{"id":648461,"date":"2026-08-24T10:36:20","date_gmt":"2026-08-24T10:36:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/648461\/"},"modified":"2026-08-24T10:36:20","modified_gmt":"2026-08-24T10:36:20","slug":"jack-kopacka-eyeing-return-to-north-america-pro-hockey-rumors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/648461\/","title":{"rendered":"Jack Kopacka Eyeing Return To North America \u2013 Pro Hockey Rumors"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jack Kopacka<\/a>\u2019s first stint in professional hockey didn\u2019t yield an NHL opportunity so he opted to spend the last four years in Sweden.\u00a0 Now, it appears that he\u2019s looking to return to North America, according to Expressen\u2019s Mattias Persson (subscription link<\/a>).<\/p>\n

The 28-year-old was a fourth-round pick by Anaheim back in 2016 and immediately followed up with back-to-back 30-goal seasons in the OHL to earn an entry-level contract.\u00a0 However, production was harder to come by in their farm system.\u00a0 Kopacka had 29 points in 69 games in two seasons with AHL San Diego before being moved to Ottawa as part of a three-way trade.\u00a0 He struggled in their farm system, leading to a non-tender.\u00a0 He spent one more year in the AHL in Toronto\u2019s system before heading overseas to Sweden.<\/p>\n

Kopacka spent two years in the second-tier Allsvenskan before his Brynas squad received a promotion to the SHL.\u00a0 The 2024-25 campaign was a strong one as he picked up 18 goals and 16 assists in 52 games during the regular season and added eight points in 17 playoff contests.\u00a0 However, things didn\u2019t go as well last year as Kopacka was limited to just 14 points in 45 appearances.\u00a0 Clearly, Kopacka was hoping that his performance the year before could help land him a deal closer to home.<\/p>\n

Notably, Kopacka doesn\u2019t qualify as a veteran player in the AHL.\u00a0 Any skater entering the season with fewer than 320 professional games doesn\u2019t get that designation.\u00a0 His 130 AHL games count as do his 97 SHL outings but his 89 contests in the Allsvenskan don\u2019t.\u00a0 That should make it more palatable for Kopacka to try to land an opportunity in North America since teams won\u2019t have to use one of their six game day veteran slots on him.<\/p>\n

Even if a deal does materialize, with how things went last season, it wouldn\u2019t be overly surprising if Kopacka had to settle for an AHL contract instead of a two-way NHL deal.\u00a0 Even if that happened though, he could still be converted to an NHL contract in-season if his play warrants it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jack Kopacka\u2019s first stint in professional hockey didn\u2019t yield an NHL opportunity so he opted to spend the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":587241,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[5,4,1970],"class_list":["post-648461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-hockey","tag-nhl","tag-shl"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/117150048835812651","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648461","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=648461"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648461\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/587241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=648461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=648461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=648461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}