Film Room: Could Juuso Ainasto battle his way to a starting role?

In the early 2000’s, Finland was one of the hotbeds for goaltending development. Tuukka Rask and Pekka Rinne were two of the generation's top goaltenders, while Mikka Kiprusoff, Kari Lehtonen, and Antti Niemi had their fair share of success, too.

By the late 2010’s, the well dried up a bit. Juuse Saros, at his peak, was undeniably elite, but Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen, Kevin Lankinen, and Joonas Korpisalo haven’t quite hit the same echelon as their earlier contemporaries, even if they’ve found their footing as NHL mainstays and even second-tier starters.

The throughline among these upper-echelon Finnish goaltenders was a strong work ethic, the ability to withstand considerable adversity, and the ability to make bail-out stops.

While there’s some promise in Los Angeles Kings’ Petteri Rimpinen and Seattle Kraken prospects Kim Saarinen and Niklas Kokko, to name a couple of notables, neither is the clear-cut number one goaltending prospect within their team’s system – putting question marks on their upside. Meanwhile, Ottawa Senators prospect Leevi Meriläinen and Pittsburgh Penguins prospect Joel Blomqvist have struggled to find their footing in NHL call-ups.

There is one goaltender who, this season, has shown promise of entering those conversations, despite a late arrival to the Finnish junior circuit and having never represented Finland internationally: Juuso Ainasto.

I wouldn’t dare call the 2026 NHL draft prospect the next Rask or Rinne, but there are certainly aspects to his game that could guide him into that legitimate starting-calibre goaltender projection of those in the tier beneath the elites of Finnish goaltending. 

Compete and athleticism

You know how kids play with superhero action figures and make all these sound effects for when the figures are flying around or fighting one another? Well, Ainasto plays his position with the same childlike love for the game.

It’s evident in his tendency to add a bit of stank to every glove save, walking off glove saves, and taunting players in his crease. Goalies with swagger can be a double-edged sword, as those reliant on that moxie can struggle immensely when things aren’t going their way. This isn’t the case for Ainasto, as he’ll face each shot like it’s his first and his last.

Ainasto has remarkable, workable athleticism; specifically, his consistent ability to get wide and maintain a stretched position, rather than the ability to do the splits. He flexes this through his ability to widen out under pressure in tight, almost reaching a full split at his peak, along with leveraging strong lateral pushes when necessary to have the capacity to stop cross-crease passes.

Furthermore, Ainasto has been able to find his edges when pushing and recoil into a counter-push when faced with a quick change in direction in the play. Even though he lacks truly high-end flexibility, the compete and workable athleticism allows him to continue projecting to make those bailout stops at the highest levels.

Mid-season developments

What makes Ainasto especially tantalizing is how much development he’s had this season. 

Early on, Ainasto’s skating looked like a major work-in-progress. He had good edge-access and explosiveness, but he’d often underpush to targets, neglecting to change his angle and take winding routes.

His transitions into his butterfly were an issue early in the season as well. He’d sometimes segment his butterfly, dropping one knee at a time, thus keeping his five-hole open just a hair longer than necessary. Additionally, he’d struggle to drop cleanly into the butterfly, with his left pad clipping and forcing that gap open at times, even if he dropped both legs simultaneously. 

Part of the reason why he may segment his butterfly when transitioning into it is that he tends to opt for a butterfly/VH hybrid position on challenges – with one leg down, one leg angled horizontally on top of his pad, and his stick covering the five-hole. 

When he does get his full butterfly down, he has impressive form with a relatively wide flair, allowing for great edge access to move on the fly, and otherwise quick transitions to and from the position.

However, by the time Ainasto made his U20 SM-sarja debut in November, these issues were mostly gone from his game, if not turned into strengths.

His skating improved immensely, becoming much more accurate in his pushes, adjusting his angle on the fly, and moving with much more pace. This carried over into his positioning, getting square to shooters more consistently when challenging at the top corners of his crease. As for his butterfly transitions, his seal cleaned itself up for the most part, going from a segmented transition on most attempts to dropping cleanly on most saves.

Areas for continued growth

Ainasto’s biggest weak point, as it stands, is his puck tracking. 

This is an area he had minimal trouble with at the Under-18 level early-season, only tending to let goals in on deceptive releases through several layers of traffic and tracking shots through the trajectory of the shots, but also following the rebound afterward.

However, as he moved up to the Under-20 level, Ainasto tended to lose the puck more often, with a greater propensity for clean shots to find their way past him. Additionally, he’d tend to lose pucks on the follow-through, leading to more erratic scrambling after rebounds.

Thankfully, because he has seen improvement in this area this season, courtesy of his strong tracking habit of following the puck through and quick reads.

Still, this remains an area he should continue to master; cleaning up his reads after rebounds will give him more time to pivot into position. He could also work on improving his reads through traffic. 

His problem isn’t in his positioning; he doesn’t concede depth when facing traffic in front, where he is willing to battle for better depth. The issue is that he will often take and remain in an inactive-upright stance, or drop preemptively into a low stance.

The former is poor form because while it lessens the “mental load”, it physically limits his ability to get down in time and makes it much harder to track the puck despite getting an eye on the release because of the explosive movement down into the butterfly.

The latter is perhaps worse because he has to guess there won’t be any pre-shot movement, which prevents him from getting an actual view of the release due to the early descent.

Instead, he should use his 6-foot-4 frame to look around the shoulders of screens while keeping his knees bent and hands engaged, shortening the time to get into a butterfly and reducing the amount. This gives him the best of both worlds, allowing him to track the release while limiting the amount of angle change in tracking the puck, as well as minimizing the amount of time to transition into a butterfly. 

Projection

Ultimately, Ainasto has what you want out of a goaltending prospect with a fairly high projectability to the NHL.

His quickness and access to his edges allow him to mobilize around the crease and beat pucks cleanly. He boasts quick reflexes, but also has scans to slow down and predict the play in front of him. He has also shown the ability to get big and wide through extensions and his butterfly, and is willing to aggressively challenge shooters when isolated to completely take away the net. 

Additionally, Ainasto's high-end work rate and his competitive, intense mentality have already translated into rapid development in his skating and butterfly form, as well as improved puck-tracking ability. 

He’s far from a perfect prospect, with progress in his handling of screens, continued progress in rebound control, and the smartening of his reads being the integral changes to maximize his potential.

However, should Ainasto reach his apex, he could become a starting goaltender, having the ability to not only make that first stop, but also possessing the poise, tenacity, and fallback athleticism and skating to make the bail-out stops teams need from their goalies at the biggest stages of them all.