I am still not overly impressed with Kakko, don’t see much difference in him now, so I’ll ask sincerely: when you say success now, what tangible improvement are you seeing in him now vs NY?
I see Seattle falling in the standings and losing more since Kakko arrived:
- SEA 33 games w/o Kakko – .484 pts pct, 4 pts out of playoff spot
- SEA 21 games w/ Kakko – .405 pts pct, 10 pts out of playoff spot
If that’s the measure of success, plunging from bubble to lottery pick, I’ll give you that one. Seattle is now in top 5 pick territory and that is something.
Are you going by Seattle having all of one win against playoff-positioned teams since Kakko got there?
Or are we going by the most illogical and useless stat imaginable, points?
Before answering that, I’ll explain my long-standing issue with points. One, this stat devalues goals and inflates assists as up to twice as valuable as goals by including secondary assists. This is the first broken thinking.
This flawed thinking is shown to be even more idiotic as it’s roughly 5x more difficult for a forward to put a shot in a net than it is for a forward to complete an offensive zone pass:
- Forward off. zone pass completion – 60.09% (sportsnet.ca)
- Forward shot percentage – 12.59% (nhl.com)
Points should never be a thing. Goals should be goals. Assists should be primary only, and their own thing. Especially when shots succeed at roughly 1/5 the frequency of offensive zone passes. This might explain why scorers in most other sports get paid vastly more than players who are heavy assist-only types.
We can also take this assists thing deeper by going into pass type. Sportsnet did a nice break down of this a few years ago, looking at which types of passes most contribute to goals (slot, rush, east-west) vs passes that had the least impact on goals (cycle). They then crossed this data against a player’s pass frequency and pass completion rate.
Which players came out as the passers most impactful on scoring in this Sportsnet CA deep dive in 2019? Crosby was 1, Panarin was 2, and the top ten saw relatively expected names of the day in 2019, such as Backstrom, Giroux, Point, MacKinnon, Kopitar, and Barkov.
So are we doing the broken points stat thing with Kakko? Or look realistically that his goal-scoring in SEA now is slightly up. And will we wait some time to observe if he is growing into a player who can consistently complete passes more likely to lead to goals or will be more the guy compiling secondary assists and completing cycle passes?
Objectively, thus far, I see his goal scoring has improved from 15 gls per 82 games to 19/82. Good on him (but short sample and can rapidly drop, as well). His assists are up, for what little that’s worth for reasons I stated above. If he becomes a guy who consistently makes plays and passes that create scoring opportunities, awesome. Time will tell more clearly on that. He seems to be playing more confidently, which is good to see also.
Beyond that, the dude to me still doesn’t look like anything to lose 3 seconds of sleep over. I’m indifferent and not trying to intentionally be disagreeable. If he flourishes, great. At this point, however, I don’t feel like it was much of a loss, have no clue what his camp wants as far as his next contract, and don’t see much tangible positive impact on his team (they’ve dropped from a bubble spot to a lottery spot, with a 1-10-0 record vs playoff teams since he arrived).
If at some point this all proves otherwise, I’ll gladly admit it. No skin off my ass to admit I am wrong. I screw up and make mistakes like a champion. Just ask my ex-wife if you need a bulleted list.
