other nine starts. That’s even more impressive when you consider that he is just 22 years old and adjusting to the North American game. However, we really shouldn’t be that surprised if you look at his two previous seasons in Finland.

For Karpat in Liiga, Vehvilainen posted a 1.89 GAA and then a 1.58 GAA before coming to the Monsters. His save percentage in those two years were .925 and .933.

It’s early and there’s a lot of hockey left to be played, but we might need to start considering what impact this could eventually have with the Blue Jackets. Both Korpisalo and Merzlikins are free agents after the season, albeit restricted free agents. Vehvilainen is showing that he wants in this conversation. If he keeps posting these kind of numbers, it’s something absolutely worth considering.

Head coach Mike Eaves talked about his early impressions of Vehvilainen and what has stood out about him thus far.

“HIs calmness,” Eaves said. “I think that for a young guy he doesn’t get rattled and I think that’s a strength for him.”

Eaves did also acknowledge that Vehvilainen is still going through the adjustment phase of being in North America. That’s to be expected just 10 games into his young career here, but it’s easy to see why there is significant confidence in the overall goaltending situation throughout the Blue Jackets organization. Kivlenieks is 6-2-2 to start his season. And yet, we haven’t even mentioned perhaps their highest upside goalie prospect in Danill Tarasov. He’s currently in Russia, but if he’s ready in a year or two we could easily see him dress for the Monsters.

As for the rest of this season, the story to watch will be which goalies rise to the top and take hold of a potential opportunity to impress an organization looking to see who their number-one goalie of the future could be. Vehvilainen is posting some early impressive numbers. If he can continue to adjust and develop as expected, we might have our answer.

This goalie competition is just getting started. Game on.