A goalie who spends his entire season at the U20 SM-sarja level, much less one who missed months of action due to injuries sustained in a car crash, is not particularly easy to scout. I consider myself lucky at all to have even found a couple U18 5-Nations replays that I could reference. Naturally, I don’t expect to have as good of a read on him, so I want to be up front: unlike the others, this isn’t so much an extensive report of the player as it is a discussion of what I saw across two tournament games. While I would love to have been able to outline his trajectory, or even reference his league play at all, it’s just not feasible with what I have at my disposal.
Coming in at 6’4” 207lb, Louhivaara is not just a big netminder, he presents as one, too. His stance is both upright and wide, and he has an acute understanding of his depth within the crease. He’s excellent at challenging shooters as well as cutting off angles, although I have noticed that he can occasionally misjudge his far side a bit when forecheckers are driving in wide. Still, Louhivaara generally makes very good use of his large frame.
What might be surprising, considering how big he is, is that Louhivaara excels down low. The player is excellent at dropping into a very tight butterfly and extending across the lower half of the net. Even in scrambles, he’s great at holding position down low. His post coverage is very tight as well, and while it can sometimes feel as though he’s exposing himself up high given how crouched down/anchored to the post he is, I never actually saw it burn him in my viewings.
In terms of additional hard skills, Louhivaara’s rebound control is solid. While I would like to see him a bit better at swallowing first attempts, he’s usually quite good at directing pucks out of danger. His blocker side is fine, nothing particularly noteworthy there, though his glove hand can be considered a strength. Quick, accurate reflexes, coupled with his ability to identify angles, keep his glove well positioned. I actually think there’s room for growth here, too, because I’ve noticed that when he sets up for a shot, his glove is initially turned inwards to a degree. I have to wonder if it becomes even more effective if he improves how he presents it.
Louhivaara’s tracking, particularly down low, is also very solid. The player seldom seems to lose sight of the puck, thanks to both his natural ability to follow it as well as a great willingness to fight through traffic to keep eyes on it. Although I don’t know if I can quite call it elite, his anticipation is also very good, and on at least one occasion I saw him call out to his defenders to identify a weakside option that was starting to develop.
Perhaps greatest of all, Louhivaara is tremendously poised in net. That’s not to say he won’t chop at an opponent’s legs if they get too close to his crease, but the player is always dialed into play. He’s calm, squares up well, and rarely seems to get shaken. At one point, I saw his defender make an egregious turnover right in front of him, and I observed no panic or desperation in Louhivaara’s save attempt; he was controlled, focused, and came out to challenge it like he would any other shot, totally ignoring the fact that it was coming from an uncontested slot.
The player’s athleticism is fine, particularly for his size, though I don’t know if it’s a standout feature. His mobility is a bit more of a mixed bag to me. On one side, he’s not the best skater, and his lateral movement is somewhat sluggish; if play breaks down or the shooter makes an extra move around him, he can struggle with getting across the crease in time. On the other hand, his push-offs are so strong, that as long as he isn’t already down to the ice, his skating is not functionally a weakness at that point. He can cover a ton of ice with one push, and thanks to his size and ability to gauge angles, that’s all the motion he needs to square back up with the puck.
Louhivaara is also a tremendously aggressive puckhandler. It’s not just that he loves to come out of his crease to settle pucks, he’ll also rocket them up the ice for breakout attempts. There isn’t an opportunity he won’t challenge either, for better or for worse. I’ll admit, I did see a couple impressive stretch passes, but I also witnessed multiple grade-A chances given up by his overzealousness. Clearly an encouraging template to build off of, it’s always easier to tame something like this than it is to work it up, but for now, as funny as it is to say for a goalie, the player could probably be labeled turnover prone for the number of chances I saw him give up.
Overall, I can’t say I’m upset with the pick, there’s really no downside to selecting a goalie in this range. Although what I saw in limited viewings does generally look good, he’s still a pretty big unknown to me, so who knows how many layers to his game I might be missing. If I had one complaint, I’m not sure I love the pick management with this selection. I don’t really know if it was imperative to grab another goalie after just having selected Yegorov with an early 2nd rounder, particularly so when factoring in the depth of the pool as well as the need to already start shipping out assets like Schmid. It just kind of comes off as, again, a bit of a reactionary pick given how tumultuous the net was this past season. Granted, obviously, if he's making the NHL, it’ll be years and years from now, but it still feels as though Tom used this draft to load up on everything that failed us. In any case, Louhivaara is an intriguing gamble, and I look forward to seeing how he looks fully recovered.
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