Kasperi Kapanen

This Season So Far

The 2022-23 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

79 games, 11 goals and 21 assists at 14:32 a night, plus-2, sixteen penalty minutes, 129 shots. Twenty-second overall in 2014 by Pittsburgh, seven seasons, 321 games, 152 points.

The Finesse Game

Thirty-seven per cent of his attempts came from the slot, the 29th-lowest of the 393 forwards who played forty games, at a 30-foot median in the 88th percentile. He shoots from further out than almost anybody.

And his shot is 99.7 mph, the 7th-hardest of the 365 forwards the tracking measures. The two facts together describe a winger who arrives with speed and fires from range rather than driving the net.

6.74 shots per 60 is the 39th percentile at 8.5 per cent — the volume is low and the conversion is worse, and eleven goals in seventy-nine games is the arithmetic.

1.59 even-strength points per 60 is the 37th percentile. 2.09 takeaways per 60 is the 79th percentile among forwards, on 10.3 bursts over twenty miles an hour per 60 at the 89th.

53.7 per cent of the expected goals and 51.9 per cent of the attempts, out of 51.8 per cent offensive-zone starts, the 276th-highest of the 652 skaters who took two hundred end-zone starts — dead level, and one of only two Pittsburgh forwards who was neither buried nor sheltered.

The Physical Game

5.75 hits per 60 is the 68th percentile and 0.99 blocks the 16th at 6-1 and 194 pounds.

0.47 penalties drawn per 60 is the 16th percentile against 0.42 taken, sixteen penalty minutes in seventy-nine games. He is almost never involved in a penalty at either end, which for a man skating this fast is unusual.

The Intangibles

23.5 mph is the 17th-fastest of the 365 forwards the tracking covers. That, the 7th-hardest shot and the 89th-percentile sprint count are three elite physical measurements in one file.

9.92 miles per 60 is the 74th percentile. Nothing here is slow and nothing here is soft.

He is 26 with 321 games and 152 points, and he has never scored twenty. The speed, the shot and the takeaways are as good as anything on this roster. The slot share, the shooting percentage and the scoring rate are why he plays fourteen minutes behind two men in their late thirties.