The wait is nearly over. The Liiga super season opens Tuesday, Sept. 1, with a seven-game round and 17 teams ready to battle it out, the largest field the league has iced in more than a decade before it trims to 14 next year. The stakes are the highest and heaviest at the bottom, where the three lowest finishers drop to a new second tier, and Iltalehti’s Pekka Virta framed the mood the best in my option: someone starts 0-3 and panics, and the gap between the top and the bottom starts, relegation is small on opening night but grows week after week.
With the preseason wrapping up it answered the questions last month’s report left open. The prospects who spent the summer in limbo have landed with their clubs, and the Liiga’s own numbers settled who is actually getting top level minutes. This edition leads with the biggest breakout candidate on the back end, tracks the reigning scoring champion’s push toward the NHL, and adds two more drafted teenagers already logging real reps. Time to get into it.
***
Aron Kiviharju, D, 5-10, Minnesota Wild (122nd overall in 2024)
HIFK: 6G, 11A, 47GP (2025-26)
Kiviharju is the breakout bet of the preseason, and the setup has finally turned in his favor. Two years ago he was talked about as a possible top-10 pick in the 2024 draft before a dislocated kneecap wiped out most of his draft season and dropped him to Minnesota in the fourth round. The talent never left. He is a puck-moving defenseman who runs a power play from the point and controls a game with his passing, and at 5-10 the only real knock is size.
A full season into his HIFK tenure and in the middle of his military service, he is set for a larger role this year. Iltalehti’s Lätkäpodi flagged him as a candidate for a genuine breakthrough, noting that his conditioning and his overall game both took a step over the summer, which is not the norm for a player balancing service and hockey. With HIFK’s forward group drawing hype as one of the league’s most watchable, a defenseman who can quarterback the power play has a real platform.
His 2025-26 line of six goals and 11 assists came in a supporting role. The projection is a top-four puck-mover with power play value, and this is the year the point totals should climb. For fantasy managers he is a buy in dynasty formats, the rare high-skill defenseman available at a discount because of the draft-day fall, and the thing to track is whether HIFK hands him the power play quarterback job out of the gate.
*
Benjamin Rautiainen, LW, 6-0, Tampa Bay Lightning (108th overall in 2025)
Tappara: 25G, 52A, 59GP (2025-26)
Rautiainen produced one of the best seasons a Liiga prospect has posted in the modern era, and the only question left is where he plays it out. His 77 points led the league and made him the first player to clear 70 since 2007-08, passing Saku Koivu’s under-21 record along the way, and he took the Lasse Oksanen Award as the regular season’s best player before helping Tappara win the championship. Not bad for a fourth-round pick.
Tampa Bay signed him to a three-year entry-level deal in May, and that is where the fantasy picture gets interesting. He reports to the Lightning’s camp in September with a real shot at the opening-night roster. If he makes it, he graduates to the NHL or the AHL. If he does not, league rules send him back to Tappara for one more Liiga season. His game translates on skill, a deceptive handler who models his edgework on Nikita Kucherov, though the smaller North American sheet and his 174-pound frame are the adjustments to watch.
For fantasy purposes he is a hold in every format, an NHL-bound scorer whose arrival is a matter of when. In a Liiga-only context the read is simpler: if Tampa Bay returns him, he is the top forward on this board and the gold-helmet favorite again. Watch the Lightning’s camp cuts in late September, because that decides which league owns him this year.
*
Anttoni Uronen, RW, 6-1, Columbus Blue Jackets (182nd overall in 2026)
HIFK: 2G, 8A, 26GP (2025-26)
Uronen is the kind of name this column exists to surface, a sixth-round pick already doing real work at 18. Columbus took him 182nd in June, and rather than a headline he arrived as a rookie logging regular minutes for HIFK, where he put up two goals and eight assists in 26 games. For a player drafted that late in his first year of eligibility, producing at that clip in a men’s league is a genuine signal.
He projects as a middle-six winger whose value is in his hockey sense and his work off the puck, the profile that tends to age well even from a late pick. A Sebastian Repo injury thinned HIFK’s forward group just before the opener, opening minutes for the young forwards, so his ice time should hold or grow through the fall.
For fantasy purposes this is a deep-league stash, not a shallow-format add. The upside is a productive middle-six forward, and in 16-team and deeper dynasty leagues a late pick already scoring in the Liiga earns a bench spot. Hold, and watch whether HIFK trusts him with power play time as the season opens, because that is where the point total climbs.
*
Aatos Koivu, C, 6-1, Montreal Canadiens (70th overall in 2024)
TPS: 4G, 5A, 46GP (2025-26)
Koivu carries the most famous surname in this class, and he is starting to build a game worth the attention on its own. Montreal took him 70th in 2024, the son of former Canadiens captain Saku Koivu and nephew of Mikko Koivu, and his calling card is a shot, a quick, accurate one-timer that already plays as a power play weapon from the half-wall. He spent last season as a full-time Liiga forward at TPS, a real step for a 20-year-old, and put up four goals and five assists in 46 games.
The production is modest because the role was, and because TPS asked its young players to defend first. In an interview this week, reflecting on his first Liiga years, he admitted he did not fully realize what the jump would be at the time, which tracks with a finisher still learning to translate his shot to men’s ice. The two-way habits are ahead of the offense, which his coaches credit to the pedigree.
For fantasy purposes he is a monitor in most formats and a dynasty hold where you can wait on a shot-first center. A larger role and power play time at TPS would lift the projection, and that is the development to track as the season starts, whether the one-timer that carried him in junior begins finding the net against men.
***
Liiga 2026 Season Watchlist
This list maintains the prospects covered in the Dobber Prospects monthly Liiga updates. Player ranks are based on fantasy upside and updated with every new article. Contract status and NHL team situation are considered.
- Suvanto
- Rautiainen
- Kiviharju
- Rimpinen
- Boelius
- Koivu
- Väisänen
- Saarinen
- Uronen
- Svensk
- Kuusla
***
The Next Wave: Finland’s U20s In Espoo
The Liiga is not the only place to find Finnish prospects this week. Finland’s under-20 team is hosting a five-nation tournament at Ilmatar Areena in Espoo from Aug. 26 to 30, its first prep for the 2027 World Juniors, with Sweden, Czechia, Switzerland, and Slovakia in town. The players who already hold Liiga jobs are missing by design. Oliver Suvanto and Anttoni Uronen, both age-eligible for this team, stayed with their clubs for the opener instead, so the roster in Espoo is the tier below, the prospects not yet playing men’s hockey.
Every Finn on it was born in 2007 or 2008, and only goaltender Juuso Ainasto, a Toronto pick, has been drafted. The rest are undrafted and eligible for the 2027 class, which makes the tournament a preview of the next pool rather than the current one. Two of the forwards, Atte Vuori and Lauri Kouhia, have already left for North American junior. For fantasy purposes this is background rather than a roster move, and the one thing to track is which of these juniors earns an early Liiga look once the games start counting on Sept. 1.
***
Final Thoughts
The season starts for real on Tuesday Sept 1, and the watchlist names each have their own stories going into the season.. Oliver Suvanto drew a top-66 spot on Corey Pronman’s under-23 board at The Athletic, which projects him as middle-six NHL future and squares with the first-round pedigree. Lasse Boelius has a clearer path to minutes than expected, since an injury cluster on Ässät’s blue line thinned the depth just before the opener, so his early ice time is the thing to watch. Petteri Rimpinen holds Kiekko-Espoo’s crease with no threat to the job in sight.
The league’s own numbers flagged two more names getting early looks, Vertti Svensk at SaiPa and Juho Piiparinen at Tappara, both worth monitoring once the games count. The first checkpoint is the opening fortnight, and which of these prospects a coach trusts on the power play will tell you more about the season ahead than any preseason result did. Suvanto and Kiviharju are the two to watch there, and the first Jokerit and HIFK derby on Oct. 8 will be the opening temperature check on the superseason.
***
That is the board as the super season opens, this season will be a fun one. I will track every name here through the fall and add the next wave as the early Liiga call-ups and the World Junior race sort out.
It’s all a great chance to track Liiga, and if you want an easy way to do it this season then. keep up with my weekly series: The Jokerit Card, which follows a Liiga team week by week and breaks down their performance in a way that easy for a North American viewer to follow. You can also find me on X at @epps_andrew, and for the Finnish game in more depth, my Substacks Lone Star to Leijonat and Jäähalli Journal.
Andrew Epps