This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Kasperi Kapanen
St. Louis Blues Right Wing
The 91st percentile of sprints, thirty shots inside twenty feet, and nine goals from them.
| 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 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 387 | 78 | 108 | 186 | +15 | 96 | 5 | 6 | 16 | 688 | 11.3 | 14:44 |
This Season So Far
The 2023-24 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
15 goals and 19 assists in 66 games — 34 points — at 13:41 a night between Pittsburgh and St. Louis. Minus-8, 116 shots at 12.9 per cent, three on the power play, one shorthanded, five game-winners, 18 penalty minutes.
Five game-winners from a thirteen-minute winger is as many as Jordan Kyrou managed in five more minutes a night.
44.2 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five across 756 minutes, the 12th percentile, with his ice at 31-37 against an expectation of 28.38-35.83.
He started 42.3 per cent of his shifts in the attacking zone, the 19th percentile.
The Finesse Game
116 shots at a median of 27 feet.
Inside twenty feet: 30 shots on goal and nine goals — 30.00 per cent, against a league forward rate of 17.71. From twenty to forty: 43 shots and four goals, 9.30 against a league rate of 11.05. Beyond forty: 28 shots and two goals, 7.14, above the league rate of 4.16.
Thirty per cent from close range on thirty shots is about four goals above the rate and it is not a finding on that volume. The career figure is 11.3 per cent across 387 games, and last season’s 12.9 is a modest step above it.
144 tracked attempts, 99 of them wrist shots — 68.8 per cent, one of the highest shares in the league — and six slap. He shoots off the rush and almost never from a set position.
94.0 mph at the 71st percentile, which is a hard shot he takes at speed and rarely from close in.
The Physical Game
6-1 and 194 pounds, and the skating is the file: 2.3 bursts above twenty miles an hour a game at the 91st percentile and a top speed of 23.1 mph at the 87th, on 2.24 miles a game at the 27th.
That is a genuinely fast winger playing short shifts, and it is why a 12th-percentile chance share is frustrating rather than expected: the tools are there.
18 penalty minutes in 66 games and 96 in 387 career games. He is not physical, does not finish checks, and at 194 pounds does not win the wall.
The speed is used to leave rather than to arrive. He beats defencemen wide on the entry and is not the man who retrieves the puck when the entry fails, which is most of the explanation for the underlying numbers.
The Intangibles
Twenty-second overall in 2014, eight seasons, 387 games, 186 points across Toronto, Pittsburgh and St. Louis.
78 goals and a career 11.3 per cent. The 20-goal, 44-point season in Toronto in 2018-19 is the peak and he has not come near it in four years.
He is twenty-seven, on a third club, claimed off waivers in the middle of the season the numbers above describe.
What this file says is what it has said for five years: a genuinely fast winger with a real shot whose on-ice record has been below average nearly everywhere, and nobody has worked out how to fix the second half without giving up the first.
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.
“The speed is used to leave rather than to arrive.”
“He is not physical, does not finish checks, and at 194 pounds does not win the wall.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 756 minutes
- Expected goals
- 44.2%
- 16th pct
- Shot attempts
- 46.8%
- 28th 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: 31 for, 37 against. Expected: 28.4 and 35.8.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe report ranks him 42 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 638 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, 2022-23 · 66 games
- Top speed
- 23.1 mph
- 90th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 2.35 a game
- Distance
- 2.24 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 94.0 mph
- 87th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.0
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 84.9
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
2022-23 with PIT · 454 minutes at five-on-five
- Jeff Carter67%
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, 2022-23
- The club
- STL took 45.8% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 44.2% — 1.6 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- 756 minutes at five-on-five — 35th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jeff Carter | 43.4% | 44.7% | 50.9% |
| Brock McGinn | 39.4% | 45.9% | 46.3% |
| Pavel Buchnevich | 50.9% | 42.1% | 48.3% |
43.4% together, 44.7% for him apart and 50.9% for Carter apart. Carter was better away from him while his own share held, which is a mark against him more than for him.
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
127 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 15 of them goals. His median goal came from 17 feet. 28% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 28% from beyond forty.