Friends, here at FlamesNation we pride ourselves on doing our homework and trying our best to provide smart, insightful commentary on the Calgary Flames and their many prospects.

So it’s worth a certain amount of humility – and excitement – that we admit we’re not all that sure what to expect from defenceman Joni Jurmo when he suits up with the Calgary Wranglers for the 2024-25 season.

Jurmo’s had a really interesting, but also kind of weird run in Finnish hockey since being drafted in the third round in 2020. On one hand, he played 178 professional regular season games – 168 in the top-tier Liiga and 10 in the second-tier Mestis – and had 28 points in Liiga and eight points in Mestis. Playing that much pro hockey in a couple pretty strong leagues before his 22nd birthday is pretty impressive. He also suited up with Finland at the World Juniors, capturing silver at the 2022 tournament.

But the challenge with Jurmo is this: what is he? When you’re a younger player in European hockey, you don’t tend to play high in the rotation – typically you move up the depth chart as you age – and there are few incentives for coaches to give a lot of high-leverage game reps to players that might be bolting to the NHL soon. As such, Jurmo didn’t really progress offensively during his run through Liiga… but that’s sort of a chicken and egg conundrum, as he wasn’t really put in a ton of favourable positions to produce.

Jurmo was a depth player in Finland – and when he was able to carve out a niche, he became a pretty solid depth player – but it’s unclear how that translates. But if you’re looking for reasons to be optimistic, take a look at some recent Wranglers history. Three recent European imports – all that came to the AHL after being depth players in Europe – have managed to figure things out early in their North American careers.

A seventh-round pick by the Flames in 2020, selected in his third year of draft eligibility, Solovyov played 2019-20 as an import with the Ontario Hockey League’s Saginaw Spirit and then headed back to Belarus. He played the 2020-21 season, as a 20-year-old, as a regular for Dinamo Minsk in the KHL; he had nine points in 41 games, for a 14.47 NHLe.

Solovyov signed an entry-level deal with the Flames and played the 2021-22 season with the Stockton Heat. He played on the third pairing, and he was perfectly fine, posting eight points in 51 games. In 2022-23, now with the Wranglers, Solovyov was paired partway through the season with veteran Nick DeSimone and something just seemed to click for him once they got together. Solovyov quietly became one of the better shutdown defenders on the team, and his offence upticked too, as he posted 18 points in 68 games.

Solovyov quietly became a prospect of note in the Flames organization, and he dressed for 10 games in 2023-24 with the big club.

The Flames signed Klapka out of the Czech Extraliga following the 2021-22 season. In his final year in Czechia, Klapka had 18 points in 44 games – that’s a roughly 19.56 NHLe.

In Klapka’s first season in the AHL, he started slow offensively but seemed to start figuring things out. He had 25 points in 60 games… but 17 of those points came after the New Year, including a hat trick in the final regular season home game. He managed to continue that pace into the next season, and he posted 46 points in 65 AHL games in 2023-24 and played his first six NHL games – he had a fight and a goal, both his NHL firsts, in the final Flames game of the season.

The Flames drafted Strömgren in the second round of the 2021 draft. In the two seasons after his selection he was a lot like Jurmo: he played a season in Swedish junior and a season in Swedish pro, but he didn’t progress beyond a depth role in the SHL, where he had eight points in 45 games in 2022-23.

He signed an entry-level deal with the Flames last spring and after a slow start, he seemed to get his footing in the AHL. He finished the season with 27 points in 68 games. Like Klapka’s, his first-year production was back-loaded, with 24 of his points coming after the New Year.

Based on their European results, Solovyov, Klapka and Strömgren were all mysteries going into their first years in the AHL. All three managed to figure things out, which could be a reason to have some patience and optimism as Jurmo adjusts to a new continent and a new league in 2024-25.