Jesperi Kotkaniemi
Carolina Hurricanes Center #82
The 3rd overall pick in 2018, and the only Hurricane whose numbers were below average.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018-19 | MTL | 79 | 11 | 23 | 34 | +1 | 26 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 134 | 8.2 | 13:44 |
| 2019-20 | MTL | 36 | 6 | 2 | 8 | -11 | 23 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 55 | 10.9 | 13:00 |
| 2020-21 | MTL | 56 | 5 | 15 | 20 | -1 | 12 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 87 | 5.8 | 14:48 |
| 2021-22 | CAR | 66 | 12 | 17 | 29 | +3 | 37 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 81 | 14.8 | 12:01 |
| 2022-23 | CAR | 82 | 18 | 25 | 43 | +10 | 50 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 129 | 14.0 | 14:44 |
| 2023-24 | CAR | 79 | 12 | 15 | 27 | -4 | 36 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 128 | 9.4 | 12:59 |
| 2024-25 | CAR | 78 | 12 | 21 | 33 | +9 | 50 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 115 | 10.4 | 14:04 |
| 2025-26 | CAR | 42 | 2 | 7 | 9 | +3 | 8 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 42 | 4.8 | 11:21 |
| 2026-27 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 518 | 78 | 125 | 203 | +10 | 242 | 6 | 1 | 9 | 771 | 10.1 | 13:29 |
This Season So Far
The 2026-27 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
2 goals and 7 assists in 42 games — 9 points, plus-3, at 11:21 a night. 203 points in 518 career games.
The Finesse Game
Very little of it survived. 55 unblocked attempts, 2 goals, and the location was actually fine — 45 per cent from inside 20 feet, median 24. He is getting to reasonable ice and doing nothing when he arrives.
78 goals in 518 games from a player taken 3rd overall is the flat summary of a career that has not happened.
The Physical Game
6-3, 212, and the physical tools are the reason clubs keep waiting. He can protect a puck and he wins faceoffs. 8 penalty minutes in 42 games says he is not using any of it aggressively.
The Intangibles
Here is the number that matters, and it is stark on this roster. Every Carolina skater in this section posted an expected-goal share between 52 and 59 per cent. Kotkaniemi posted 47.7 per cent — 33rd percentile.
On the best possession team in the league, playing 11 minutes a night in sheltered minutes, he was the only man on the ice when the ice tilted the wrong way. His shot-attempt share of 54.9 per cent is 91st percentile, which tells you the system carried him and the chances still went against.
He is 26 and the third pick in a draft, and this is the most damning page in the Carolina section precisely because everyone around him makes the comparison so easy.
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
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.
- sheltered· is started in the attacking end
62% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 90th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 47% keep it
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2025-26 · 463 minutes
- Expected goals
- 47.7%
- 34th pct
- Shot attempts
- 54.9%
- 90th 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: 20 for, 16 against. Expected: 16.1 and 17.6.
The eye and the numbers
SightedThe numbers rank him 30 points above where the report does. It was written with these numbers on screen and departs from them anyway, which makes the gap a judgment rather than an oversight. Why the numbers land there sets out the club he did it on, the minutes he played and the men he played them with.
The same player was graded a second time from his biography and his box score alone, with the measured record withheld. That reading lands 19 points from the numbers; this one lands 30. Across the whole control the two distances come out the same, which is worth knowing in both directions: the arithmetic on both sides of the sighted reading did not buy it any accuracy, and it did not cost it any either.
All three bars are percentiles among the 656 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 61 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, 2025-26 · 42 games
- Top speed
- 21.6 mph
- 24th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.57 a game
- Distance
- 1.85 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 82.0 mph
- 31st pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.2
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 83.6
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.
Recent form
Last 20 appearances, 2025-26, oldest first
3
points in his last 10 games — 0 goals, 3 assists, 11 shots
Each bar is one game by points. Filled bars are games he scored in.
Usual linemates
2025-26 · 463 minutes at five-on-five
- Taylor Hall21%
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, 2025-26
- The club
- CAR took 55.7% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 47.7% — 8.0 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- 463 minutes at five-on-five — 15th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Eric Robinson | 42.3% | 52.1% | 59.1% |
| Alexander Nikishin | 37.0% | 56.9% | 57.4% |
| Mark Jankowski | 52.4% | 44.7% | 60.3% |
42.3% together, 52.1% for him apart and 59.1% for Robinson apart. Both were better apart than together — the pairing was doing neither of them any favours.
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
55 unblocked shots in 2025-26, 2 of them goals. His median goal came from 37 feet. 47% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 25% from beyond forty.