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Flames defenceman Valimaki focusing on positives as he prepares for sophomore season

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The Calgary Flames’ incoming coach was, at times, hard on this up-and-coming defenceman.

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Darryl Sutter is not one for sugar-coating and, as he settled in for a second stint as bench boss at the Saddledome, he raised eyebrows with a couple of blunt remarks about highly touted blue-liner Juuso Valimaki.

Valimaki was, at times, awfully hard on himself, too.

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After a few months to reflect on his rookie campaign, the 22-year-old realizes that now.

“To be honest, that’s kind of what I’ve always been and that has definitely helped me in my career — to be hard on myself, always wanting to be better, always wanting to play better and all that,” Valimaki said. “But you can do a lot of harm in that, too. I think that’s definitely something that I’ve learned a little bit at the end of the year and now try to deal with that a bit in the off-season so that next year, it could be a little bit easier for me.

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“But I know that I’ve done that … I don’t know if it’s a mistake, but I know that I’ve done that mistake sometimes where I beat myself up too hard and then it’s a little harder to manage it and go into the next one.”

The next one is coming up quick.

The Flames report for training camp in just a month and Valimaki, re-upped late last week on a two-year contract with an annual cap hit of US$1.55 million, should be a staple on Calgary’s third pairing.

Valimaki’s final stat-line last winter showed two goals, 11 points and a minus-2 rating in 49 appearances during the shortened slate. He was scratched seven times after Sutter’s arrival, with the boss stressing that No. 6 needed to play with more pace and consistency and obviously including him when he suggested “one of the reasons that we are not in a playoff spot is there are three or four young defencemen that have not lived up to expectations this year.”

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While Valimaki will be first to admit that the condensed campaign didn’t go exactly as he’d planned, his summertime reflections have reinforced that there was still a lot to feel good about.

“For me personally, the biggest thing — and I’ve said this many times — is that I was healthy to play,” said Valimaki, who missed all of the 2019-20 season as he recovered from knee surgery. “Leaving out a couple of games, I was a regular in the NHL. I was in the lineup. I was able to play. And still looking at things, I was able to do some good out there too, not just survive.

“I’m really hard on myself as a player but now, after the games are done, it’s a little bit easier to look at it a little more positively and see all the good that there was. Because when you’re playing, you might not have the best night and it’s easy to kind of go on the negative note. But after the season, it’s a little easier to look at all the good and take that out of it and start looking and using that to your advantage for next year.

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“To be able to look at the season a little differently and to see that there was a lot of good, it definitely helps your confidence. And I think going into next camp, that’s kind of all you can have — to have a good confidence, go in well trained and in a good peace of mind with yourself and with your last season. Yeah, take some of the learning. But at the same time, that’s last year. There’s nothing you can do about that anymore. I think that’s the focus from last year is not to focus on it too much, if you know what I mean. Just move forward. You can’t move back.”

Valimaki, remember, still has just 75 total nights of NHL know-how, a tally that includes a pair of playoff loggings. That’s several outings shy of one standard-length season, so this is far from a finished product.

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He says he had “really good conversations with (Sutter), a couple times actually” before heading home to Finland and has been back-and-forthing with assistant coach Ryan Huska, who oversees the defence, as he prepares for his sophomore campaign.

“I know a lot gets made in the media about Darryl making comments,” said Flames general manager Brad Treliving after signing Valimaki — a restricted free agent for the first time after his entry-level deal expired — to that two-year pact. “The comments were just being truthful. I don’t think it, at all, was ever disparaging. You know, it’s a hard league to play in. It’s a hard league to play defence in. I think we have always had faith in Juuso. And you also have to take into consideration if you go back in time and look at players that come off an injury like he’d come off of … And I don’t want to talk about that, that’s ancient history now, but it takes a bit of time to get everything back up to speed.

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“The one thing with Juuso is he’s a very committed player. He wants to be the very best that he can be. He’s committed to his training, committed to all parts of his development, and we have had lots of good conversations over the course of the summer. You can’t give a guy confidence. A lot of people say, ‘build it up,’ but ultimately confidence comes from work you put in, preparation you put in, and I firmly believe you earn your confidence. You earn confidence by going out and doing all the things you can to prepare and then playing well.

“So the more you put into it, the more confident you’re going to be at game time, and I feel really good that Juuso has put in the work over the course of the summer.”

wgilbertson@postmedia.com

Twitter.com/WesGilbertson

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