The Bruins have acquired defenseman Henri Jokiharju from the Sabres in exchange for the Oilers’ 2026 fourth-round pick, both teams announced. Darren Dreger of TSN was first to report the trade, which wasn’t certain to go through ahead of the deadline.
Boston’s buzzer-beater acquisition of Jokiharju will help fill in after they traded stout defensive defenseman Brandon Carlo to the Toronto Maple Leafs. Carlo’s absence leaves nearly 19 minutes of ice time every night up for grabs. The bulk of those minutes will likely go to Andrew Peeke, but it will be a battle between Ian Mitchell and Jokiharju for a role on the team’s second pair.
Jokiharju has filled a minimal role in Buffalo this season, with just six points, 12 penalty minutes, and a plus-six in 42 games. He has also scored three goals – exactly the same amount that he’s scored in each of the last five seasons. Jokiharju’s downward trend in scoring this year comes after a career performance last season, when he totaled a career-high 20 points and fought his way into a second-pair role through 74 games. He even rivaled top-pair utilization in 2021-22 and 2022-23, averaging over 21 minutes a night through 120 games between the pair of years.
Jokiharju, 25, is still finding his footing in the NHL after breaking into the league at age-19. He was a first-round selection by the Chicago Blackhawks in the 2017 NHL Draft – and recorded 12 assists in 38 games with the team as a rookie in 2018-19. Chicago traded Jokiharju to the Sabres in exchange for Alex Nylander in the following summer, setting him up for an extended run as part of Buffalo’s desolate blue-line. Over six years in Buffalo, Jokiharju totaled 81 points in 351 games – just enough to earn a spot on Team Finland at 2025’s 4-Nations Face-Off, where he scored one goal in three games.
Jokiharju is signed at a $3.1MM cap hit through the end of the season. He will slot into Boston’s bottom-four and look to find a groove on the new-look Bruins, after six years with a struggling Sabres squad.