Finnish players in Jets organization playing in Liiga are starting to head back to Winnipeg

The Liiga season was put on pause December 2nd which impacted five Jets prospects or players under contract to Winnipeg including:

Ville Heinola (2019 1st rounder)
Henri Nikkanen (2019 4th rounder)
Kristian Vesalainen (2017 1st rounder)
Santeri Virtanen (2017 4th rounder)
Joona Luoto

Both Heinola and Nikkanen made the preliminary Finnish rosters for the World Junior tournament which is to be held in Edmonton this month but the other three were in limbo until the planned re-start of Liiga which is set for December 19th.

Photo Credit: Colby Spence (Illegal Curve)

Today both HIFK (Luoto’s team) and HPK (Vesalainen’s team) put out press releases indicating that Joona Luoto and Kristian Vesalainen were returning to Winnipeg for training camp.

Player totals to date:

Heinola – 19 GP 1 goal 13 assists, averaging 19:53 of ice time per game.
Nikkanen – 15 GP 2 goal 5 assists, averaging 18:54 of ice time per game.
Vesalainen – 10 GP 4 goals 4 assists, averaging 19:52 of ice time per game.
Virtanen –  17 GP 2 goal 4 assist, averaging 16:47 of ice time per game.
Luoto – 19 GP 5 goals 4 assists, averaging 18:13 of ice time per game.