AHL’s Colorado Eagles Sign Joel Kiviranta, Peter Holland
After attending Colorado Avalanche training camp on professional tryouts, forwards Joel Kiviranta and Peter Holland have inked one-year contracts with their AHL affiliate, the Colorado Eagles. Both players have significant NHL experience, although Kiviranta’s is more recent, logging 70 games for the Dallas Stars last season.
Kiviranta, 27, had high hopes of securing a fourth-line job in the NHL, but he was passed over in favor of a Dallas teammate last season, Fredrik Olofsson. The Finnish winger notched a career-high eight goals last season but only registered one assist for nine points – poor production given his games played total and ice time (12:09 per game). He’ll now try and earn his way back to the sport’s highest level by taking on a significant role in the minors with Colorado. Kiviranta’s lone stint in the AHL came in 2019-20, recording 12 goals, 11 assists and 23 points in 48 games with the Texas Stars.
Holland was much less likely to earn an NHL job, so it’s fair to call this a successful tryout for the 32-year-old center who retired from hockey after the 2021-22 campaign. A 2009 first-round pick of the Anaheim Ducks, Holland last played in the AHL in 2018-19 before departing for overseas play the following season. He was always a strong producer in the minors, recording 222 points in 252 AHL contests across seven seasons, but couldn’t lock down a full-time NHL role outside of a three-year period with the Toronto Maple Leafs and Arizona Coyotes in the mid-2010s. Holland and Kiviranta will play vital roles to begin the season with the Eagles, who are without three projected regulars (Alex Beaucage, Jean-Luc Foudy, and Chris Wagner) due to injuries.
Joel Kiviranta Signs PTO With Colorado Avalanche
Peter Baugh of The Athletic is reporting that the Colorado Avalanche have dipped their toes into the PTO waters once again as they have signed forward Joel Kiviranta to a professional tryout. The 27-year-old spent last season with the Dallas Stars where he registered eight goals and one assist in 70 games while playing 12:09 a night. Kiviranta joins Peter Holland who also signed a PTO with the Avalanche last week and will be looking to crack the team’s bottom six forward group and earn an NHL contract.
The native of Vantaa, Finland was signed by the Stars as an undrafted free agent back in May 2019 after he helped Finland earn a gold medal at the 2019 World Championship. He dressed in 11 NHL games the following season scoring just a single goal before dressing in 26 games in 2020-21 where he scored a career high 11 points.
The next two seasons would see Kiviranta become an NHL regular, albeit one who couldn’t regularly crack the score sheet. In 126 games over the past two seasons, Kiviranta has posted a total of nine goals and seven assists while going -15. Obviously, his offensive numbers leave a lot to be desired but on the defensive side of the puck Kiviranta has posted 214 hits over the past two years, and last season posted terrific takeaway numbers with 29 takeaways and just 13 giveaways.
Kiviranta is unlikely to develop into much more than a 13th forward at this point in his career, but for a team starving for some sandpaper and depth, it makes sense for the Avalanche to take a free look at Kiviranta and see if he can help them out.
Dallas Stars Reassign Marian Studenic
Feb 9: After just eight minutes of ice time, Studenic has been loaned back to the AHL.
Feb 8: The Dallas Stars have made a slight change to the roster, calling up Marian Studenic from the minor leagues. The move comes after Joel Kiviranta missed practice yesterday, and could indicate that someone is unavailable due to injury.
Studenic, 24, has been excellent for the Texas Stars this season, scoring 14 goals and 30 points in 43 games. If he appears in a game for Dallas it would be his first of the season at the NHL level, but 42nd overall, after appearing 16 times for them in 2021-22.
Claimed off waivers from the New Jersey Devils nearly a year ago, Studenic has been right on the fringe of NHL rosters for years now. With the right opportunity, it seems likely that he could secure a role in the bottom-six, though a team like Dallas may have their sights set a little higher given their Stanley Cup aspirations.
For now, he’ll serve as some organizational depth and try to force his way onto the fourth line with some strong play. Dallas is back in action tonight against the Minnesota Wild in a key Central Division matchup.
Hintz, Lindell Added To COVID Protocol
The Dallas Stars have two more names for the COVID list, as both Roope Hintz and Esa Lindell have been placed in the protocol. They join Jani Hakanpaa, who went in before Christmas, and Radek Faksa, Miro Heiskanen, Joel Kiviranta, Michael Raffl, and Jason Robertson who all entered yesterday. Two of the team’s support staff are also in the protocol.
Dallas is expected to return to action on Wednesday against the Colorado Avalanche, but like everywhere else in the league right now, that game could obviously be postponed at any moment. The Stars obviously have an outbreak of their own and are now down eight players from their active roster. That includes a huge swathe of defensemen, certainly making it difficult to field a competitive group in the coming days.
The team is practicing today but according to Saad Yousuf of The Athletic, it is closed to the media. The team is also not holding any media availability for the time being as they try to get things under control.
Stars Place Five Players In COVID Protocol
Dallas has returned from their holiday break with a sizable batch of COVID-positive tests as well. The Stars announced (Twitter link) that defenseman Miro Heiskanen, center Radek Faksa, plus wingers Jason Robertson, Michael Raffl, and Joel Kiviranta have all been placed into COVID protocol along with two support staff members. They will all now be out for at least the next ten days.
Heiskanen is obviously a significant loss as he is their top defenseman. The 22-year-old has four goals and 14 assists in 28 games this season while leading the Stars in ATOI at 24:32 per game. With Jani Hakanpaa also recently entering COVID protocol, Dallas will need to bring up a blueliner from AHL Texas.
They’ll also have to recall several forwards as they were down to 11 on the active roster with three of their active players entering protocol today (Kiviranta is currently on IR with an upper-body injury). Robertson sits second on the team in scoring with 10 goals and 15 assists in 23 games and is the only Star averaging more than a point per game on the season. Faksa has been limited to just two goals in 27 contests but has won an impressive 57% of his faceoffs while Raffl has eight points in 28 games on the season.
Dallas is next scheduled to take to the ice on Wednesday against Colorado pending any other adjustments to the schedule.
Stars Re-Sign Joel Kiviranta And Ben Gleason
The Stars reached contract agreements with two of their restricted free agents. The team announced that winger Joel Kiviranta signed a two-year, $2.1MM deal while defenseman Ben Gleason inked a one-year, two-way deal. PuckPedia reports (Twitter link) that Gleason will make $750K in the NHL and $95K in the minors.
It was a bit of a tough year for Kiviranta. He started the season on IR and after being activated, he was shuffled to and from the taxi squad on several occasions. The 25-year-old then missed more than a month due to a lower-body injury. In the end, he wound up playing in 26 games last season, notching six goals and five assists. He had just 11 career NHL regular season contests under his belt heading into the season but had gotten himself on the radar with five goals in 14 playoff contests in the bubble in 2020. Kiviranta was eligible for salary arbitration but instead will bypass that option and will now be eligible for unrestricted free agency two summers from now.
As for Gleason, he made four NHL appearances in his rookie professional season in 2018-19 but has exclusively played with AHL Texas since then. Last season, he had four goals and 13 assists in 37 minor league games and will now need to pass through waivers in order to return there in 2021-22.
Kiviranta was the last NHL regular on the Stars to need a new deal although they have a trio of minor leaguers that remain as restricted free agents. They now sit roughly $3MM above the cap ceiling per CapFriendly but with Ben Bishop appearing to be unable to play to start next season, they will be able to place him on LTIR and remain in cap compliance.