[3] In December, she won the silver medal at the 2016 Finnish Figure Skating Championships, only 0.15 points behind Anni Järvenpää.

[5] The following season, Saarinen won the senior Finnish national title for the first time and made the free skate at the 2022 European Championships, finishing seventeenth; she originally finished eighteenth overall,[6] but the retroactive disqualification of Kamila Valieva resulted in all other ladies singles skaters moving up a place.

This would normally have had her one ordinal outside qualification to the free skate, but due to the controversial Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) decision allowing Valieva to compete in the event despite suspicion of illegal doping the International Olympic Committee decreed that twenty-five skaters would advance.

[6] Illness delayed the start of Saarinen's 2022–23 season, while she also struggled with motivation and had it affect her everyday life.

She placed ninth at the event and explained afterward that she had "a long, great career with ups and downs.