Armchair Hockey Scout Beta

This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

84

Kaapo Kakko

Seattle Kraken Right Wing

44 points in 79 games across two clubs, in the first season anybody has used him properly.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2019-20NYR66101323-26142031099.214:17
2020-21NYR489817+3102008111.114:21
2021-22NYR4371118+9101026211.315:27
2022-23NYR82182240+12800212514.415:18
2023-24NYR6113619+6241029114.313:17
2024-25NYR/SEA79143044-23840211712.015:37
2025-26 so far
Career3797190161+21041001158512.114:46

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

14 goals and 30 assists in 79 games across New York and Seattle — 44 points at 15:37 a night, with 4 power-play goals and 38 penalty minutes. It is a career high by fourteen points.

47.2 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 25th percentile. His ice went 37-43 against an expectation of 40.24-45.06 — three goals of scoring missing and two fewer conceded.

The Finesse Game

117 attempts at a median of 27 feet with 39 per cent from inside 20, converting at 12.0 per cent.

30 assists is the number that changed. He protects the puck below the goal line better than almost anybody on this roster and he waits — the pass arrives a beat after a defenceman has committed, and it is the reason Seattle traded for him.

The Physical Game

6-1 and 215 and genuinely strong on a puck. He wins the wall, he is difficult to separate from possession, and he forechecks properly.

38 penalty minutes in 79 games. He is not an agitator and the physicality is used to hold the puck rather than to hurt anybody.

The Intangibles

Second overall in 2019 and six seasons of being told he was a disappointment for not being the man taken first — 379 games and 161 points.

He was traded to Seattle in December for Will Borgen and a pair of picks, put on a line with a centre who needed a puck-protector, and scored at a career-best rate for the rest of the season. He is 24.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 1,046 minutes

Expected goals
47.2%
25th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
49.6%
48th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 37 for, 43 against. Expected: 40.2 and 45.1.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight
Report
66th
Numbers
25th

The report ranks him 41 points above where the numbers do. 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 — 75 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.

Usual linemates

2024-25 · 679 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, 2024-25

The club
SEA took 47.2% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 47.2% — level with the club he did it on.
The role
First line, 1,046 minutes at five-on-five — 67th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Matty Beniers47.7%46.5%49.3%
Jaden Schwartz49.4%45.2%46.1%
Brandon Montour50.0%46.2%47.9%

47.7% together, 46.5% for him apart and 49.3% for Beniers apart. Splitting them up moved neither man. Whatever is driving the share, it is not this pairing.

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

170 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 14 of them goals. His median goal came from 14 feet. 39% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 15% from beyond forty.