Brian Halonen is very aware of the uphill battle he faces in securing a spot in the NHL via the New Jersey Devils. However, that won’t stop him from trying.
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Halonen, 26, is an undrafted forward that signed a standard entry-level contract out of the NCAA in 2022 following a 21-goal, 44 point season at Michigan Tech.
Before he even thought of a professional hockey career, Halonen told The Hockey Writers that although he wanted to play hockey, his backup plan was to become a mechanical engineer in the case it didn’t work out.
Fortunately, he’s thus far carved out a respectable professional hockey career.
The 6-foot, 207-lb forward has all the qualities of a power forward. He’s unafraid to throw his body around, battles for puck possession in all three zones, gets in the dirty areas, and has a wicked shot to boot.
Over the last three seasons, Halonen has been one of the scoring leaders for the Utica Comets in the American Hockey League, leading the team with 25 goals last season. The season prior, he was second on the team with 20, and the year before that, third with 17 tucks.
This fall, Halonen’s already displayed his wicked shot in the preseason. He opened the scoring for the Devils in their first preseason game on Sunday, firing a missile past Jonathan Quick on the power play.
“Yeah, I thought he was good. I mean, that’s a big time shot,” Devils head coach Sheldon Keefe said. “Obviously, you don’t see a lot of one-timers go in from that distance outside the dot in the NHL. That’s an NHL goalie he beats clean on that. So that was a great shot. We’ve seen that from him.”
Halonen has what it takes to hold down an NHL roster spot. The path is a bit clearer with bodies such as Nathan Bastian, Tomas Tatar, and Justin Dowling elsewhere.
Yet, he does face competition as others fight for a spot on the NHL roster such as Juho Lammikko and Thomas Bordeleau, PTO players like Luke Glendening and Kevin Rooney, as well as rookie Arseny Gritsyuk who also showed well on Sunday.
Keefe even admitted with the star power on the Devils, there’s no likely going to be a path to power play minutes for Halonen, which is how he scored on Sunday. Instead, he’ll need to try to find ways to be effective at 5-on-5.
“I thought he played hard, in straight lines and doing all that sort of stuff,” Keefe said. “You know, I don’t know how much ice time would be available on our team for him to rip one-timers on the power play and such. So it’s a lot of the other things that he’s got to be able to show in other areas of his game, being finding ways to produce at 5-on-5.”
Halonen certainly proved he could do that on Sunday, adding three hits and a blocked shot while also being tough to play against on the forecheck in 16:41 of time on ice.
Keefe explained he sat down with Halonen as training camp got underway, instilling his faith in the undrafted forward to fight for a spot on the NHL roster. Thus far, Keefe likes what he’s sees, and there’s a real chance that Halonen could carve out a role for himself in the Devils’ bottom-six should this play continue.
“He plays hard. He’s here to try to make the team, which is exactly what it should be,” Keefe said. “When I talked to him before camp started, I said, ‘Don’t be the forgotten man here. Push and challenge and take advantage of every opportunity that you get.’ So I thought he played a good, hard, honest game, and it was good to see him get rewarded with the goal too.”
