Rasmus Ristolainen is playing in the playoffs — finally!
820 NHL regular season games.
12 full seasons + this one.
Today, Rasmus Ristolainen of Philadelphia Flyers and an alumnus of TPS Turku will play his first NHL playoff game. Finally.
Let's rewind a bit. All the way to January 5th, 2014. A few days earlier I had moved to San Francisco, US and the following day I'd start in a new job. I went to a local bar in the morning and asked if they could put the IIHF U20 World Championships final game on one of the screens. It took a moment for me to explain what that was but eventually, I got to watch the game from the biggest screen of the bar pretty much alone. U20 hockey final between Finland and Sweden on Sunday morning was not the hottest thing to Californians at the time apparently.
On the 70th minute, in the first overtime, Rasmus Ristolainen gets the puck on the offensive zone, dekes a defender, drives to the goal and sneaks the puck past the goalie. Finland wins the U20 gold. My new life across the ocean has started with a everlasting memory of Finnish hockey glory.
Rasmus Ristolainen was a TPS defenceman who had been drafted 8th overall in the 2013 NHL Draft and was playing in Rochester Americans AHL team during that time. Next season, he'd be called up to Buffalo Sabres 8 seasons during the longest playoff drought even when the team picked up players like Jack Eichel, Rasmus Dahlin, Sam Reinhart, Ryan O'Reilly and others.
Following a trade to Philadelphia Flyers for the 2021-22 season, the questions started flying: can Ristolainen make it to playoffs in his new team? After all, Flyers had been a semi regular playoffs team in the past years, making it to the first round about every other year. '22 no playoffs. '23 no playoffs. '24 no playoffs, '25 no playoffs. The drought had arrived to Philadelphia.
Now, let's talk about the Flyers and playoffs a bit. I'm a Pittsburgh Penguins fan but I do want to see Flyers in the playoffs every season. There's no better rivalry playoffs series than the Battle of Pennsylvania. In the playoffs, there's been 41 series between the two teams and Philly is leading by one. But not for long.
Flyers played an excellent final stretch in a very contested Metropolitan division to eventually topple Washington and Columbus from the playoff race and took the last division playoff spot to face Penguins again. We haven't seen a Pens - Flyers playoff series since the spring of 2018 so it's damn about time.
And that means Rasmus Ristolainen will play his first game tonight in The Paint Can. 820 games later, the drought is finally over. I don't expect or hope for Flyers to get past the first round but I'm so happy to see both the team and Ristolainen in that series. It'll be fire. Like they say in Philly, ignite the orange.
NHL published a nice piece on him in Youtube as the playoffs approach.