After an injury in late May, Joni Ikonen finally returned to Liiga play on Saturday. The Finnish centre was raring to go and looking better than expected after such a long time away from the game.
Ikonen had clearly built up some muscle and looked a fair bit taller as well. He centred the third line for KalPa and played an astonishing 17 minutes during his first game in over seven months. He was used to run the second power-play unit, usually as a player down by the net in a 2-3 formation, as KalPa plays that unit with two players next to the goal (as illustrated below from a 5-on-3 situation, Ikonen to the left of the net from our view).