Imagine this sequence of events.

Jesperi Kotkaniemi was playing in the Stanley Cup Final in early July. Meanwhile, back home, it is discovered that his father, Mikael, has a tumour in his mouth. Surgery would be required. Kotkaniemi and his father are extremely close, but considering what was happening an ocean away, Mikael decided not to tell his son what was happening.

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As the Final played out, Kotkaniemi had no idea.

“We needed to keep that information with us for three weeks here in Finland because we didn’t want to ruin his feeling during the finals,” Mikael said in a text message. “It was a hard homecoming for him.”

The Stanley Cup Final ended July 7. Kotkaniemi did not play in that game. Two days later, on July 9, the Canadiens held their exit meetings and, though Kotkaniemi wouldn’t talk about this, it is widely believed his did not go so well. Both coach Dominique Ducharme and general manager Marc Bergevin talked about how they wanted to see more from him, that the time had come for him to take the next step in his career.

Seems like bad news, but the real bad news would only come once Kotkaniemi flew home.

“He’s doing good now, he stopped with his treatments now, he stopped that last week. So it’s good now,” Kotkaniemi said over the phone this week. “Yeah, it was not nice (getting the news). Thank God he’s doing better now.”

In a span of a few days, Kotkaniemi lost in the Stanley Cup Final, heard about his shortcomings as a player from his boss and found out his dad had cancer. A few weeks later, he became a restricted free agent. A few weeks after that, he would receive an offer sheet from the Carolina Hurricanes worth $6.1 million for one season.

Perhaps it’s not that difficult to see why Kotkaniemi was in a frame of mind where a new start somewhere else could be welcomed, and why playing his first game in Montreal as a member of the Hurricanes on Thursday evening doesn’t seem like that big of a deal.

Every day in his new home in Raleigh, N.C., Kotkaniemi waits for a ride.

Somehow, after signing a contract worth $6.1 million, Kotkaniemi does not have his own car. So he waits for Teuvo Teravainen to pick him up and take him to practice, and he gets a ride home afterward. Social time is spent at Sebastian Aho’s house roughly two minutes away, where they will often have dinner with Aho and his girlfriend.

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And then they will hit the sauna in his backyard.

Yes, three Finns in North Carolina, hanging out in a sauna. Sometimes, stereotypes are stereotypes for a reason.

“I like saunas!” Kotkaniemi said with a laugh when the stereotype is brought up. “It’s really relaxing!”

What’s also relaxing is playing hockey in North Carolina. When Kotkaniemi signed that offer sheet, there was some concern that the pressure of the contract would weigh on him, that it would prevent him from being able to perform. Had the Canadiens matched the offer sheet, that would have 100 percent been the case in Montreal.

Only four games into the Canadiens’ season — all losses — Nick Suzuki and Cole Caufield are definitely feeling it with no points so far, and neither of them is making $6.1 million this season, though Suzuki will be making even more than that as of next season. But for Kotkaniemi, who also doesn’t have a point this season, his reality is now different.

“On my first day, I had one media guy ask about (the contract),” Kotkaniemi said. “That was the last time I talked about it. That was the last time I heard about it.”

Suffice to say the environment in Raleigh is different from the one in Montreal.

“I can say I can work on my game in nice peace here,” Kotkaniemi said. “Just try to get better without hearing about it. That’s kind of nice.”

But he quickly corrected himself. Kotkaniemi did not want to give the impression that it was the environment in Montreal that soured him on playing for the Canadiens, because that is not the case. Even though what the Canadiens are currently experiencing is a perfect example of what can make playing in Montreal somewhat more difficult than playing in Raleigh, Kotkaniemi insists that was not a factor for him.

“I didn’t really mind that in Montreal,” he said. “I’m not that type of guy who really takes any kind of pressure or that kind of thing. I didn’t really mind that. Like I said, it’s really nice weather here, enjoying life, hang out with the boys. It’s been nice here. Really relaxing.

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“I feel in Montreal, you face that if you want to face that. That’s how it was for me. You will find that stuff if you want to find it, but you don’t actually have to face it in your normal life when you’re just walking on the streets and stuff. That’s how I felt, at least.”

Kotkaniemi’s transition to this moment to come at the Bell Centre probably was finalized on opening night. Not the Hurricanes’ opening night, but the Canadiens’ opening night.

Kotkaniemi was at Aho’s house, and he flipped on the Canadiens’ game in Toronto.

“I know how they’re doing, but I don’t watch the games,” he said. “I saw the first 10 minutes of the Leafs game, I think that’s about it pretty much. They looked pretty good.”

Kotkaniemi doesn’t know it, but he probably saw the best 10 minutes of the Canadiens’ season. Anyhow, the viewing ended right there.

“We were at Aho’s place, and we wanted to see the start of the Rangers game against the Capitals,” he said. “That was it.”

The channel was flipped because there was a Metropolitan Division matchup to watch. It was time for Kotkaniemi to move on. He hasn’t watched any of the Canadiens’ games since.

But the reason he still checks on scores and how the Canadiens are doing is he still has friends on the team, and he’s invested in how they do. When Suzuki signed his eight-year, $63 million contract, Kotkaniemi made sure to congratulate him right away.

Suzuki got back to him five days later.

“I texted him right after it came out, like five minutes after, and I had to wait five days,” Kotkaniemi said, laughing. “I’m still thinking about it like he probably got a couple of other texts after signing that deal. I’m not the only one who reached out.”

Though this was not necessarily a sign of it — Suzuki surely got hundreds of texts that day — but the Canadiens have also moved on from Kotkaniemi.

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The first-round pick they received as compensation for the Hurricanes signing Kotkaniemi was quickly flipped to the Arizona Coyotes as the centrepiece of the package that brought Christian Dvorak to Montreal. And in this season of utter misery for the Canadiens, Dvorak has been one of the shining lights, his line with Jonathan Drouin and Josh Anderson being the only forward line that can be considered to be working.

“He’s a complete hockey player,” Ducharme said after the home opener against the Rangers. “It was a nice play he made, but he’s not someone that brings you to the edge of your seat. It’s the little details he does all the time, he’s strong on the puck, he protects it, he rarely gives it up easily to the opposition.

“He’s playing the way we want to play.”

Kotkaniemi was not playing that way for the Canadiens, not the way they wanted him to play, at least. And now he has perhaps gone to a team where the way he plays fits with the way the Hurricanes play better than it did in Montreal. Seems like a win-win transaction, even if it wasn’t technically a trade. And if both sides come out of this better as a result, it will be easier for everyone involved to move on.

Even if Kotkaniemi has moved on, he was still a little apprehensive about how things would go at the Bell Centre.

“I don’t actually know (what to expect). If I remember right, they’re booing all the old players, right? That’s a thing, right?” Kotkaniemi said. “But when you play the game, you don’t really hear the fans because you’re in the game. So I’m counting on that.

“I can’t wait to see a full Bell Centre again. It’s been a while. I want to see that one more time. But it will be 21,000 people against you. I’m going to take it like even if they are booing me, somehow they’re still thinking about me. That’s my mindset for the night.”

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Even if those fans are booing, Kotkaniemi would like to send them one message. He won’t be able to deliver it personally, so this will have to do.

“I would just say thank you,” he said. “I think every night, they made me feel at home when I played there. They gave the energy every night to play there. I never had any problem with the fans, everything was just really good, and it was a really inspiring place to play every time we went on the ice at the Bell Centre. They just made it special every time.”

(Top photo: John Russell / NHLI via Getty Images)