I agree about Kakko’s shot. So many younger guys can really pick that top corner, a group that maybe is lead by Elias Petersson. Kucherov has of course always had that ability.
Someone’s shot can be developed. Kakko isn’t a bad shooter and he got a knack for beating goalies. Put them in a tough spot. But in some situations the shots he get of are weak. It’s definitely something he can work on.
Someone referred to Kakko as being a pup his rookie year, something like that, wasn’t familiar with that phrase but it’s perfect. Look, it’s amazing that it doesn’t show more in the NHL but hockey is to a large extent about conditioning. The level I played, mostly 3rd tier hockey in Sweden, some qualifications up and down from that tier and in Finland one year, we were a team that pretended to be a pro team. Training 365 days a year. 14 hour weeks during the summer. Conditioning, conditioning and more conditioning. A coach with the ambition to put the best possible team on the ice every year, albeit getting free sticks to was seen as a very generous salary by the team. Anyway at that level, many talented players never played at “100%” for a game. If they went full speed one shift they would have been gassed the rest of the period almost. I had this one teammate, so taltented. 6’2 210 lbs, really nifty hands and a totally natural skater. We played the Sedins in juniors and experienced how good the best were, he wasn’t 5 tiers below them, maybe 2-3. He trained as hard as the rest of us, harder even, but he was always gassed after 15-20 seconds on a shift. I was often on his line, you knew that it was like night and day if you got Jouni the puck 15 seconds into a shift or 30 seconds into the shift. Looking back at it, he got a lot of knee problems. Sprains etc. Bet that came partly from being gassed and playing when you weren’t 100% in control.
Equipment is lighter today, but my point is just, for someone that isn’t like 1 in 500 of kids playin a sport until they were 18 y/o — getting to the stage where you could play hockey hard for 20 minutes a game at forward and have so much left in the tank that you are close to 100% most of the time — that feels more or less
unattainable. It’s something that you think or talk about in terms of, how the heck is it possible?? Running 10km at 45 minutes is nothing, basically anyone can do it after years of training. But getting that hockey shape, that is like running 10km at 30 minutes, it seems unattainable. I could never get there.
Look at someone like Ryan Lindgren and you get the answer. He has so little body fat that he almost looks sick. He used to be fairly beefy, now he looks like this:
View attachment 451386
Super fit, zero body fat, super light equipment. That is what it takes for these guys, to be able to hit the ice and give 100% for 60.
My point is just, I often get the impression that people comment on kids against the background of what you see is what you will get. That definitely does — not — have to be the case. You can basically not expect anyone to have had time to be a junior star in hockey and develop the physic of some of these NHLers. And what are the results of someone not being at that level? You can’t skate hard for full shifts. When you get gassed, you become weaker, get worse control of your body. Anytime seen a kid that it seems is falling down all the time? Yeah that is a sign of being a bit gassed.
Many were talking about how Kakko couldn’t play defense his rookie year. More than anything he was obviously dead tired often when he was on the ice. You back check despite your legs protesting the entire way, and then makes a clumsy attempt defensively? Yeah those two are connected.
The big relevant question is that if you bring a kid to the NHL when he is 18, how do you develop that kid — while — he is building up his physic? Because he won’t be there for the regular shift 20 minutes a night. You either stach him away for a minor role for 2-3 years and hope that he can pick it up once he gets a big role in the future or you invest in the kid and give him the offensive minutes he can handle and the rest that he needs in other areas.
