Nikolas Matinpalo was wearing a suit when the Ottawa Senators honoured their players chosen to compete at the Winter Olympics in Milan-Cortina.
Ahead of hosting the New Jersey Devils on Jan. 31, Lars Eller (Denmark), Tim Stutzle (Germany), Jake Sanderson (U.S.A.) and Brady Tkachuk (U.S.A.) each skated out to the neutral zone and stood next to a minor hockey player holding their respective country’s flag.
When it was time to announce Team Finland’s representative, the Hockey Night in Canada broadcast faded into a shot near centre ice of a young kid holding a large Finnish flag, standing alone.
Matinpalo was on the far left side of the Sens’ bench, giving a half-hearted wave to the crowd.
It was his 14th time being a healthy scratch in January. And he would watch from the press box for the remainder of Ottawa’s games leading up to the Olympic break.
“It’s hard. Of course, you want to play every game,” Matinpalo told the Ottawa Citizen in late January. “When you don’t play a lot, you don’t really practise together. It’s hard. But at the same time, you just try to get better every day.
“When you get the chance, you need to play very good if you want to stay in the lineup. It is what it is.”
The chemistry between Tyler Kleven and Jordan Spence on the third pairing, coupled with coach Travis Green’s commitment to keeping Nick Jensen on the second duo with Thomas Chabot, has almost entirely relegated Matinpalo to spectator status.
He has played two NHL games so far in 2026; he was plus-1 in 19:40 of ice time in an 8-2 loss to the Colorado Avalanche on Jan. 8, and he played 15:26 in a 4-1 loss to the Carolina Hurricanes on Jan. 24.
“I check every morning when I wake up, how our players play, who’s on the team and, of course, who’s not, too,” Team Finland general manager Jere Lehtinen said in a phone interview. “Of course, you want to see (Matinpalo play), and I think he’ll get the chance to play again too.
Nikolas Matinpalo, right, was part of Finland’s team at the 4 Nations Face-Off last year. He called it ‘a very good experience’ in preparation for the 2026 Olympics.
“I don’t know if they’re rotating, tough to say for him. But he’s an athlete; he takes care of himself. And you know, he’s practising when he’s not playing, so I’m not worried about that. But on the bright side, I think he’s going to get ice time again pretty soon.”
Despite being in and out of the Sens’ lineup leading up to the deadline for nations to name their Olympic squads, Matinpalo notably beat out New York Rangers defenceman Urho Vaakanainen for one of the final spots on Finland’s blueline.
And looking forward to Wednesday’s tournament-opening game versus Slovakia, there’s a good chance Matinpalo will dress.
“He’s a good-size player with a good attitude,” Lehtinen said of Matinpalo. “He plays hard and defends hard. His shot is good and he’s a really good team guy; he will play for the team. I think all of that is there, to be a good defensive defenceman.”
The 2026 Olympics come one year after Matinpalo was a last-minute injury replacement for Team Finland at the 4 Nations Face-Off.
The Finns ultimately fell short then, winning just one round-robin game, but Matinpalo played all three games and built relationships with fellow players, coaches and other staff.
“That was a big thing, absolutely,” Matinpalo recalled, “knowing the coaches, knowing how we want to play in the Olympics. Of course, the hockey there, it was a great week and very hard. That was a very good experience.”
From unknown to Olympian
Years after being passed over at the NHL Draft in the late 2010s, Matinpalo was seemingly discovered simultaneously by the Senators and Finland’s national men’s hockey program.
“His story is a little different than most players because he didn’t play on the junior national teams,” Lehtinen explained. “He played a lot of youth hockey, junior hockey, not on a top team like a challenger team.
“That year when we picked him for World Championships in 2023, I think nobody really expected him to be with the team. But when we got him in the pre-camps in the spring, those games kind of showed how good he is. He came from behind a lot of players and grabbed a spot.”
At age 24 in May 2023, in the midst of representing Finland at the World Championships, Matinpalo signed a one-year, entry-level contract with Ottawa.
After playing a full season with the Senators’ AHL affiliate in Belleville in 2023-24, he was a mainstay on the NHL blueline for the final half of 2024-25, including all six playoff games against the Toronto Maple Leafs.
“When I got to know him a little bit more,” Lehtinen said, “how his attitude was and everything, then you kind of knew, ‘OK, he’s going to go to the next level.’ I’m so happy for him.”
Lehtinen and Matinpalo are both from Espoo, Finland, just outside of Helsinki, where saunas are all the rage and the salmon soup is to die for. They didn’t cross paths in Matinpalo’s earlier years — after 875 games with the Dallas Stars, Lehtinen stuck around for several years in Texas before accepting the GM position back in Finland — but the two now live mere kilometres apart in their hometown and re-connect at the local rink in the summer.
Following in his idol’s footsteps
Matinpalo’s favourite player growing up was another compatriot blueliner, Teppo Numminen, the all-time leader in NHL games played by a Finnish defenceman (1,372).
Numminen’s games with the Buffalo Sabres were rare finds over in Finland — NHL games were broadcast once a month, and Matinpalo would record them and watch in the morning — but the famed playmaker committed to playing for Leijonat (The Lions) whenever he could.
Numminen represented Finland in four Olympic Games, including Torino 2006, when a trip to the gold-medal game ended in a heartbreaking 3-2 loss to rival nation Sweden.
Seven-year-old Matinpalo, who had been told by a coach that he looked like Numminen “in the eyes,” watched in dismay.
On Friday, Matinpalo could avenge his childhood trauma, as Finland and Sweden will meet to potentially decide the winner of Group B.
This past Boxing Day, the 6-foot-3 defenceman got a phone call from coach Antti Pennanen to tell him he’d been selected to Finland’s Olympic team.
For a player who was relatively unknown at the time of the last Winter Olympics, Matinpalo says it was an “awesome” feeling to receive such an honour.
To be frank, this could be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Matinpalo has the potential to have a long NHL career, but nothing is guaranteed at the highest level for 27-year-old depth defencemen.
Nonetheless, this trip to Italy is exceedingly more business than pleasure. As defending Olympic champions, winners of the gold medal in Beijing 2022, Team Finland is singularly focused on standing atop the podium.
“Winning. We want to win the whole tournament,” Matinpalo said. “And I think we have a good team. We have a possibility to win.”
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