Penguins sign a new goaltender on Sunday afternoon!

Penguins add another goalie.

HockeyFeed
HockeyFeed
Published 4 years ago
Penguins sign a new goaltender on Sunday afternoon!
HANNU LUOSTARINEN / AOP

The Pittsburgh Penguins have just signed a brand new player coming off of an outstanding season.

According to an official announcement from the Penguins official website, the Penguins organization has signed 22 year old Finnish goaltender Emil Larmi to his first ever National Hockey League contract. According to the Penguins this will be a standard 2 year entry level contract for an undrafted free agent signing out of Europe and it could be one that proves to pay huge dividends for the Penguins in the long run. The youngster is coming off arguably the best performance of his career during the 2018 - 2019 playoffs and there is almost no question that this resulted in him getting a contract from the Penguins. 

In fact the Penguins said as much in a statement that they released with the official announcement of Larmi's signing today.

"Emil is coming off of a fantastic playoff run with HPK, and has proved himself to be one of the best goaltenders in Liiga," said Penguins goaltending development coach Andy Chiodo, who has extensively scouted Larmi in Finland. "He's an athletic and mobile goaltender that reads the game well and is highly competitive. We are excited for Emil to join our organization as he transitions to life and hockey in North America."

Liiga of course refers to the Finnish Elite League where Larmi has played the last 3 seasons of his career. All of them have been with HPK Hameenlinna and all of them have shown a steady improvement from Larmi who really elevated his game in the playoffs. Over the course of an 18 game stretch in the playoffs this year Larmi recorded an outstanding 1.72 goals against average and an equally impressive .930 save percentage over that same stretch of play.

Now to be clear I would be surprised to see Larmi make the immediate jump to the National Hockey League level, however if he maintains his current form during training camp with the Penguins I would not be shocked if he got at least some consideration for the backup job behind Matt Murray. His 2 year entry level deal however will make him very easy to manage for the Penguins and don't be surprised to see if he gets significant time in the American Hockey League before making the jump to the NHL.

According to the Penguins he will earn an average annual value of $700,000 on this deal.

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