This is the 2022-23 edition — an archived read. Read the 2024-25 report →
Rasmus Kupari
Los Angeles Kings Center
A first-round centre with the 7th-most sprints and the 10th-most ground covered of 365 forwards, and the 5th-percentile shot rate.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020-21 | LAK | 7 | 1 | 0 | 1 | -5 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 8 | 12.5 | 11:28 |
| 2021-22 | LAK | 57 | 5 | 8 | 13 | -5 | 18 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 51 | 9.8 | 11:48 |
| 2022-23 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 64 | 6 | 8 | 14 | -10 | 20 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 59 | 10.2 | 11:46 |
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
Five goals and eight assists in fifty-seven games at 11:48 a night, minus-5, at 22. Twentieth overall in 2018, and 64 NHL games now.
11:48 is the 10th percentile among forwards.
The Finesse Game
Almost nothing. 0.89 even-strength points per 60 is the 5th percentile and 4.55 shots per 60 is the 5th. He does not shoot and he does not produce, and unlike Kaliyev there is no volume underneath to argue from.
46.4 per cent of the expected goals is the 21st percentile and 46.3 per cent of the attempts the 19th — the worst regular figures on the club after Gabriel Vilardi. His ice went 16-21 against an expectation of 21.22-24.51, so even the model expected him to be under water.
And the deployment offers no excuse: 55.3 per cent of his end-zone starts came in the attacking end. He was being sheltered, not buried, and the share is what it is anyway.
0.89 takeaways per 60 is the 6th percentile. Nothing in the puck-recovery columns credits him either.
The Physical Game
6.07 hits per 60 is the 72nd percentile, which is the one column that reads like an NHL fourth-line centre. 1.52 blocks is the 41st.
Eighteen penalty minutes in fifty-seven games; he draws fewer than he takes and neither number is large.
The Intangibles
The skating file is extraordinary and it is why he is still here. 18.4 bursts over 20 mph per 60 is the 7th-most of the 365 qualified forwards and 10.46 miles per 60 is the 10th-most. Add 23.2 mph, the 90th percentile. He is among the ten hardest-working skaters in the league by the chips, at 22, in eleven minutes a night.
Nothing in the production columns has caught up to it, and one of those two things is the anomaly. The honest reading is that a first-round centre who covers this much ground with a 5th-percentile shot rate is not getting to the places where shots happen — which is a coaching and usage question the data raises and cannot answer.
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
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.
“18.4 bursts over 20 mph per 60 is the 7th-most of the 365 qualified forwards and 10.46 miles per 60 is the 10th-most.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2021-22 · 619 minutes
- Expected goals
- 46.4%
- 26th pct
- Shot attempts
- 46.3%
- 24th 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: 16 for, 21 against. Expected: 21.2 and 24.5.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 13 points of one another. 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.
Both bars are percentiles among the 649 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 52 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, 2021-22 · 57 games
- Top speed
- 23.2 mph
- 94th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 3.61 a game
- Distance
- 2.06 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 85.7 mph
- 43rd 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 84.1
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
2021-22 · 619 minutes at five-on-five
- Trevor Moore35%
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, 2021-22
- The club
- LAK took 52.8% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 46.4% — 6.4 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- Fourth line, 619 minutes at five-on-five — 26th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Trevor Moore | 46.1% | 46.6% | 57.9% |
| Tobias Bjornfot | 44.4% | 47.2% | 48.0% |
| Gabriel Vilardi | 47.6% | 46.0% | 42.7% |
46.1% together, 46.6% for him apart and 57.9% for Moore apart. Moore 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
85 unblocked shots in 2021-22, 5 of them goals. His median goal came from 11 feet. 40% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 26% from beyond forty.