Last week, the Pittsburgh Penguins made some big headlines in the National Hockey League when they announced a new contract for forward Ville Koivunen. 

Koivunen was a restricted free agent, and one of the last pieces of unfinished business for general manager Kyle Dubas before training camp opens in September. But the deal is gaining major traction for how unusual it is. The 23-year-old inked an eight-year, $32 million deal with the Penguins. 

On the surface, it’s an exorbitant amount of money for a player with such little time spent in the NHL. Koivunen has just 47 games played in the National Hockey League, and has averaged just 13:39 a night during those games. 

Of course, signing young players to long-term deals before their talent tacks on several more millions is far from an unheard of concept in the NHL. Usually, however, those deals are made with players who came into the show with way more hype, way more draft pedigree, and way more production to their name. Koivunen doesn’t have that kind of production yet to warrant such a deal. 

The Finnish forward has just two career goals in the NHL, and is coming off a season where he registered just seven points in 39 games. And yet, this new deal the Penguins signed him to puts him in rare company in team history. 

At eight years long, Koivunen’s contract puts him ahead of franchise legends Mario Lemieux and Marc-Andre Fleury, and ties him with Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang. Only Sidney Crosby has signed a longer deal, and once the new seven-year cap on contracts comes into effect next month, Koivunen will forever be enshrined in that top four. 

But for as insane a contract as this seems, the risk for the Penguins is actually rather minimal. Koivunen’s cap hit of $4 million is an overpay as of now, but it wouldn’t take all that much improvement for him to achieve market rate status. With the salary cap exploding in the NHL, $4 million buys you so much less than what it used to. 

If Koivunen was able to get to around a 30-point pace (which is only six more than the 82-game pace his career puts him on), that is arguably money well spent right now, and will certainly be starting in the next year or two. 

The hope, however, is that Koivunen goes far beyond that. This contract now is a calculated bet that his résumé as a top scoring forward in every professional league he has skated in will eventually translate to NHL success. 

Back when the Penguins first acquired him from Carolina in the Jake Guentzel trade in March of 2024, a 20-year-old Koivunen was lighting up the Finnish league and finished that year with 22 goals and 34 assists for 56 points in 59 games. 

The Penguins were eager to bring him stateside as quickly as they could. Koivunen joined the Wilkes-Barre-Scranton Penguins in the American Hockey League for their brief playoff run in 2024, and stayed to play almost a full season of AHL hockey the next year. 

In his first year on North American ice, Koivunen scored 21 goals and added 35 assists (56 points) in 63 games. At the end of the season, in the final days of Mike Sullivan as coach and with the Penguins well out of the playoff race, Koivunen was called up. In an expanded role on a team with nothing but development to play for, Koivunen picked up his first seven NHL assists. 

All signs pointed to a full-time spot in the NHL this past season for Koivunen, but his path was far more bumpy than anticipated. 

He struggled to establish himself in the NHL. The skill he brought and the finesse he showed on AHL ice just didn’t translate over to the steeper competition. 

Despite opening the year in Pittsburgh, Koivunen didn’t get a true run of games until the end of October, when he was called back up to the NHL. From there until January 4th, he registered just two goals and three assists (five points) in 25 games, while averaging 13:37 a night. 

It just wasn’t enough out of the young forward. When the Penguins sent him back to the AHL, the scoring really took off again. Unfortunately for Koivunen, though, that didn’t translate into another big chance late in the year. 

Unlike las season, the team’s final weeks were spent securing a playoff spot for the first time since 2023. The focus had shifted from development to competition, limiting Koivunen’s ice time at the NHL level, provided he was in the lineup at all. 

Dubas is now betting that after a year where he got a legitimate taste of NHL action, he can break through the crowded bunch of forwards in Pittsburgh and establish himself as a mid-line winger. 

And while that bet comes at an expensive $4 million a year, $32 million total price tag, this contract has the closest thing to an escape route an NHL deal can. 

Per the lovely folks at PuckPedia, Koivunen’s contract is very easily bought out. If Koivunen has an atrocious year and the Penguins decide they want to jump ship after just one season, they can. Sure, they will be on the hook for some dead cap for a daunting 14 years, but that buyout cap hit will never exceed $650K, and will only rise to $646K starting in 2034. 

By then, that will be the cost of a cup of coffee and nothing that would hinder anything Pittsburgh wanted to do. 

There’s a similar story if the Penguins bought him out later down the line too. If they buy him out after two years, the Penguins will pay under $730K a year for the next 12 years, but will only near that figure starting in 2034. If they bail after the third season, the cost is heftier but still won’t eclipse $1.5 million, which would sit on the books for the last five years of the buyout. 

Long story short, if Koivunen succeeds, the Penguins have an incredibly cost-controlled option in their lineup. If he doesn’t, the Penguins can bail with essentially no cost to them. And no matter what happens in Koivunen’s career, he’s pocketing an awesome amount of money for someone of his NHL experience.