While he hasn’t been able to debut in North America as he planned earlier this month, Jesse Ylonen now has an entry-level contract under his belt after the Habs signed him on Thursday. The deal begins in the 2020-21 season.
PuckPedia reports that the deal breaks down as follows:
2020-21: $700,000 base salary, $92,500 signing bonus, $132,500 in games played bonuses.
2021-22: $832,500 base salary, $92,500 signing bonus
2022-23: $832,500 base salary, $92,500 signing bonus
That results in a cap hit of just over $880,000 which is pretty good for a second-round pick as Ylonen was back in 2018 when he was picked 35th overall. Marc-Antoine Godin of The Athletic adds that the deal does not contain a European Assignment clause.
After playing in Finland’s second-tier league in his draft year, Ylonen moved up to the SM-liiga in 2018-19 with Pelicans where he has spent the last two seasons. He was pretty consistent in both years, picking up 27 points in 53 games last season and 22 points in 53 contests this year. While he did see his point total drop, it’s worth noting that he still finished fourth on the team in scoring; only one player cracked the 30-point mark. A year earlier, he was ninth.
It will be interesting to see if Ylonen follows a similar path as Artturi Lehkonen and makes the jump right away to the NHL. Lehkonen was a year older when he signed though.
The plan was for Ylonen to go to Laval to finish up the season. However, he was a little banged up when he arrived and had to sit out and now that he’s healthy, the schedule is on hold. That could push him to the Rocket to start next year to help him get acclimated to playing in North America (assuming the AHL campaign doesn’t resume later on) but it wouldn’t be surprising if he’s in a Montreal uniform before too long.
Ylonen’s Stats: