Season Pass: Leinonen earns first win with Mora

Mora IK is two games into the HockeyAllsvenskan regular season, and Sabres goaltending prospect Topias Leinonen has gotten the start in both of them.

It’s a positive trend early on for Leinonen, who has demonstrated confidence when taking the ice with his new club and, perhaps more importantly, has seemingly earned the confidence of Mora’s coaching staff after a challenging two seasons in Finland’s JYP system.

On Wednesday, Leinonen earned his first regular-season victory for Mora, stopping 13 of 16 shots in a 5-3 decision over AIK. You can find all of his puck touches in the contest in the video below.

Leinonen faced four shots in the opening frame. The third shot resulted in a goal that he certainly wants back.

The play rekindles the RVH versus overlap argument. When the RVH is done properly, it is damn near impossible to score from the bad angle, especially on a 6-foot-5 netminder. When done sloppily, bad goals can happen. We’ll file the 1:10 timecode as a bad goal.

(I understand modern coaching techniques, but the old school hockey student in me doesn’t recall standups of yore getting beaten like that!)

Leinonen allowed a pair of goals in the middle frame on six total shots. One was a stoppable shot on the power play that he saw cleanly, while the second was the result of a tough carom off the end boards. He shut the door in the third, stopping all six shots sent his way.

While there things that Leinonen will need to keep working on as the season progresses, the key takeaway is that he continues to get important developmental minutes and solid goal support from the Mora skaters.

The expectation is that more minutes will equate to more rhythm and more consistent puck tracking, and ultimately culminate with fewer bad goals against and a more savory save percentage. Time will tell how much Leinonen achieves this season, but the full body of work to date has been somewhat encouraging with a 4-0 preseason mark, including one shutout, and a 1-1 start to his regular season.