Sports

The big Finn has been playing some hard, effective hockey the last few games and might not look at all out of place skating with Nugent-Hopkins and Eberle, as he did Friday before the team boarded a plane for Michigan. It'd be a nice promotion for the 215-pound 22-year-old. "I started with six minutes of ice time and now I'm getting 10 minutes and 12 minutes. I see that I'm doing things right and coaches are starting to trust me more and more," Hartikainen said. "My confidence is going up. I'm seeing that I can beat guys in the corners. I can take it to the net and create a lot of scoring chances in a game. That's what I have to be at the NHL level. It's just hard work. You have to earn those minutes, they don't give them to you. I've been trying to do that."