{"id":340343,"date":"2025-12-05T21:19:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-05T21:19:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/340343\/"},"modified":"2025-12-05T21:19:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-05T21:19:10","slug":"penguins-place-joona-koppanen-on-waivers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/340343\/","title":{"rendered":"Penguins Place Joona Koppanen On Waivers"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Penguins placed forward\u00a0Joona Koppanen<\/a>\u00a0on waivers Friday, Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet<\/a> reports. He\u2019ll be assigned to AHL Wilkes-Barre\/Scranton if he clears.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s Koppanen\u2019s second time on the wire this season. He cleared during training camp and began the campaign in the minors before Pittsburgh recalled him in early November as the corresponding move for\u00a0Filip Hallander<\/a>\u2019s blood clot diagnosis.<\/p>\n

The 27-year-old played 10 games on his recall, just enough to require waivers again to return to the minors. Now in his ninth year in North America and third in the Penguins organization, he recorded one assist and a -1 rating with six shots on goal during his recent stint in the lineup. Those 10 appearances were consecutive after his recall; he was then scratched for their win over the Flyers last Monday and missed Thursday\u2019s win over the Lightning with an illness.<\/p>\n

Koppanen was a fifth-round pick by the Bruins back in 2016. He remained in the Boston organization until 2022-23, making his NHL debut for the B\u2019s that year, before reaching Group VI unrestricted free agency and signing in Pittsburgh. He initially inked a two-year deal but re-upped with them on a two-way extension in June of this year.<\/p>\n

The big 6\u20195\u2033 center is a competent piece of organizational depth and a good middle-six producer in the minors, scoring 139 points in 365 career AHL appearances. He hasn\u2019t been able to stick as a fourth-line piece in several NHL tries now, though. He averaged north of 12 minutes per game on this call-up and even received some penalty kill deployment \u2013 he also did in 11 games for the Pens last year. His possession impacts and lack of offense (one goal, three points in 30 career NHL games) haven\u2019t offered enough justification to keep him in the lineup. Among 25 qualified Pittsburgh skaters this year, Koppanen\u2019s 47.2 xGF% at 5-on-5 ranks 20th. After playing a physical brand with 40 hits in 11 games last season, he only recorded nine hits in 10 appearances this time around.<\/p>\n

Teams who are in dire need of center depth could take a long look at placing a claim for Koppanen, but in all likelihood, he shouldn\u2019t have much trouble clearing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Penguins placed forward\u00a0Joona Koppanen\u00a0on waivers Friday, Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet reports. He\u2019ll be assigned to AHL Wilkes-Barre\/Scranton…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":340344,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[5,4153,4,100,405,11839],"class_list":{"0":"post-340343","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-hockey","9":"tag-joona-koppanen","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-pittsburgh-penguins","12":"tag-transactions","13":"tag-waivers"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/115669052501777803","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340343","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=340343"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340343\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/340344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=340343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=340343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=340343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}