Well, the early returns continue to be excellent for Jonathan Lekkerimäki and his move back to Sweden’s top professional league.

Jonathan Lekkerimäki scored his third goal of the SHL preseason and he has only played in five SHL preseason games.

I’ve been impressed by his eagerness to drive the net and position himself in the high-danger areas — even if he has to take a beating at times. Lekkerimäki is also seeing time on Örebro’s first power play unit and he has been positioned on the left half-wall. He looks like he is hunting for scoring chances and is now getting back to beaver-tailing for the puck a bit, which is something we see from him when he is playing with confidence.

Lekkerimäki began the preseason on the fourth line, he then moved up to the third line in his third preseason game and has not been on the second line for the two most recent preseason games. He is quickly becoming a consistent scoring threat but we should probably gear down our excitement a bit as this is still just the preseason.

The SHL’s regular season kicks off in two weeks (September 13th) and who knows, maybe we will see Lekkerimäki on the top line by then. He is certainly making a case for it with his strong play in the preseason.

Elias Pettersson (D-Petey) was lined up as the third-pairing defenceman in Thursday’s game. The interesting note for him was that he was lined up on the right side of the pairing. This is something he has done in the past but we’ve seen it throughout the SHL preseason this year. It would add a nice little wrinkle to the prospect value of D-Petey if he can continue to develop the ability to play both sides of defence.

D-Petey played penalty kill time in Thursday’s game, it’s something he has been doing throughout the preseason.