CRANBERRY, Pa. -- The Penguins rounded out their draft class last month with the selection of a big, Finnish defenseman in Kalle Kangas in the seventh round.
"Kalle Kangas is a big defenseman, extremely hard to play against," Penguins director of amateur scouting Nick Pryor said of the pick at the time. "His skating is going to need to improve. He can move the puck, he's hard to play against. So he's one of those guys that makes it harder on the other team."
Kangas, already 6 foot 4 and 205 pounds at 18 years old, is one of the biggest prospects in the Penguins' system. As a seventh-round pick, he has a steep uphill road to the NHL, but he has one of the few attributes you can't teach in his size.
Kangas was at a hockey camp in Kuopio on draft day when another player at the camp checked his phone and told Kangas the news: He was selected in the seventh round, No. 223 overall, by the Pittsburgh Penguins.
"My friends watched, but I didn't watch," Kangas recalled while at the Penguins' development camp earlier this month. "My friends tell me, 'You're drafted.' Unbelievable, unbelievable. Great feelings. Incredible."
Shortly after the draft was over, the Penguins were on the phone with both Kangas and their other seventh-round pick from Finland, Emil Jarventie, to try to make arrangements to fly them out to Pittsburgh for development camp, which was only two days away.
Kangas and Jarventie were on a flight early the next morning and made it to Pittsburgh the night before camp. Their bags didn't arrive quite as quickly. Those got stuck in London, where the players had a layover. With such a quick turn of events after the drafts, the players had packed their personal items in their hockey bags, so they had nothing once they landed in Pittsburgh.
The lack of personal items was rectified with a quick Target run on Day 1 of camp. But not much could be done about the gear other than wait and hope.
The real dillema was the lack of skates. First-round pick Brayden Yager, for instance, arrived at camp with just his skates, since he came straight from the draft in Nashville, Tenn. The Penguins were able to get him the rest of the equipment he needed to participate in camp.
Breaking in brand new skates would be a challenge, and that's even if the Penguins had the size and kind of skates they wore on hand. Kangas told the Finnish outlet Ilta-Sanomat once he got back home that the Penguins had him try on both new and used skates belonging to Evgeni Malkin at the camp because they were the closest they had to his size, but they didn't quite fit. The skates were made custom to Malkin's feet, and they were just a little too big on Kangas.
Luckily, the airline finally came through, and the bags arrived on the night before the three-day camp wrapped up with a three-on-three tournament. Kangas and Jarventie both played in the games.
Obviously, it's not an evaluation tournament, and a three-on-three scrimmage isn't that comparable to a real-life game situation. Nobody is laying out big hits in games like those, so Kangas' physicality wasn't really able to be on display. I thought that his skating was better than I had anticipated given his size and what Pryor said on draft day about it needing to improve, but it does still need some work.
Kangas described his own strengths as "good defense, I'm a big guy, and a defense leader."
Asked if he'd consider himself "hard to play against," like the way Pryor described him, Kangas needed an assist. His English isn't the best, and so he looked over to Jarventie, who was sitting next to him in case Kangas needed translation help. Kangas and Jarventie conferred with Finnish whispers for a few moments.
"Yeah, yeah, I have," Kangas said with a chuckle. "I have."
"You are," Jarventie chimed in, having played against Kangas for many years, as well as with him in the U18 Hlinka Gretzky Cup tournament.
Kangas said that he likes watching two NHL defenseman more than others, both fellow Finns: 6-foot-6 Stars defenseman Jani Hakanpaa, and 6-foot-4 Panthers defenseman Niko Mikkola.
"They're big guys doing the same as me," Kangas explained of his selections.
Kangas pointed to his strength and his power-skating as the areas of his game in which he'd most like to improve moving forward.
Kangas has yet to play professional hockey at any level in Finland. He spent last season in the Jokerit system at the U20 junior level, where he recorded one goal, eight assists, 40 penalty minutes and a plus-15 rating in 42 games.
Kangas said his goal next season is to play on the men's team, at the professional level. Jokerit currently plays in the Mestis league, the second-tier league in Finland.
Kangas' path forward would ideally be a strong year with Jokerit, then a move up to a team in the top Finnish league, Liiga. If Kangas can eventually put together a good season in the top league, then he could earn himself a contract with the Penguins at some point in the future.
