This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2024-25 report →
Jani Hakanpää
Dallas Stars Defense
Six-foot-seven, a 100.4 mph shot, and one goal on 59 shots from beyond forty feet.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019-20 | ANA | 5 | 1 | 0 | 1 | +1 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 25.0 | 18:07 |
| 2020-21 | ANA/CAR | 57 | 2 | 2 | 4 | +4 | 35 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 54 | 3.7 | 18:01 |
| 2021-22 | DAL | 80 | 4 | 8 | 12 | +1 | 43 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 68 | 5.9 | 16:13 |
| 2022-23 | DAL | 82 | 6 | 10 | 16 | +18 | 60 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 86 | 7.0 | 19:20 |
| 2023-24 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 224 | 13 | 20 | 33 | +24 | 140 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 212 | 6.1 | 17:52 |
This Season So Far
The 2023-24 season has not started. The empty row above is his, and both it and this paragraph fill in on their own from the morning after he first plays: what he has done, what it is worth against his own last season, and the run he is on when the two disagree.
Last Season
6 goals and 10 assists in all 82 games, plus-18, 60 penalty minutes, 19:20 a night — a career high in games, points and ice time at 31.
49.0 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,297 minutes, the 43rd percentile, with his ice at 51-53 against an expectation of 51.89-54.07. Both ends within a goal of the chances, which for a third-pair defenceman playing nineteen minutes is a good answer.
Four seasons, 224 games. He did not play an NHL game until he was 27.
The Finesse Game
86 shots at a median of 50 feet, 74 per cent from beyond forty and 6 per cent from inside twenty.
Beyond forty: 59 shots on goal, one goal, 1.69 per cent — half the league rate for a defenceman. Inside forty: 26 shots, five goals, 19.23 per cent.
Five of his six goals came from inside forty on a third of the volume, off a shot that measures 100.4 mph at the 98th percentile with twenty slap shots behind it.
That is the whole shotSpeedMax problem in one player: he registers one of the hardest shots in the league, he takes it from the blue line 59 times, and it goes in once.
The Physical Game
6-7 and 225 — one of six skaters in this edition at that height, and only Tyler Myers is taller.
22.4 mph at the 55th percentile with 0.6 bursts a game at the 33rd and 2.69 miles a game at the 60th. For a man that size the speed is respectable and the mileage is ordinary.
60 penalty minutes in 82 games. He defends by taking up space, and at 6-7 with a stick he covers a passing lane the way nobody under 6-3 can. Against speed he is exposed, and the 43rd-percentile share is where that shows.
The Intangibles
104th overall in 2010 to St. Louis, and then nine years in Finland and the minor leagues before he played a single NHL game.
He arrived at 27, played 224 games in four years and has been a useful third-pair defenceman on a Conference Final club. For a fourth-round pick who was written off for the better part of a decade that is a genuinely unusual outcome.
He is 31 and the role is not going to grow. Nothing about it needs to.
What kind of player
The searchable half of the report. The first group is computed from the season's own data; the rest are read out of the prose above, and each one carries the sentence that produced it. A subject the report never raised is simply absent.
- measuredcomputed here from the season's own data
- a strengthread out of the prose, and claimed
Each computed tag also says how well its measure holds up from one season to the next, because a tag describes a season that has finished and a reader will assume it predicts the one coming. Some do and some do not, and the gap is wide: five-on-five workload repeats well, scoring late does not repeat at all.
- durable· was available
82 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
- hard-minutes· is started in his own end, against the other club's best
34% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 2nd percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 50% keep it
“at 6-7 with a stick he covers a passing lane the way nobody under 6-3 can”
“He defends by taking up space”
“60 penalty minutes in 82 games. He defends by taking up space”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 1,297 minutes
- Expected goals
- 49%
- 43rd pct
- Shot attempts
- 47.3%
- 32nd pct
share of the chances while he was out there
share of the attempts while he was out there
Goals while he was on the ice: 51 for, 53 against. Expected: 51.9 and 54.1.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe numbers rank him 26 points above where the report does. It was written for a back edition, with the seasons that followed already known. Neither the agreement nor the gap says anything about the eye, and this report is excluded from the club-level comparison for the same reason. Why the numbers land there sets out the club he did it on, the minutes he played and the men he played them with.
Both bars are percentiles among the 638 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 58 on their own scale — against every other report's mean. The numbers bar ranks his share of expected goals. A gap is a disagreement about where he belongs, not two scales talking past each other.
Tracked
NHL Edge, 2022-23 · 82 games
- Top speed
- 22.4 mph
- 81st pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.65 a game
- Distance
- 2.69 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 100.4 mph
- 96th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 21.5
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 90.0
A top speed is a season's best, and a man who takes more shifts gets more tries at one; the percentile is the feed's own, against every skater, and says less between a top-pair defenceman and a fourth-line wing than it does between two men in the same job. The counts are shown per game for the same reason.
Usual linemates
2022-23 · 1297 minutes at five-on-five
- Esa Lindell77%
- Ryan Suter11%
Share of his five-on-five ice time spent alongside each player, measured from shift charts. Special teams are excluded: a power-play unit is not a line.
Why the numbers land there
Five-on-five, 2022-23
- The club
- DAL took 52.0% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 49.0% — 3.0 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- Second pair, 1,297 minutes at five-on-five — 90th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Esa Lindell | 48.3% | 51.0% | 55.8% |
| Wyatt Johnston | 49.6% | 48.7% | 50.0% |
| Ty Dellandrea | 49.2% | 48.9% | 48.4% |
48.3% together, 51.0% for him apart and 55.8% for Lindell apart. Lindell was better away from him while his own share held, which is a mark against him more than for him.
Expected-goal share while both were on the ice, and for each man in the minutes he played without the other. Apart is the pair subtracted from his own totals. It does not settle who was carrying whom — apart from each other, both were still playing with somebody — but it does say whether the share travelled when the pairing broke up.
Where he shoots from
goal on goal missed
129 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 6 of them goals. His median goal came from 31 feet. 7% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 74% from beyond forty.