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The fall from No. 1: Aatu Räty is no longer the 2021 NHL Draft’s top prospect, but that isn’t the end of his story
By Scott Wheeler Jun 2, 2021 38
Aatu Räty is laughing as he explains how he’s better at cooking, basketball, tennis, squash, chess and maybe now golf than his big brother, Aku.
Golf and chess are newer hobbies brought on through some of the little spare time the pandemic has given him between games and training sessions. Last year, he confesses, Aku had him beat on the course, but his girlfriend plays and she has been coaching him for their pending rematches in Finland’s short two-month summer playing season.
These days, Räty is relaxed. He has also developed an avid interest in reading as a way to reset in his time away from the rink.
It has taken him some time to get here, though. This time a year ago, he’d begun to lose his love for hockey.
This season, after a pivotal fall meeting with those close to him, he has slowly begun to let go of the expectations that have followed him — and the pressure he put on himself.
Räty was the early front-runner for the No. 1 pick in the 2021 NHL Draft. Now, as that status has slipped away, he’s at peace with who he is. And those who know him are starting to see the player and person they all love again.
People began to really talk about Räty in Finland in 2018 when the then-15-year-old was laying waste to the country’s under-18 level with his hometown Kärpät team, producing a combined 27 points in 12 games across the end of one season and the beginning of the next.
A year before that, he’d become a client of agent Mika Backman, signing in December 2017 when Räty turned 15 and rules restricting an agent’s ability to approach prospective clients lifted with his birthday. Backman also worked with Räty’s his older brother Aku (a fifth-round pick of the Coyotes in 2019).
By winter 2018, as the calendar changed and he had his 16th birthday, Räty’s star began to garner more attention in the sport at large. He was promoted to Finland’s top under-20 junior league, making waves with 43 points in 51 games, and appeared as the youngest player on Team Finland for the 2019 under-18 world championships.
It was then that, two full seasons before Räty was even set to hear his name called in the NHL Draft, Backman says things began to get away from his client.
“Aatu was not facing any pressure about his draft number. I think the media were doing that, saying he was supposed to be first overall. I think it was too early for media to start this talk about how he should go first overall,” Backman said.
The following season, Räty’s momentum pushed him into contention for playing time with Kärpät ahead of his 17th birthday on Nov. 14. But after a season of bouncing between junior and pro, and appearing for Finland at the under-20 world juniors, the discussion began to slowly shift, the pressure began to mount and his play at both levels suffered.
In time, as the 2019-20 season neared its unanticipated shutdown due to the pandemic, Räty had begun to feel like he was losing himself.
“Last spring, it wasn’t easy for him,” Backman said. “He was the youngest player in the whole world juniors and then after the tournament Kärpät put him to play with the juniors and he tried to work harder and harder, and I think he even practiced too hard. I think he pushed too hard. The joy, he lost it.”
That blend of disappointment and frustration then spilled through the summer before his draft year and into the start of a second season vying for ice time with Kärpät, one of Liiga’s dynastic top teams.
When he returned, team staff began to worry about his progression.
“His start was tough,” said Kärpät general manager Harri Aho, the father of Hurricanes star Sebastian Aho. “His performance was not enough at the beginning of the season. He struggled. And it can be mental as well as physical. He didn’t play his game at the level that he can play.”
In October, team president Tommi Virkkunen, Kärpät coaching staff, Aho, Backman, Räty’s parents — Tuomo (a former professional hockey player and now a coach himself) and Päivi (a psychologist) — convened a meeting with Räty to try to course-correct.
“I think from us, everything seemed to get to him,” Virkkunen said.
“He had a little bit of a tough start early in the season and that was pretty tough for him but also for us because we were hoping for him to be playing every game, that was the plan early on in the season. And then the COVID situation was really tough for the kids because the juniors usually play a few games for us and then they go back to junior and play a lot and them come back to the main team but we couldn’t do that this year, so that was affecting him quite a bit.”
In the meeting, they came to the conclusion that he needed to re-focus on his development, spend some time with the junior team and make sure he was properly resting. He also needed to begin working exclusively with one of the program’s strength coaches and skating coaches (rather than bouncing around on ice sheets with both in his yoyoing from pro to junior).
After the meeting, Backman also had his partner, Juha Ylönen (the father of Canadiens second-rounder Jesse) sit down with Räty to tell him to lessen his training before games so that his legs were fresh when it mattered, stop over conditioning and focus on skating.
After returning to the pro team in December, the staff immediately thought he looked and played more like himself, but the challenging start kept him off of the world juniors squad, even though he was a returnee.
“I wasn’t happy about not making it,” Räty said. “I know that I didn’t play as well as I should have at the start of the season but I also didn’t get the chance to play almost at all. I played like 10 minutes a game and only every other game. So I basically knew that I wasn’t going to be selected, not because of the skill level but because I just hadn’t had enough games.”
Despite the world juniors snub, Räty’s season began to turn for the better into 2021, and he remained with the pro team the rest of the way in a regular role as one of the league’s youngest everyday players. He also began to feel the progress of the individual skating work he’d spent so many hours on in-season.
Virkkunen and the rest of the team’s staff saw it, too.
“The thing he needs to practice is the top speed. If he wants to be a player in the NHL, I think that’s the main thing to practice going forward. But I think he can do that. He’s still a young kid. And he has worked at it,” Virkkunen said.
“He’s definitely headed in the right direction now and I mean, he’s a good-sized center and that’s tough to find in Finland. He can battle with his size and in tight positions he’s good, and he can shoot fairly good. I wouldn’t say it’s the best but it’s still good.”
Though Aho doesn’t call Räty’s skating a weakness, he believes it’s clearly better today than it was when this season started.
That’s a big deal because the rest of his tools are already there, according to Aho.
“His hockey IQ is good and he can create plays by himself and for other players. That’s probably his best strength. The basic skills are good, so that’s not going to be an issue,” Aho said. “And he works really hard on and off of the ice. Sometimes he needs to take more rest than work. It’s not about his work ethic. That’s super. He’s a guy who wants to learn all the time more and more, and he’s interested about the game and how to develop himself. From that point of view, he’s a really good prospect and a good kid. He really can be someday in a good role in the NHL but it will take some time.”
That time will include at least one more year in Liiga, where he is signed to play in 2021-22.
Patience might even be needed beyond that year. Avalanche forward Joonas Donskoi benefited from spending five seasons in Liiga after his draft year. Sebastian Aho broke out in his post-draft season with Kärpät. While the Oilers’ Jesse Puljujarvi could be a cautionary tale as one who made the jump too early. Miro Heiskanen emerged in the league semifinals in the year after he was drafted third by the Stars.
“We can see which players decided to take an extra year. Some kids are more ready and some are not. … So I try to push to Aatu not to leave early because then you go to the minors and you don’t know how you’ll be treated and there are no other Finnish guys around and not too many make it out of that,'” Virkkunen said.
Patience should have been the message with Räty earlier than it maybe was, Harri Aho admits.
“They can develop in one year a lot if they have good surroundings and mentally they’re ready to work hard and do everything it takes. It can go very fast. But at the same time, if they have too much pressure that they need to do something, they can lose that joy for the game, which is really important to enjoy what you’re doing,” Aho said.
“Can Aatu be a superstar? I don’t know. Can he be a star in some organizations? Probably but it’s hard to say.”
Two Finnish NHL scouts said they now expect Räty to be picked in the 10-20 range of the 2021 NHL Draft.
They credited his raw tools, especially his hands but also his shot, as his biggest assets. But they worry about his game-to-game and even shift-to-shift inconsistency.
“His skating has definitely changed this season but not necessarily for the better, at least not yet,” one scout said. “It might limit his potential but I don’t see it as a major issue. The constant changes probably haven’t helped.”
Räty insists he has learned not to care about what others think of him.
“I don’t think that there’s any difference if I get selected in the first round, or the second round, or any round. I know many players from Finland who’ve made it from the seventh round to the NHL,” Räty said. “I just know that you have to work hard and when you’re an NHL-level player, you’re going to get there. It doesn’t matter how I get there, just that I do. And I will.”
He credits his brother for instilling that confidence in him, and for lessons relayed from his camp in Arizona.
“Aku is one of the best things that has ever happened to me. Having someone to help me and train with me every single day, it has made me who I am today. … He’s my best friend,” Aatu Räty said.
He’s happy with where his game’s at as well, and talks with bravado about his size-skill combination, believing he’ll be an impact player in the NHL once he continues to improve his skating and two-way game.
Backman sees Räty through his brother, and says having a role model like Aku has helped him persist.
“They both are very competitive people. They want to beat each other. It starts there. And then they’re both really good athletes too and hockey is just in their blood. They are determined to play hockey in the NHL. That’s their dream,” Backman said.
“I think Aku is more calm and peaceful than Aatu. Aatu is more passionate and intense. And as players, Aku is more defense-orientated whereas Aatu takes more risks in his game. But Aatu has been developing his sense and his defensive-zone skills and vice-versa. ”
Through it all, Backman’s belief that Aatu Räty will get to the same place he was always meant to go remains bullish.
“I think he has handled everything really good and he understands what he needs to improve. In Kärpät, they don’t give anything for free so you really have to fight for your place on the roster,” Backman said.
“I would tell NHL clubs that Aatu is a determined athlete who wants to make it to the NHL and I think he’ll be a top two-line NHL center. I’d put my name on it. Mark my words.” |
