BUFFALO, NY — The Washington Capitals drafted their first Finnish player in two decades on Friday, selecting two-way center Oliver Suvanto with the 18th overall pick at the 2026 NHL Draft.
The moment was a dream come true for Suvato, but the full-of-personality Finn admitted his mind was elsewhere at points during the first 17 picks, which took nearly two and a half hours to complete.
“I didn’t have to wait that long. I just had to go to pee many, many, many minutes,” he said, laughing. “So I had to hold that, but yeah, I got a little hungry and thirsty through that. But yeah, it was nice, nice experience, this whole arena full of fans. And yeah, just the whole thing is so nice. So it wasn’t a big thing to just wait.”
What else did he feel?
“Excitement,” Suvanto said. “Washington is a big city, Capitals (are a) very nice club, so excited to join them.”
“I think they [have] good potential in their team right now,” he added. “Protas brothers, for example, and Leonard coming up. Yeah, just excited to see them as soon as possible.”
Capitals select Oliver Suvanto with 18th overall pick in 2026 NHL Draft
Suvanto was the second-youngest player drafted in the first round, just five days older than Nashville’s Wyatt Cullen. He admitted he had something of a hunch that the Capitals might pick him when NHL commissioner Gary Bettman came up to announce his selection.
“The interview with them went pretty well [at] the (Draft) Combine,” Suvanto said. “I think they liked me, so I got some smell about that, but, yeah, nothing sure, so it’s kind of surprising at the same time.”
NHL Central Scouting ranked Suvanto as the third-best skater outside North America in this year’s draft. The 17-year-old Finn played the majority of his 2025-26 season suiting up against much older players with Tappara in Liiga, Finland’s top professional hockey league. He recorded 11 points (2g, 9a) in 48 games — the most of any under-18 player.
When asked what makes him different, he replied, “Probably just the competitiveness I have. Just the willing to do everything it takes to play in NHL someday. Maybe it’s one of the key points. Willing to do the work, willing to do the grind to just play in NHL one day.”
Growing up in Finland, Suvanto looked up to Florida Panthers forward Aleksander Barkov, both for his strong 200-foot play on the ice and for the example he set off of it.
“Big player, kind of similarities with me,” Suvanto said of Barkov. “Two-way player, reliable, responsible. And first of all, or most of all, he’s a great person. What a leader. Led his team twice to the Stanley Cup as a captain. Big role model for me, and can be a good model for young kids.”
Suvanto got the chance to learn from his childhood hero firsthand earlier this year: after Barkov missed the entire 2025-26 NHL season with a knee injury, he trained alongside Suvanto as he prepared for the 2026 IIHF World Championship, where Finland ultimately emerged victorious.
The pair didn’t get much time together, but Suvanto soaked up all the advice he could.
“He told me a lot of things: to work calm, for example, in faceoffs, catching the puck, those basic things,” Suvanto said on Friday. “He does that so well, so I tried to just learn everything I could from him and, just trying to be a little boy, hearing everything he says and use it to my own stuff.”
Suvanto noted that he’d spent much of last summer building up his strength, something that made it possible to succeed in an adult league for much of his draft year.
“It helped me a lot in skating and obviously in battling,” he said. “I’m a big guy, but big guy needs some muscles to wrestle in a corner. So I got some strength last summer and it helped me a lot. Just working on the skills we do every day training in Tappara helped me a lot and made possible for that jump.”
The selection of Suvanto was surprising considering Washington hadn’t drafted a Finnish player since 2006, when they took Oskar Osala in the fourth round (97th overall). Suvanto wasn’t too worried about the dearth of Finns in the team’s history: if anything, he saw it as a challenge.
“The guys told me that the last time was, what, 20 years ago? Maybe (they’re not) used to Finns, but (I’m) trying to be the first one to really establish our country out there,” he said.
The Capitals had leaned especially hard on the WHL when choosing their high-end draftees in recent years, using their top pick to draft WHL players in five of the previous 10 years. Washington assistant general manager Ross Mahoney, who oversees the draft and played junior hockey with the WHL’s Regina Pats, explained that the Finn-less phenomenon was more a coincidence than a strategy.
“Honestly, we don’t care where the players are from,” Mahoney said. “I know we haven’t drafted a lot of Finnish players; I don’t have an answer for that. We’ve had lots of Finnish players really high on our list at times, but we’re picking 24 or 26, or whatever the case might be. But our Finnish scout, Matti Lamberg, really was high on him. Talked about him as an underage (player) and spoke really highly of him again this year. So, you know, where they come from, honestly, it doesn’t make any difference to us. But, yeah, we did end up drafting a player from Finland.”
Even general manager Chris Patrick joked with Mahoney about the team’s lack of Finnish draftees when making the pick.
“People are going to go nuts we took a Finn,” Patrick said. “They say we never take Finns.”
In Suvanto, the Capitals are getting a 17-year-old player who is already 6’3″ and over 200 pounds. The selection fit the role of the larger center Mahoney told reporters the team was targeting ahead of the draft. On Friday, Mahoney pointed to both size and ability to play multiple positions as among Suvanto’s strengths.
“He’s six-foot-three and a half, 207 pounds, captain of the under-18 team. So we thought we had a good size center. He can also play left wing, because he played most of the year in the Finnish Elite League as a left winger. But within his age group, he was a center. So he’s a true center, but also showed the versatility of being able to play on the wing. So that combination of his skating, his size, his character, he’s a very smart, intelligent player also…We see him being a second-line center for us in the future.”
Off the ice, they’re also getting a talented drummer who loves country music.
“I played [them] through my childhood. Since I was a young kid, the music has always been a big part of my life,” Suvanto said. “And I don’t know, maybe affects my personality some way, maybe brings some freshness to me. I’m kind of outgoing guy and positive.”
Looking ahead, Suvanto hopes to develop a stronger scoring touch as he looks to make the NHL.
“I want to improve a lot of my offensiveness. I want to be good threat in there. I want to create more. I’m not maybe the point maker guy or the leading goal scorer. There’s a bunch of guys (like that) in the Capitals already. But yeah, I’m trying to be a complete player, a two-way player, but I would like to be more offensive-minded.”
Katie Adler contributed to this story from Arlington, Virginia
