Kasperi Kapanen

Last Season

Eight goals and 17 points in 41 games, plus-five, on fourteen 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 five 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 thirty 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

Six-one 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-nine winger, and stretches where he has been unplayable.

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