That’s a pretty good one. The one thing for me is that (although he was much older when he broke into the league) Stone is a guy who averages about 45-55 hits per season, over a hit per game in the playoffs and overall asserts himself more physically than Kakko. Similar puck skills and possession strengths, and 50 hits per season isn’t particularly physical, but he asserts himself physically in other ways and the hits are just that last bit of doing everything to keep the cycle alive or maintain possession. So far Kakko has registered 31 hits in 93 career games including play-ins. Raw hit totals are subjective to stats keepers and this is by no means a “moar tuff!” criticism, but I’d just like to see Kakko learn to use that size a little more assertively. He has these tremendous possession tools and if he would play with a bit more edge (again, not talking a big hitter or hitting for the sake of hitting) he could force defenders to respect his size and tools even more and also keep certain plays alive better.
I’m very happy with his overall play but every game I see a guy coming out of the corner with the puck and KK goes for the reaching stick check and refuses to initiate the contact and almost every time the guy just moves it up the wall past KK and he peels off and doesn’t even make the little bump. I think just upping his aggression by 20% would do wonders.
