Ryan Murray sat in the Blue Jackets players’ lounge in December and chatted with rookie Markus Nutivaara, a defenseman who had served as his partner for three months but remained somewhat of a mystery to him.

The world junior championships were on television. Many of Murray’s teammates had played in the tournament and he wondered whether Nutivaara had represented Finland. The 22-year-old with a shock of blond hair and cherubic face smiled.

“I told him, ‘Hell no, not even close,’ ” he recalled. “Two years ago, nobody knew about me even in Finland.”

Nutivaara grew up 107 miles south of the Arctic Circle in Oulu. But in terms of hockey pedigree, he hails from out of nowhere.

The defenseman, who might partner with All-Star Seth Jones in the playoffs due to injures, thought of quitting the sport as a teenager. A youngster who may draw postseason shifts against Pittsburgh’s Sidney Crosby was playing in what he called a low-level junior “beer league” in 2012.

Nutivaara was the 189th player selected in the 2015 NHL draft after having been passed over in his first two years of eligibility. His unlikely tale is one of perseverance and learning on the fly.

“He takes nothing for granted because he knows how hard it is to get here,” said Murray, sidelined with a broken hand. “He has told me his story of how he got here, and it was years and years of buckling down.”

Nutivaara made the Jackets out of training camp on the strength of his mobility and the gift of delivering a crisp first pass out of the zone, one that gets a team quickly from defense to offense. But it’s another rapid transition, one from obscure Finnish junior to NHL rookie that at times overwhelms him.

“I don’t think about it too much because it stresses me out,” Nutivaara said, “I just focus on the day to day.”

For the longest time, he loved a game that didn’t seem to love him back. Nutivaara played hockey as child growing up in Finland’s fifth-largest city, but he was not considered a serious prospect. He toiled in a third-division junior league for his hometown team at 16.

“It was almost like beer league,” Nutivaara said. “I was playing hockey for fun at that time.”

The following year, he thought of quitting. If hockey hadn’t panned out, Nutivaara was toying with the idea of a career in sales. Would he have been a good salesman?

“Oh, no, terrible,” Nutivaara said.

His father is an autoworker. His mother works for Nokia, one of Oulu’s largest employers. His younger sister rides ponies in competition. Nutivaara’s family is supportive and they just want him to be happy. Hockey was never a priority with them.

Nutivaara stuck with the sport, but to bolster his career he needed to move six hours south to Lahti.

“He had to leave his town because he couldn’t make his (junior) team,” Blue Jackets coach John Tortorella said. “For coaches, and for all of us, but especially coaches, you can never say, ‘No.’ You cannot give up on people. You never know when the maturity is going to come and click in mentally.”

Nutivaara finds himself in a situation similar to the one that afforded him his biggest break in hockey — a depth defenseman thrust into the spotlight.

Playing in Finland’s top pro division, Nutivaara became an unexpected playoff hero in 2015 while replacing injured star blue liner Lasse Kukkonen. He helped lead Oulu Karpat to the league title.

“They lost their top defender, and Nutivaara came in and there were guys on my team who were like, ‘Who the (expletive) is this guy?’ ’’ Blue Jackets prospect Markus Hannikainen said. “You could really see how much he had improved.”

The playoff performance earned Nutivaara a trip to Chicago Blackhawks’ development camp. Just as a 20-year-old Nutivaara prepared to depart, the Blue Jackets drafted him in the seventh round.

Jackets general manager Jarmo Kekalainen had worked for the Ottawa Senators, an organization that didn’t mind spending draft picks on overage players. Nutivaara was encouraged but knew he needed to tweak his game to make himself a legitimate NHL prospect.

“I became more brave with the puck during my last season (in Finland),” he said. “I made some mistakes and I got yelled at a lot, but I learned when it was good to do those things with the puck and when it was not.”

As Nutivaara altered his game, the Blue Jackets were shifting their approach. The club traded for Jones last season and expected 19-year-old Zach Werenski to make the team in the fall. The franchise was placing a high emphasis on mobile, puck-moving defensemen.

“I saw him play in August of 2015 and I talked to him after a game and I said, ‘You’re not that far from being over here,’ ” Kekalainen said. “(Nutivaara) looked at me and I could tell he was thinking ‘Really?’ ”

Nutivaara’s rookie season has been predictably uneven. He has played well at times but has struggled with one-on-one coverage, a byproduct of never having played on smaller North American ice surfaces, where defensive reads must be made quickly.

His “welcome to the NHL moment” occurred in his regular-season debut as Boston’s Brad Marchand beat him for a goal. Nutivaara has registered two goals and five assists, playing at a plus-7 rating, in 64 games. There’s no question the 6-foot-1, 186-pound defenseman must get stronger in the offseason.

“He needs to understand the battles within the game and how much you have to do it and how important they are,” Tortorella said. “The caveat is how quickly he can get you out of the end zone, and that’s why I like him in the lineup because he can make plays.”

Nutivaara had been in and out of the lineup recently, but unless Werenski (shoulder) and Murray return from injury, the rookie will feature in the playoffs. He even is working the point on the second-unit power play.

Four months ago, Nutivaara told teammates that he wasn’t good enough to play for his world junior team. Now, he readies himself to step onto hockey’s biggest stage.

Life comes at you fast, sometimes at speeds quicker than Marchand. But it sure beats a job in sales in Finland.

treed@dispatch.com

@treed1919