Ruben Rafkin (born 8 January 2002) is a Finnish professional

ice hockey Ice hockey (or simply hockey) is a team sport played on ice skates, usually on an ice skating rink with lines and markings specific to the sport. It belongs to a family of sports called hockey. In ice hockey, two opposing teams use ice hock ...

defenceman Defence or defense (in American English) in ice hockey is a player position that is primarily responsible for preventing the opposing team from Goal (ice hockey), scoring. They are often referred to as defencemen, D, D-men or blueliners (the la ...

for

HC TPS TPS or Turun Palloseura is an ice hockey team and 10-time champion of SM-liiga and 1-time champion of SM-sarja. They play in Turku, Finland, at Gatorade Center. In terms of championships, TPS is the second all-time most successful team in SM-L ...

of the Finnish

Liiga The SM-liiga (marketed as just Liiga from 2013 on), (Finnish for ''League'') colloquially called the Finnish Elite League in English or FM-ligan in Swedish, is the top professional ice hockey league in Finland. It is one of the six founding leagu ...

Playing career

Rafkin was drafted 14th overall by the

Windsor Spitfires The Windsor Spitfires are a Canadian junior ice hockey team in the Ontario Hockey League (OHL). The team is based in Windsor, Ontario, Canada. Founded in 1971, the franchise was promoted to the Ontario Major Junior Hockey League for the 1975� ...

in the 2019 CHL Import Draft. He recorded four goals and 27 assists in 59 games for the Spitfires. On April 3, 2020, Rafkin signed a two-year contract with

of the Finnish

. He made his professional debut for TPS during the 2020–21 season.

International play

Rafkin represented

Finland Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of B ...

at the

2021 World Junior Ice Hockey Championships The 2021 World Junior Ice Hockey Championships (''2021 WJHC'') were the 45th edition of the Ice Hockey World Junior Championship. It began on December 25, 2020, and ended with the gold medal game on January 5, 2021. This marked the 16th time that ...

where he appeared in one game and won a bronze medal. He will again represent Finland at the

2022 World Junior Ice Hockey Championships The 2022 World Junior Ice Hockey Championships were the 46th edition of the IIHF World Junior Championship, played from August 9–20, 2022 at Rogers Place in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. The tournament was originally scheduled to be held from Dece ...

Career statistics

Regular season and playoffs

International

References

External links

* 2002 births Living people Finnish ice hockey defencemen HC TPS players Ice hockey people from Turku Finnish people of Russian-Jewish descent Tri-City Storm players Windsor Spitfires players Finnish expatriate ice hockey players in Canada Finnish expatriate ice hockey players in the United States {{Finland-icehockey-defenceman-stub