Kirill Kaprizov

Last Season

Forty-five goals and 89 points in 78 games, nineteen of the goals on the power play, on 269 shots and twenty-two minutes a night. That is a career year, and it came on a team whose second-best forward is a twenty-four-year-old and whose next-best was traded.

The Finesse Game

The shot is the headline and it is a genuinely rare one — heavy, quick, and released from positions where a goaltender has not finished setting. He scores from the top of the circle on his off wing as often as he scores from in tight, which for a winger listed at five-ten is unusual and is what makes him impossible to play a single way.

The hands in traffic are the other half. He protects the puck low in the zone with a wide base and a strong lower body, and he wins pucks back below the goal line against defencemen with six inches on him. That is where a lot of the offence starts: not off the rush, but off him simply refusing to give the puck up.

He is a better passer than the goal totals suggest, and he spent 54 percent of his five-on-five ice time with Zuccarello, who has gone to Los Angeles. That is the single largest question about this team’s season.

The Physical Game

Five-ten and 202, and built like a fire hydrant. He absorbs contact well and is very hard to knock off a puck, though he is not a forechecker who finishes checks for their own sake. Twenty-eight penalty minutes across a full season is a player who is engaged without being reckless.

The Intangibles

He arrived late from the KHL with a reputation already made, and everything about his adjustment to this league was immediate. He is the reason a small-market club sells out, and he plays like he knows it.

The honest caution: his production has leaned on a specific linemate for several years, and that linemate is gone. This season is a real test of whether he elevates people or was elevated.