The Edmonton Oilers have added more goaltending depth to their organization. According to an announcement from the Oilers, the AHL’s Bakersfield Condors have signed netminder Eemil Vinni to a contract for the 2026-27 season.

It’s an intriguing addition to Edmonton’s depth chart, at the very least. The Oilers drafted Vinni with the 64th overall pick of the 2024 NHL Draft, and he’s been playing in his native Finland since. Still, Vinni has hardly enough experience in the Finnish Liiga to speak of, having appeared in just three games since the 2022-23 season.

That’s not to say he hasn’t been playing at all. For the past three years, Vinni, 20, has been relegated to the Finnish Mestis league, the country’s second-highest professional league. Despite showing flashes of being a very well-rounded netminder for his age, his on-ice production has been far from consistent.

During his draft season, Vinni played for the Mestis’ JoKP, finishing with a 17-9-10 record in 37 games with a .892 SV% and 2.72 GAA. Although he made Team Finland’s roster for the 2023-24 IIHF World Junior Championships, he didn’t feature in any games.

The following year, Vinni bounced around quite a bit, limiting his ability to gain any traction. He played seven games for HIFK in the U20 SM-sarja, one game for Kiekko-Vantaa in Mestis, and one game for HIFK in Liiga. This past season, it was spent entirely in the Mestis league, with middling results.

In the first chunk of the season, again on JoKP, Vinni managed an 8-5-4 record in 17 games with an .884 SV% and 2.99 GAA. Not only was he not improving, but he was also performing worse two years after being drafted despite playing in the same league. However, the Oilers loaned Vinni to the Ketterä, and he finished the season with a much better 2-1-1 record in four games with a .951 SV% and 1.23 GAA. He continued that strong play into the postseason, registering a 4-2-0 record in six games with a .943 SV% and 1.52 GAA.

Regardless of the strong play to end the 2025-26 season, Vinni’s promotion to the North American professional circuit appears premature. Dominating in 10 games to end his season is far from a large enough sample size, and it wasn’t even in the highest league of his home country. In the Oilers’ defense, Vinni’s new contract is a two-way deal, meaning he can spend a decent chunk of the 2026-27 season with the ECHL’s Fort Wayne Komets.

However, the Finnish Liiga is generally considered a more talented league than the ECHL. It may have been more prudent for Edmonton to facilitate a move to Finland’s highest league before having Vinni test his mettle on the other side of the Atlantic. Goalies take longer to develop, so it wouldn’t have prolonged his eventual promotion much longer anyway.