CRANBERRY, Pa. -- Just about this time last year, NHL teams were scrambling to find homes for many of their European prospects for the 2020-21 season.
It wasn't yet a given that the AHL would have a season at all, and the league pushed back its anticipated start date multiple times, eventually settling on Feb. 5.
With the top leagues in Sweden, Finland, and other European countries starting on time in the fall, many teams opted to loan their European prospects back to teams in their home countries in order to get some playing time. Once AHL camps did finally get underway, a lot of those teams opted to leave those prospects in Europe for the rest of the year, giving the prospects some stability rather than disrupting their season.
That's what the Penguins did with defense prospect Niclas Almari, loaning him to the Pelicans of the top Finnish league for the duration of last season. The decision might prove to be one that benefits Almari in the long run.
Almari, 23, was the Penguins' fifth-round pick in 2016. He made the move to North America for the 2019-20 season, and had a decent rookie season.
Almari, who is listed at 6 foot 1 and 180 pounds, was never much of a point-producer at any level in his career, and that didn't change in the AHL. He scored one goal and six assists in 51 games, and finished with a minus-8 rating. During film sessions with then-assistant coach J.D. Forrest, Forrest would show Almari clips of defensemen like Brian Dumoulin and Marcus Pettersson, who Almari called "role models" due to their similarities. All three are left-handed, puck-moving defensemen who aren't exactly major point producers themselves, but are the type of defenseman who will often get paired alongside a point producer.
In speaking to Almari that year, though, it sounded like he was struggling with his confidence. The adjustment from the European game to the North American game was a big one. There's less time to hold onto the puck, so players have to make decisions fast. And if a bad decision is made, an opponent can make a play off of that much faster. Almari was worried about making mistakes.
"You have to be so alert of everything," Almari told me near the end of his rookie season. "That's the biggest difference from the European game style. If you make one mistake back home, it doesn't come back and bite you in the ass."
When I spoke with then-head coach Mike Vellucci at the end of the season, confidence was the one area of Almari's game that he mentioned as an area that needed improvement.
"His talent is very good," Vellucci said of Almari. "He's big, he can skate, he has a really hard shot, he's smart hockey-sense wise, he's a good player. He just need a little more confidence and just needs to play a little more in this kind of environment. He showed a lot of strides. His talent is something that stands out."
In a conversation I had with director of player development Scott Young in July, Young expressed a similar sentiment.
"He's got the tools, he's a good skater, he sees the ice very well," Young said. "He moves the puck well. We want to see him be a little bit more assertive, play with more confidence and start to jump up into the play a little bit more, trust his instincts, trust himself and have confidence in himself with the puck because he does have all the tools. At times he can maybe play a little bit conservative, and he certainly has to tools to be able to jump up and add a little bit of offense. And he's got a great stick defensively. He's a good size and he defends really well stick-on-puck. So we like a lot about Niclas."
With Almari needing to regain his confidence, this time spent in Finland as a result of the effects of COVID-19 might be a blessing in disguise.
Almari played 28 games for the Pelicans last season, missing some time at the start of the season and then again mid-season due to injury. But when he was in the lineup, he was typically on the Pelicans' top line, playing a significant role and earning big minutes.
"A couple of injuries, but the games I played, I played pretty well," Almari said after Sunday's development camp practice of the experience. "So I got to play a lot. I got a lot of confidence. So I think it was a good year."
Reflecting on his first season in North America two years ago, Almari acknowledged that he didn't have the most confidence that season, but that he feels differently entering this year.
"Yeah, maybe it was just a huge learning year, the first year here," he said. "But right now I have good confidence, I'm healthy. So it should be good year for me."
Almari is entering the final year of his entry-level contract, something he called "good motivation" for the coming season. And as far as his goals for the year, he's setting his sights high.
"I'm going to try to make the team, the big boys," he said. "And if not, the goal is to be one of the top defensemen in the AHL."
