The London Knights get back a player from their championship-winning and Memorial Cup-winning roster from last season.
London Knights forward Jesse Nurmi (44) with the J. Ross Robertson Cup. Credit: Morgan Roobroeck/OHL ImagesThe London Knights lost 11 players from their 2025 championship-winning roster. Three of these players, Easton Cowan, Denver Barkey, and Sam Dickinson, have already played in NHL games. Most of the remaining players are competing in either the AHL or ECHL, but one player is returning to the OHL.
The Bridgeport Islanders of the AHL announced that they have reassigned Finnish forward Jesse Nurmi to the London Knights.
Nurmi, a fourth-round pick of the New York Islanders, came over from playing in the Finnish top league (Liiga) to don the green, gold, and white last season. He recorded nine goals and 22 assists for 31 points in 58 regular season games. In the playoffs, he produced three goals and five assists for eight points in 17 games. Utilized in the team’s bottom six, Nurmi gave the Knights the kind of depth that many other teams could not match.
The Finnish winger graduated to the professional ranks, but it’s been a rough go thus far.
Nurmi has been playing in the ECHL for the Worcester Railers. ECHL players previously went on strike, postponing games in the schedule due to a lack of compensation in their salaries. On Tuesday, a new labor deal was put in place to end the strike, but Nurmi's return to the OHL is the right move for his development.
The Islanders prospect had only one goal and an assist in 12 ECHL games. Returning to the OHL allows Nurmi to be an offensive leader for the Knights, something he couldn’t do last season due to the talent on the roster. And playing time is everything for a player’s development. They need to be given/put in situations where they can grow and gain confidence. Nurmi wasn’t having that in the ECHL.
London was able to recoup Nurmi as an overager and import player. American forwards Braiden Clark and Kaeden Hawkins were the only two 2005-born players on their roster. Meanwhile, on the backend, defensemen Maksim Sokolovskii and Linus Funck are registered as import players, and with the OHL opening up to three import spots per team this year, Nurmi was able to come back.
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