St. Andrew’s College will be adding a new Finnish goalie to its prep hockey team in Daniel Salmivuori. The 17-year-old netminder spent the past season between HIFK’s U16 and U18 teams in Finland. In nine games with the U18 team, Salmivuori recorded a 3.11 goals against average and .899 save percentage. In 2019, he played at the Pohjola Camp which featured top Finnish players in the 2004 born age group.
Between 2018-20, St. Andrew’s College had another Finnish goalie in Lassi Lehti, who played two seasons with the prep team and improved quite a lot in his second season, earning more games and recording impressive numbers. In 2020-21, Lehti played for Sport U20 in Finland and he was the backup for the men’s Liiga team in a couple of games. Much like Lehti, Salmivuori has great size, strong foundational skills and raw potential, so it will be interesting to monitor his development.
St. Andrew’s College is an independent Canadian school based in Aurora, Ontario and was founded in 1899. The prep hockey team will be competing in the Prep Hockey Conference, which is set to begin in the 2021-22 season. The other five teams will be Shattuck-St. Mary’s School, Northwood School, Culver Academies, Mount St. Charles Academy and South Kent School.
Over the last four years, there have been four NHL Draft picks from St. Andrew’s College: Kienan Draper (Detroit Red Wings, 2020), Matthew Stienburg (Colorado Avalanche, 2019), Morgan Barron (New York Rangers, 2017) and Ryan O’Connell (Toronto Maple Leafs, 2017). Furthermore, there have been numerous Division 1 college commitments – and there is certainly more on the way.