Coach Toni Söderholm tried to implement a completely new system. Aatos’s uncle, Mikko Koivu, was added to the coaching team and on top of it all the club got draw into a labour law situation with regard to Pride jerseys that had a fallout all the way up to the boardroom.
It wasn’t the easiest season for Aatos who looked to jump out of the gate and showcase the talent that was visible during last year’s development camp and the Summer Showcase. However, on the two biggest stages this year, the World Junior Championships and Liiga, Koivu has been left wanting.
He finished the World Juniors with two points, a goal against Denmark and an assist against Latvia. He was benched against Canada in the round robin after making two bad defensive plays in the 7-4 loss, and scratched in the next two games against the United States and Sweden in the playoffs. He did return but on the fourth line for the Bronze Medal Game.
Figure 1. A five-game rolling average over Aatos Koivu’s season in Liiga. The points were spaced out all throughout the season.
Aatos played 46 games in Liiga. He was with the team in the last game of the season but didn’t take to the ice, and missed the games from December 11 to January 16 due to the World Juniors. The points came throughout the season and there is no statistical model (Pearson, Welch and Mann–Whitney) that points to a correlation between that and increased time on ice equalling increased scoring.
I spoke to multiple European scouts that have insight to players in Liiga. One scout even said “I would have preferred to have a player in any other team in Liiga than in TPS.” This speaks to a very different situation that Koivu had to navigate last season.
Strengths
Aatos is a shooter, and therefore very different from Mikko and his dad, Saku, but the shot is great and when he has confidence in his own play he uses it to deadly effect — as seen last summer. One Swedish Junior player that played against him in different International U20’s tournaments mentioned that “his shot came from everywhere, you could not let him have any space. It was hidden and fast. He used the wrists to great effect to get velocity on the puck.”
Weaknesses
His game is built around his shot, and when it doesn’t work or Koivu doesn’t get the chance to show it, then his confidence seems to go away and it impacts his overall game.
His defence is a weakness at this point. That was clear during the WJC, and part of his low usage in Liiga. In hindsight, it would probably have been better to have Aatos play in the U20s for another year and focus on that rather than bring him up to TPS for the 2025-26 season. His reads and positioning make him a bit of a liability in defensive-zone coverage, and that is one aspect of the game that definitely needs improvement no matter where Aatos continues his career.
Let’s remember that it took time for Oliver Kapanen, whose name holds similar status in Finland, to lose the burden of living up to a legacy
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