This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Kaapo Kakko
New York Rangers Right Wing
Second overall in 2019, and 117 points in 300 games across five seasons.
| 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 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 300 | 57 | 60 | 117 | +4 | 66 | 6 | 0 | 9 | 468 | 12.2 | 14:32 |
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
61 games, 13 goals and 6 assists for 19 points, 1 on the power play, 24 penalty minutes, 13:17 a night and plus-6. He took 48.8 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 744 minutes, the 44th percentile, and his ice went 24-21 against an expectation of 26.67-27.97.
Three goals of scoring that did not arrive and seven fewer conceded than the chances called for. Nineteen points in sixty-one games at thirteen minutes a night is a third-line season from a second overall pick in his fifth year.
The Finesse Game
128 attempts at a median of 26 feet with 38 per cent from inside 20, 91 on goal, converted at 14.3 per cent against a career 12.18.
60 career assists in 300 games. Thirteen goals on ninety-one shots is above his own rate and the volume is the problem: a hundred and twenty-eight attempts in sixty-one games is a fourth-liner’s share. He protects the puck well and does very little with it afterwards.
The Physical Game
He is 6-1 and 215 and holds the puck on the wall against anybody.
66 career penalty minutes in 300 games is a very low rate. He forechecks by position rather than by force and does not take liberties or retaliate.
The Intangibles
Second overall in 2019 out of Turku, five seasons, and 117 points in 300 games, all of it for one organisation.
He is 23 and has never had more than forty points. Second overall picks who cannot hold a top-six job at 23 on a club that needs scoring are running out of seasons in which the question stays open.
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.
- 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.
“He is 6-1 and 215 and holds the puck on the wall against anybody.”
“He is 6-1 and 215 and holds the puck on the wall against anybody.”
“He forechecks by position rather than by force and does not take liberties or retaliate.”
“He forechecks by position rather than by force and does not take liberties or retaliate.”
“He forechecks by position rather than by force and does not take liberties or retaliate.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 744 minutes
- Expected goals
- 48.8%
- 45th pct
- Shot attempts
- 50.1%
- 56th 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: 24 for, 21 against. Expected: 26.7 and 28.0.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 6 points of one another. 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.
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 · 61 games
- Top speed
- 21.7 mph
- 25th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.30 a game
- Distance
- 2.02 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 87.4 mph
- 54th 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 · 744 minutes at five-on-five
- Will Cuylle43%
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
- NYR took 50.1% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 48.8% — 1.3 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- Third line, 744 minutes at five-on-five — 34th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Will Cuylle | 46.9% | 50.4% | 49.1% |
| K'Andre Miller | 46.0% | 50.6% | 48.9% |
| Braden Schneider | 42.1% | 52.2% | 50.8% |
46.9% together, 50.4% for him apart and 49.1% for Cuylle apart. He was better away from Cuylle, who was no worse away from him — the pairing cost him more than it cost Cuylle.
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
128 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 13 of them goals. His median goal came from 11 feet. 38% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 20% from beyond forty.