{"id":184978,"date":"2025-09-08T16:04:13","date_gmt":"2025-09-08T16:04:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/184978\/"},"modified":"2025-09-08T16:04:13","modified_gmt":"2025-09-08T16:04:13","slug":"brad-hunt-expected-to-sign-with-liigas-vaasan-sport","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/184978\/","title":{"rendered":"Brad Hunt Expected To Sign With Liiga’s Vaasan Sport"},"content":{"rendered":"

Longtime pro defenseman Brad Hunt<\/a> is expected to take his career overseas for the first time next season. He is set to sign with Vaasan Sport of Finland\u2019s Liiga, per Tony Androckitis of Inside AHL Hockey<\/a>. Hunt recently concluded his 14th season in the North American pros. His only rich experience with playing in Europe came during the spring of 2023,\u00a0 when he joined Team Canada for the World Championships, which were played in Latvia that year.<\/p>\n

Hunt, 37, has already built up a career worth being proud of. He was originally overlooked in the NHL Draft \u2013 the consequence of being a 5-foot-9 defenseman \u2013 but earned a pro contract after four strong years at Bemidji State University. Hunt made his AHL debut in 2012 and quickly looked the part of a strong play-driver.<\/p>\n

He played his way into three NHL appearances with the Edmonton Oilers in 2013-14, coupled with a breakout performance in the AHL that saw him post 50 points in 66 games. Hunt continued that pace \u2013 great AHL scoring mixed in with a handful of NHL starts \u2013 through the 2016-17 season.<\/p>\n

Hunt seemed doomed to the role of fringe-NHL defenseman until 2017-18, when the Vegas Golden Knights operated with him on the NHL roster for the whole season. Hunt stepped into 45 games and scored 18 points that year, enough to earn him a solid NHL role for the next four seasons, even through moves to the Minnesota Wild and Vancouver Canucks.<\/p>\n

He didn\u2019t return to the AHL until the 2022-23 season, when he donned the captaincy for the Colorado Eagles and scored 21 points in 24 games. Hunt served an additional year as the Eagles\u2019 captain before moving to the Hershey Bears last season. He scored just 19 points in 41 games with Hershey last year, though he managed a lofty 49 points in 70 games in the 2023-24 season.<\/p>\n

Hunt now sits with 86 points in 288 games, and 10 seasons, in the NHL and 298 points in 422 games, and nine seasons, in the AHL. He will now take that deep resume to one of Finland\u2019s emerging clubs. Vaasan finished last season ranked 11th out of the Liiga\u2019s 16 teams. They struggled to consistently drive up the scoring, which is something that the puck-moving Hunt should be able to directly address.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Longtime pro defenseman Brad Hunt is expected to take his career overseas for the first time next season.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":169170,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5125],"tags":[401,28527,198,146,5300,5,6031,4,24,405],"class_list":{"0":"post-184978","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-edmonton-oilers","8":"tag-ahl","9":"tag-brad-hunt","10":"tag-edmonton","11":"tag-edmonton-oilers","12":"tag-edmontonoilers","13":"tag-hockey","14":"tag-liiga","15":"tag-nhl","16":"tag-oilers","17":"tag-transactions"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/115169530163708537","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184978","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184978"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184978\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/169170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}