Kaapo Kakko

The second pick in 2019, plus 14, and the 12th percentile.

Season	Team	GP	G	A	PTS	+/-	PIM	PP	SH	GW	S	S%	TOI

2019-20	NYR	66	10	13	23	-26	14	2	0	3	109	9.2	14:17
2020-21	NYR	48	9	8	17	+3	10	2	0	0	81	11.1	14:21
2021-22	NYR	43	7	11	18	+9	10	1	0	2	62	11.3	15:27
2022-23	NYR	82	18	22	40	+12	8	0	0	2	125	14.4	15:18
2023-24	NYR	61	13	6	19	+6	24	1	0	2	91	14.3	13:17
2024-25	NYR/SEA	79	14	30	44	-2	38	4	0	2	117	12.0	15:37
2025-26	SEA	65	13	27	40	+14	14	2	0	2	78	16.7	14:15
2026-27 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	444	84	117	201	+16	118	12	0	13	663	12.7	14:41

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

13 goals and 27 assists in 65 games — 40 points, plus-14, at 14:15 a night with 14 penalty minutes.

The Finesse Game

Better hands than the career has advertised. 122 unblocked attempts, 13 goals, median 23 feet with 45 per cent from inside 20 — good ice and a good conversion off low volume.

27 assists in 14 minutes a night is the best rate on the club and the most encouraging thing on this page. 201 points in 444 career games.

The Physical Game

6-1, 215 pounds, and heavier than he plays. 14 penalty minutes.

He protects the puck well below the goal line and can win a wall exchange when he chooses to, and the recurring criticism across 7 seasons has been that he does not choose to often enough.

The Intangibles

46.1 per cent of the expected goals, 22nd percentile, and 46.8 per cent of the shot attempts, 24th, across 831 minutes, with the goals 42-25 in his favour.

The plus-14 comes from special teams and from a goaltending group that beat its chances by 16 and a half goals; the 5-on-5 ice was under water.

10 points in his last 10. He is 25, the second pick in a draft where the first was Jack Hughes, and the word bust has followed him since he was 20. 40 points in 65 games at 14 minutes is not that. It is a good third-line winger who has never once been used like one.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2025-26 · 831 minutes

Expected goals: 46.1%; 22nd pct
Shot attempts: 46.8%; 25th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 42 for, 25 against. Expected: 31.3 and 36.6.

The eye and the numbers

Sighted

Report

55th

Numbers

22nd

Blind

38th

The report ranks him 33 points above where the numbers do. 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 16 points from the numbers; this one lands 33. 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 — 73 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 · 65 games

Top speed: 21.6 mph; 23rd pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 0.31 a game
Distance: 2.18 miles a game
Hardest shot: 87.3 mph; 65th 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.

Recent form

Last 20 appearances, 2025-26, oldest first

points in his last 10 games — 2 goals, 8 assists, 8 shots

Each bar is one game by points. Filled bars are games he scored in.

Usual linemates

2025-26 · 831 minutes at five-on-five

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: SEA took 46.0% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 46.1% — 0.1 above the club he did it on.
The role: Third line, 831 minutes at five-on-five — 40th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Shane Wright	52.6%	42.0%	48.6%
Adam Larsson	42.8%	48.5%	45.2%
Vince Dunn	42.9%	48.2%	45.6%

52.6% together, 42.0% for him apart and 48.6% for Wright apart. Both were worse apart, so whatever the two of them had together was doing real work.

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

122 unblocked shots in 2025-26, 13 of them goals. His median goal came from 14 feet. 46% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 19% from beyond forty.