Artturi Lehkonen arrived to Montreal with substantial hype this season as an accomplished international hockey player, but he is certainly not the first from his region to ply his trade across the Atlantic in the National Hockey League. Players such as Jyrki Lumme, Petr Svoboda, and Niklas Sundstrom all played for the Habs with varying degrees of success after coming over to play in North America.
However, there are two who have left a significant imprint on the Canadiens in their respective eras: Mats Naslund from Sweden, and Saku Koivu from Finland.
Drafted in the second round of the 1979 NHL Draft, Naslund became the first European-trained player to play with the Montreal Canadiens when he arrived in North America in 1982, at the age of 21.