Player Acquisition & Development (Europe) – Tobias Salmelainen
Coach for Player Development Andreas Karlsson
Coach for Mental Performance and Player Development: Vincent Malts
Salmelainen, 39, comes to the Oilers from HIFK in Finland (Liiga), where he most recently held the position of General Manager from 2017 until the 2023–24 season. Throughout his tenure, his teams won two bronze medals and advanced to the Liiga semifinals four times.
With background as an executive, agent, and player, the native of Espoo, Finland, will be headquartered in Helsinki. After retiring from the game, Salmelainen entered the player representation industry. From 2014 to 2017, he worked mostly as an agent for Acme World Sports for over five years, until being hired for his current position at HFIK.
Karlsson, 49, joins the team after serving as an assistant coach in the Ontario Hockey League for the Kitchener Rangers and Brantford/Hamilton Bulldogs for the previous six seasons. He assisted the Bulldogs in winning the OHL title in 2022.
Following a 19-year professional hockey career that saw him play 264 NHL games between the Atlanta Thrashers and Tampa Bay Lightning, as well as win a gold medal in the IIHF World Championship in 2006, the native of Ludvika, Sweden, started his coaching career in the 2011–12 season as both a development coach for the SHL’s Frolunda Hockey Club and an assistant coach for the U18 team.
He led the Frolunda U20 Hockey Club from 2012 to 2015 before traveling to North America to take a position as an assistant coach.
Malts, 45, comes to the team after spending the 2020–21 and 2021–22 seasons as a Mental Performance Coach with the Danbury Jr. Hat Tricks of the North American Hockey League. He spent two seasons in the same role with the Indianapolis Fuel of the ECHL before that.
The Philadelphia, Pennsylvania native played professionally for ten years until joining the Victoriaville Tigres as a scout in the Quebec Maritimes Junior Hockey League in 2011–2017.
Stan Bowman, the executive vice president of hockey operations and general manager of the Oilers, expressed his excitement at the signings of Tobias, Andreas, and Vincent. “Player development is critical to our long-term success and this kind of investment is an important step.”
