Devils Skilled Prospect Transfers to Reigning Frozen Four Championship University

New Jersey Devils prospect Samu Salminen hit the NCAA player transfer portal last week.

Salminen decided to move on from the University of Connecticut, along with Nashville Predators 2023 first-round selection and forward prospect Matthew Wood and Calgary Flames prospect goaltender Arsenii Sergeev.

On Sunday, Samu Salminen made his decision on where he will play his next NCAA game.

Salminen is transferring to the University of Denver which just defeated Boston College in the NCAA Frozen Four championship.

The Devils forward prospect will join 2024 NHL Draft eligible Zeev Buium granted the highly touted defense prospect doesn’t graduate to the professional level.

The University of Denver entered the Frozen Four tournament as the No.3 seed and ended the season on a nine-game win streak, moved past Michigan [nine] for most titles of all time.

Salminen played the last two seasons at UConn, scoring 17 points in each of the last two years. In 2022-23, the Devils prospect tallied nine goals and eight assists in 27 games. He repeated the point total in 2023-24, however, did so in 35 games scoring 10 goals and seven assists.

The Athletic doesn’t rank Salminen within their top- Devils prospects. Eliteprospects ranks him 21st.

It is expected that Salminen will play out his junior and senior year with Denver.

Salminen’s transfer to Denver makes sense. The Devils prospect committed to Denver in 2022 before running into difficulty with admissions. As a result, he made the decision to join Northeastern instead.

In other Devils prospect news, Artem Shlaine is leaving Northern Michigan University and transferring to Arizona State University. It is not expected that Shlanie will remain with the Devils’ organization after his rights with New Jersey expire in August and he becomes a free agent.