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Ontario Reign Player Review: Otto Salin

Originally posted on Hockey Royalty  |  By Kyle Garcia  |  Last updated Jun 7, 2026 12:55 PM ET
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With the Ontario Reign season over, we will begin our player reviews for the 2025-26 season. Up first: Otto Salin!

*Note: These player reviews will be for players who played at least five games with the Reign and finished the season with the team*

Season stats

Games: 43

Goals: 3

Assists: 2

Points: 5

+/-: -3

Penalty minutes: 22

Season review

A trying season would be the appropriate way to sum up Otto Salin’s. The fifth-round pick from 2022 had a solid season in his final season in Liiga (Finland) with 28 points in 56 games, his highest total during his time in Finland’s top league.

With one year to sign him before his signing rights expired, the Kings signed him to a three-year entry-level contract and a PTO attached to it, allowing him to finish the season in Ontario with the Reign. Salin recorded one assist in three regular-season games and played in one playoff game.

Now to his 2025-26 season.

The 22-year-old rotated in and out of the lineup, serving as the third right-handed defenseman playing 5v5 minutes. It was a huge learning experience for him. In Finland, the ice rink is wider, the game is different, there is more finesse than physicality, and having to live in a new country.

“The ice is smaller and it’s more physical here. The lifestyle here also is not too bad,” he said in an exclusive one-on-one interview with me. “It usually takes one to two hours in the grocery store. But it’s fine.”

When in the lineup, Salin wasn’t shy at all in jumping into the rush, pinching or playing down low in the offensive zone, or carrying the puck up the ice in transition. On the defensive side, it was a work in progress. Being a smaller defenseman, Salin will have to work his way up the rankings to make it to the NHL.

In the end, Salin played in 43 games and recorded five points. From the end of March all the way up until the end of the Reign’s playoff run, the young defenseman played in two games and was a healthy scratch. He is one of two right-handed defensemen drafted by the Kings under contract.

This article first appeared on Hockey Royalty and was syndicated with permission.

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