Jonathan Lekkerimäki

Twenty-four games at 20, from the best pure shooter in the organisation's system.

Season	Team	GP	G	A	PTS	+/-	PIM	PP	SH	GW	S	S%	TOI
2024-25	VAN	24	3	3	6	-6	2	0	0	0	30	10.0	12:30
2025-26 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	24	3	3	6	-6	2	0	0	0	30	10.0	12:30

This Season So Far

The 2025-26 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

3 goals and 3 assists in 24 games — 6 points at 12:30 a night, minus-6, on 2 penalty minutes and 30 shots.

50.8 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 51st percentile, across 251 minutes. His ice went 8-12 against an expectation of 10.04-9.72, which on that sample is a goaltending number and nothing else.

The Finesse Game

The release is the reason he was a first-round pick and it is genuinely NHL-quality already. It is quick, it is disguised, and it does not need a passing lane to be dangerous.

30 attempts in 24 games at a median of 33 feet with 24 per cent from inside 20. He shot from too far out and too rarely, which at 20 on a club that could not generate chances is not a surprise.

The Physical Game

5-11 and 172 pounds and among the lightest forwards in this chapter. He does not win pucks on the wall, he does not forecheck with force, and he is moved off the puck by grown men.

2 penalty minutes in 24 games. The willingness is not the question and the weight is, and that is a two-year problem rather than a permanent one.

The Intangibles

Fifteenth overall in 2022 and 24 NHL games in, after a full American League season in which he was among the better rookie scorers.

He is 21. On a club that is 30th in the league at creating chances and has nobody under 24 in its top six, he is the most important thing in the organisation after the captain.

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.

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.

wins-the-wallhe lacks it· the corners and below the goal line
“He does not win pucks on the wall, he does not forecheck with force, and he is moved off the puck by grown men.”
forechecks-aggressivelyhe lacks it· first man in, and on the puck
“He does not win pucks on the wall, he does not forecheck with force, and he is moved off the puck by grown men.”
hard-to-movehe lacks it· cannot be shifted from where he decides to stand
“He does not win pucks on the wall, he does not forecheck with force, and he is moved off the puck by grown men.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 251 minutes

Expected goals: 50.8%; 61st pct
Shot attempts: 52.1%; 74th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 8 for, 12 against. Expected: 10.0 and 9.7.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

30th

Numbers

61st

The numbers rank him 31 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 637 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 69 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, 2024-25 · 24 games

Top speed: 20.8 mph; 6th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 0.63 a game
Distance: 2.02 miles a game
Hardest shot: 93.4 mph; 93rd pct

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

2024-25 · 251 minutes at five-on-five

J.T. Millernow NYR29%
Nils Aman22%
Pius Suternow STL21%

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, 2024-25

The club: VAN took 49.1% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 50.8% — 1.7 above the club he did it on.
The role: Fourth line, 251 minutes at five-on-five — 4th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Quinn Hughes	45.4%	55.6%	55.2%
Tyler Myers	53.7%	49.2%	49.9%
J.T. Miller	49.4%	51.5%	50.2%

45.4% together, 55.6% for him apart and 55.2% for Hughes 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

46 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 4 of them goals. His median goal came from 33 feet. 24% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 28% from beyond forty.