Kasperi Kapanen

Blazing speed, a decent shot, and 11 years of people wondering why it has not added up to more.

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

2015-16	TOR	9	0	0	0	-3	2	0	0	0	14	0.0	14:47
2016-17	TOR	8	1	0	1	-2	0	0	0	0	11	9.1	10:42
2017-18	TOR	38	7	2	9	-1	4	0	1	1	55	12.7	11:15
2018-19	TOR	78	20	24	44	+12	27	1	2	3	174	11.5	16:37
2019-20	TOR	69	13	23	36	0	22	0	2	2	121	10.7	15:47
2020-21	PIT	40	11	19	30	+15	7	1	0	3	68	16.2	15:32
2021-22	PIT	79	11	21	32	+2	16	0	0	2	129	8.5	14:32
2022-23	PIT/STL	66	15	19	34	-8	18	3	1	5	116	12.9	13:41
2023-24	STL	73	6	16	22	-5	14	0	1	1	99	6.1	14:23
2024-25	STL/EDM	67	6	8	14	-22	16	0	0	2	66	9.1	11:55
2025-26	EDM	41	8	9	17	+5	14	0	0	0	65	12.3	14:35
2026-27 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	568	98	141	239	-7	140	5	7	19	918	10.7	14:21

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

8 goals and 17 points in 41 games, plus-5, on 14 and a half minutes a night. Prorated over a full season that is roughly a 35-point pace, which is about what he has been for most of the last 5 years.

The Finesse Game

The speed is legitimate and always has been — he can beat NHL defensemen wide from a standing start, which is a skill perhaps 30 players in the league possess. The shot off the rush is quick and he can score from distance.

The trouble has always been what happens after the entry. He carries the puck into the zone and the play too often dies there, because he is not a natural playmaker and does not consistently find the second option. He has never been an effective cycle player; his game is built on space, and playoff hockey is where space goes to disappear.

The Physical Game

6-1 and 194 and he does not play to it. He is not a forechecker in the physical sense, he avoids most of the traffic, and he can be moved off pucks by defensemen who are willing to engage.

The Intangibles

This is the part that has followed him from Toronto to Pittsburgh to St. Louis to here — the perception, fair or not, that the effort comes and goes. There have been stretches, including in Edmonton, where he has looked like a genuine top-9 winger, and stretches where he has been unplayable.

At 30 he is what he is: a fast, streaky, useful middle-6 winger who will win you some games with his legs and disappear for a week at a time.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2025-26 · 543 minutes

Expected goals: 49.2%; 48th pct
Shot attempts: 46%; 19th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 22 for, 18 against. Expected: 20.0 and 20.7.

The eye and the numbers

Sighted

Report

49th

Numbers

48th

The two rank him within 1 points of one another. It was written with these numbers on screen, so the agreement is not corroboration — the arithmetic is on both sides of it.

Both 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 — 72 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 · 41 games

Top speed: 23.9 mph; 98th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 1.90 a game
Distance: 2.35 miles a game
Hardest shot: 91.2 mph; 88th 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 — 1 goals, 1 assists, 14 shots

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

Usual linemates

2025-26 · 543 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: EDM took 51.6% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 49.2% — 2.4 below the club he did it on.
The role: 543 minutes at five-on-five — 21st percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Vasily Podkolzin	54.0%	42.5%	51.5%
Darnell Nurse	47.4%	50.6%	49.5%
Leon Draisaitl	56.4%	44.9%	54.2%

54.0% together, 42.5% for him apart and 51.5% for Podkolzin apart. He was worse away from Podkolzin, who was no better away from him — he needed that pairing more than Podkolzin did.

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

90 unblocked shots in 2025-26, 8 of them goals. His median goal came from 27 feet. 33% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 19% from beyond forty.