Fimis making the most of his chance with the Blue Jackets

As Pano Fimis was piling up points last season – 25 goals and 51 assists in 68 games with Erie of the OHL – it was clear he could play at a high level.

For a once ballyhooed but eventually undrafted prospect, all the 20-year-old believed he needed was a chance to show what he could do for NHL teams.

He finally got that chance this weekend when the Blue Jackets reached out to add him to their prospects tournament roster – but with a few strings attached.

“I wasn’t guaranteed anything,” Fimis said. “I think I was told I was going to play one game in the prospects tournament; I ended up playing three. I wasn’t guaranteed main camp by any means. Just taking it day by day and taking advantage of the opportunity.”

A short week later, Fimis is in Blue Jackets camp, largely on the strength of three goals in three games this past weekend at that Prospects Challenge in Buffalo. Given the opportunity, the 5-11, 183-pound center showed up at the right time, and now he’s getting a look at the highest level.

He almost certainly won’t be one of the 23 players left when the Blue Jackets cut down from 55 at the start of camp – he'll return to Erie, where he should put up even better numbers on one of the top teams in junior hockey – but his time in Columbus is another opportunity to make a name for himself.

“I want to be able to prove myself and make a statement,” he said after the opening skate of training camp Thursday. “I think it’s been a bit of a rough go just through junior and the whole COVID situation, but there’s honestly no excuses. Your time frame for opportunity is pretty small. I want to be able to make a statement, make sure that I make a name for myself.”

Indeed, there was a time where it felt like Fimis was on track to great things. The No. 2 overall draft pick in the 2020 OHL draft by Niagara, he arrived in Canadian junior hockey with a reputation for tenacious two-way play as well as the ability to put the puck in the net. Fimis was even good enough to earn a spot on Canada’s team for the Under-18 World Championships back in 2022.

But as he referenced, his junior career has seemingly hit snag after snag. Fimis lost his entire first year with Niagara to the pandemic, then even as he put up solid numbers – 44 points in 2021-22, 49 more in a 2022-23 season split between Niagara and Erie – he never quite had a breakout while playing on teams riddled with coaching changes and instability.

Last year in Erie, then, was the springboard he was looking for, and he’s continued it into the early moments of this season. He tallied the opening goal of the Blue Jackets’ second game in Buffalo against Boston, then followed that up with a two-goal performance in the finale vs. Ottawa. The highlight was a shorthanded breakaway goal in the third period vs. the Sens that stood as the winner, as he made a nifty move to stop at the net and roof a shot over goalie David Egorov.

By the time he tapped home an excellent tic-tac-toe finish off a feed from Luca Del Bel Belluz to complete the Prospects Challenge, Fimis had earned his ticket to Columbus for training camp.

“A weekend like the prospects tournament, any chance that you get, you have to take advantage of it,” he said. “I thought I did a pretty good job of that. I didn’t really set any goals going into it. My expectations are always high for myself, though, going into any opportunity that I get. My goal per se was just to be myself, play my game and do what I do that’s gotten me to this point.”

His name might be unique – his full first name is Panayioti, and he’s of Greek heritage – but in many ways his story is typical of any young Canadian. A native of Richmond Hill in the northern suburbs of Toronto, he fell in love with the game as a kid along with his younger brother Andoni, a defenseman currently in the BCHL who is committed to play college hockey at Vermont.

“We go at it a lot,” Fimis said. “He’s the polar opposite of me – he's a big frame, 6-2, a little bit more lean, skinner guy, but he’s a defenseman. We’re polar opposites. He’s less chatty than I am, but we push each other. It’s great because now he’s figured out what he has to do, too, and we work out together, we go out on the ice together and do all that fun stuff. We definitely battle it out and push each other every day.”

Time will tell where his journey with the Blue Jackets will take him, but Fimis truly believes that with all that’s happened, his NHL dream is still alive. All he’s needed is the chance to show it.

“I don’t mention it often because I don’t really need to talk about it to a lot of people,” he said of his hopes of making it to the highest level. “I think it’s just something that I keep to myself, and it’s always in the back of my head.”