{"id":7194,"date":"2016-10-13T17:01:20","date_gmt":"2016-10-13T21:01:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sportswtbu.com\/?p=4630"},"modified":"2016-10-13T17:01:20","modified_gmt":"2016-10-13T21:01:20","slug":"mens-hockey-defenseman-kasper-kotkansalo-commits-to-bu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/2016\/10\/13\/mens-hockey-defenseman-kasper-kotkansalo-commits-to-bu\/","title":{"rendered":"Men&#8217;s Hockey: Defenseman Kasper Kotkansalo Commits to BU"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By: Dan Shulman<\/p>\n<p>Finnish defenseman Kasper Kotkansalo has committed to Boston University for thee 2017-18 season.<\/p>\n<p>The blue-liner is the second to commit to BU for next year following U.S. Under-18 Team defenseman David Farrance.<\/p>\n<p>Kotkansalo won gold with Finland at last year&#8217;s IIHF World U18 Championships. He spent four years playing for Espoo Blues in Finland before making the switch to the USHL club Sioux Falls\u00a0Stampede. He&#8217;ll join former Terriers Peter Ahola and Ahti Oksanen as BU players who graduated from the Espoo Blues organization.<\/p>\n<p>The Finnish starlet joins Farrance, Logan Cockerill, Brady Tkachuk, Ty Amonte, and Henry Crone as recruits for next season&#8217;s squad.\u00a0His time in Sioux Falls\u00a0will be spent playing with 2018-19 BU recruit Matthew Quercia.<\/p>\n<p>In an interview with the USHL, the multi-faceted Kotkansalo described his elation and excitement about playing in the United States.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I think I\u2019m an all-around defenseman, maybe a little bit of offensive upside. Obviously, I like to make big hits, but they don\u2019t come so often. I can do that and make good passes.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Kotkansalo will be eligible for the upcoming 2017 NHL Draft in which he is projected as the eleventh-best Finnish prospect according to FinnProspects.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By: Dan Shulman Finnish defenseman Kasper Kotkansalo has committed to Boston University for thee 2017-18 season. The blue-liner is the second to commit to BU for next year following U.S. Under-18 Team defenseman David Farrance. Kotkansalo won gold with Finland at last year&#8217;s IIHF World U18 Championships. He spent four years playing for Espoo Blues [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17194,"featured_media":7195,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1026,1028],"tags":[1053,1248],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7194"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17194"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7194"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7194\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}