Sheffield Steelers: Aaron Fox continues team building by sealing return of key Finnish duo

The Finland-born pair made themselves an integral part of a Steelers team who missed out on silverware this time around, but went deep in all three formats.

In his second season for the Steelers, 27-year-old forward Juusola finished as the team’s joint top-scorer along with Mitchell Balmas.

His compatriot added some steel and grit to the Steelers back-end and, in the second half of the campaign showed more of his offensive qualities, finishing the season with 27 points, including seven goals.

They join captain Robert Dowd and defencemen Kevin Tansey and Reece Kelly on next season’s roster, after those three were confirmed as returning on Thursday morning.

Fox said last summer ahead of Juusola’s second season in South Yorkshire that he expected the left-hander to have more of an offensive impact, something he felt was clearly demonstrated.

“Mikko is such a dynamic skater, such an offensive, creative player, that he ended up leading our team in goals this year in all competitions,” said Fox.

“I’m really happy he’s back. There are just certain things that you can’t duplicate in this game or replace and I think he’s one of those guys with that pace and how he can out-do teams under pressure with his skating ability, it really sets him apart.”

On defenceman Huttula, Fox added: “I think Joons came in and set a competitive tone to his game from day one.

“And that was in our own locker room, at practice as well as how hard he competed in games.

“You see him play physical against other teams, but you also better have your head up in practice because he doesn’t have that second gear, either.

“Everything he does is hard and at times, he was just somebody that was going to go through everything, play hard below the goal-lines, win those battles and he did that extremely well.

“I don’t think he had a goal in the first 25 or 30 games but then he ended up with quite a few, so he also figured out the offensive side of his game and was effective that way, too, which made him an even better player for us and one that we wanted back.”