This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Jesperi Kotkaniemi
Carolina Hurricanes Center
Third overall in 2018, forty-eight goals for against thirty-two on his ice, and twelve of his own.
| 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 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 398 | 64 | 97 | 161 | -2 | 184 | 6 | 1 | 8 | 614 | 10.4 | 13:35 |
This Season So Far
The 2024-25 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
12 goals and 15 assists in 79 games — 27 points at 12:59 a night, minus-4, with 1 power-play goal on 128 shots at 9.38 per cent, and 36 penalty minutes.
56.9 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 930 minutes, the 94th percentile. His ice went 37-36 against an expectation of 47.06-35.63 — exactly the scoring the chances predicted and three fewer conceded, which on this club made him almost unique.
The Finesse Game
128 attempts at a median of 23 feet, with 43 per cent from inside 20 and 19 per cent from beyond 40, converting at 9.38 per cent. Sixty-four goals in 398 career games.
15 assists. He does not create at NHL level and he is not asked to — the job is to win a draw, protect the puck below the goal line and get it to a winger.
The Physical Game
6-3 and 212, and he forechecks with real force. He wins pucks on the wall, he protects the puck with the frame, and the physical half of his game is the half that has developed since he arrived.
36 penalty minutes in 79 games and 184 in 398 for his career is a moderate rate. He does not agitate and he does not go looking for the second penalty.
The Intangibles
Third overall in 2018 by Montreal — taken ahead of Brady Tkachuk and Quinn Hughes — signed to an offer sheet by this club in 2021, and 398 games and 161 points at 24.
A third-overall pick who becomes a very good third-line centre is a disappointment against the pick and a useful player against everything else, and on a club whose system produced the ninety-sixth percentile of chances from his ice, he is doing the job it needs.
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
- he lacks itraised, and he does not have it
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
79 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
“**6-3 and 212, and he forechecks with real force.** He wins pucks on the wall, he protects the puck with the frame, and the physical half of his game is the half that has developed since he arrived.”
“**6-3 and 212, and he forechecks with real force.** He wins pucks on the wall, he protects the puck with the frame, and the physical half of his game is the half that has developed since he arrived.”
“**He does not create at NHL level and he is not asked to** — the job is to win a draw, protect the puck below the goal line and get it to a winger.”
“**He does not create at NHL level and he is not asked to** — the job is to win a draw, protect the puck below the goal line and get it to a winger.”
“He does not agitate and he does not go looking for the second penalty.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 930 minutes
- Expected goals
- 56.9%
- 94th pct
- Shot attempts
- 59.2%
- 98th 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: 37 for, 36 against. Expected: 47.1 and 35.6.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe numbers rank him 55 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 652 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 67 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, 2023-24 · 79 games
- Top speed
- 22.0 mph
- 40th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.89 a game
- Distance
- 2.11 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 93.0 mph
- 85th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.1
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 84.5
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
2023-24 · 930 minutes at five-on-five
- Martin Necas36%
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, 2023-24
- The club
- CAR took 56.6% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 56.9% — 0.3 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- Fourth line, 930 minutes at five-on-five — 50th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Martin Necas | 55.9% | 57.6% | 52.2% |
| Dmitry Orlov | 57.4% | 56.6% | 57.7% |
| Jaccob Slavin | 57.9% | 56.5% | 57.8% |
55.9% together, 57.6% for him apart and 52.2% for Necas apart. Necas was worse away from him while his own share held — the pairing was doing more for Necas 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
184 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 12 of them goals. His median goal came from 18 feet. 44% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 19% from beyond forty.