Eight years later, the Maple Leafs will receive a flyer on former draft pick Nikolas Mattinen

If you're going to talk about the road less traveled on the road to an NHL contract, how about that for newly signed Nicolas Mattinen?

Sixth round pick of the Leafs in 2016 -> Four years in the OHL covering London, Flint and Oshawa -> Two years of hockey at a Canadian university (Ottawa State) -> A cup of tea with Laval in the AHL -> Austrian League -> German League -> A one-year, two-way NHL deal worth $775,000 with the Toronto Maple Leafs at age 26.

🖊 We have signed defender Nicolas Mattinen to a one-year two-way contract from 2024-25.

— Toronto Maple Leafs (@MapleLeafs) April 14, 2024

The former London Knight was the big-bodied “draft” pick of then-Leafs assistant GM Mark Hunter in the 2016 draft. The Leafs selected him as the last of their three 2016 defensive tackle picks 6'5 or taller (J.D. Greenway, Keaton Middleton and Mattinen). Then they selected 6'5 Eemeli Rasanen and 6'7 Fedor Goreev in 2017. Only Middleton, who played three games with the Avalanche, played an NHL game among this cohort).

Mattinen was listed as 6'4.5 during his draft year, and now eight years later he is listed as 6'6, 225 pounds, according to Elite Prospects. From drafting 6'4 Noah Chadwick and last offseason signing of NHL UFA Simon Benoit, to the recent additions of Ilya Lyubushkin and Joel Edmundson, to recently acquired 6'7 college prospect Cade Webber, Mattinen is a perfect fit for Brad Treliving. a way to add more dimension to the defensive posture at all levels of the organization. It should be noted that Mattinen also shoots correctly.

In this case, it's a flyer for bringing potential late bloomers into the American League, the only possible downside to taking up a standard player contract slot for one season. Given his unusual path and age (26), it's hard to see Mattinen as an NHL long shot until there's some proof of concept in the AHL, but he's shown some interesting displays of his mobility and offensive ability of late. before some major production in his OHL career in his final professional seasons in Europe.

For a better understanding of Mattinen's recent exploits in Germany, McKeen's Chapin Landvogt (@Tsomichapin) provided the following insights into MLHS.

Nikolas Mattinen's 2023-24 DEL Player of the Year

Nicolas Mattinen can best sum up the season he just finished by saying that Germany took the league by storm in the DEL. Coming into the season, it can be said that fans and experts of the German ice hockey scene expected less. His departure from the ICEHL in neighboring Austria was an unusual move, as typically older North Americans in the midst of career declines make their way from the DEL to Austria.

Mattinen's numbers last season with Villach were indeed very flashy (43 points and +37 in 51 games) and his monster size was surprising. However, due to his lack of professional experience coming out of North America, many analysts expected him to primarily slot in as a fourth/fifth defenseman, and wondered if his size would have the makings of a skater. Additionally, Canadian players coming out of the USports circuit usually start their second, if not third, pro rounds in Germany.

However, since day one on September 15, Mattinen has been an impressive player, often leading his small-budget Straubing Tigers team, which finished third overall in the regular season, again defying pundits' predictions. Mattinen was the main figure of this success.

In the 16th game of the season, Mattinen was one of the league's leading scorers with 10 goals and 20 points. As this blue-collar production seemed too good to be true, there were still voices in and around Straubing who felt that it should return to earth at some point, but that never happened.

Mattie didn't go more than three games without a point all season and finished with 14 multi-point games and a playoff berth. The consistency of his offensive contributions surpassed that of the vast majority of forwards in the league, as he finished seventh in scoring on the season overall. So far, he's been used in all situations and has been a fixture on both special teams.

It's hard to imagine any close observers being surprised that he finished the year at +18 over 64 games; The difficulty of attacking forwards (far less) combined with his suffocating shot and pass lane blocking made the league seem too easy for him at times.

Most importantly, while he has some flaws in his overall mobility and skating mechanics, he is mobile enough to be on the ice all the time. His prowess along the blue line was that of a classic big defenseman (i.e., he wasn't the type to dance around there), but his shooting power and passing accuracy from distance were often a threat. He was also a third or fourth hitter with high consistency. He was all over the ice and seemed to have a knack for getting pucks out of traffic or picking corners.

Understandably, his performance dipped slightly during the playoffs (1-6-7 in 12 games) as Straubing played two incredibly tough and contested series, but his importance to the team was emphatically emphasized. 24 minutes of ice time per game, breaking the 30-minute mark twice. In the final two losses of the season, he logged more than 27 minutes, earning a +2 in the process. In Game 2 of the series against Berlin, he had a 41:57 one-goal loss (no, that game was not in overtime).

While Mattinen's one season in the DEL will go down in German hockey history as a season filled with offense, a bit of scraping, and a suffocating defense, he returns to North America with a very nice gift for those back home. Straubing. As the season progressed, he was often paired with 20-year-old Adrian Klein, a 6'3”, 215-pound defenseman whose progress after making his DEL debut as a 16-year-old has largely stalled in recent years.

Still eligible for the draft as an overdraft player, Klein became a physical force alongside Mattinen who used the puck more and more as the season progressed. By the time the playoffs ended, Klein had become a top-six player and finished the year with three goals, 11 points and a +3 in 64 games, flashing many of the same tendencies on the ice as Mattinen.

Mattinen's new employer could appreciate that kind of leadership in recruiting Mattinen for next season. The impact he has had on his team and the development of this young fellow shows a level of character that could be valuable on an AHL club with promising, young options.

For DEL fans, it's clear that they were able to witness an extraordinary player by DEL standards who was undoubtedly on his way up the career ladder. It seemed like he was just now realizing how good and impressive he could be.