The one thing Kupari is doing pretty well is being solid in his own zone, not a lot of dangerous chances against. The dangerous chances for are only slightly lower, though, so he's not creating a whole lot.
PuckIQ has a neat stat they track called dangerous fenwick, which I call the eye test stat. It takes shot location, distance, and type, and uses an algorithm to assign shots a "danger" value. It can't take everything into account, like screens and deflections, but more often than not a shot from the middle of the slot is going to be more dangerous than one from the point. DFF% counts DF for vs DF against, similar to corsi, and gives a good indicator of creating vs allowing dangerous chances. It kind of quantifies when you view a player and think 'they didn't score, but they created a lot of dangerous chances, while the other team didn't do much of anything'.
Kupari is near the bottom of this, but nothing terrible. He's in what I call the Nick Shore zone, where nothing really good or bad seems to happen on the ice when he's out there. Of the young guys, Kaliyev is the highest regular which makes sense as they are overpowering other bottom lines. Turcotte has only played a few games and is slightly more protected more than the other guys but he's already passed Kaliyev. It tells you that even though he has no points yet he's doing the correct things. The lowest on the team is Tynan, who was obviously over his head. Tkachev and Vilardi are right behind him because of their terrible start to the season.
For some context, the top guys on the team are players like Iafallo, Arvidsson, and Danault, who create far more than they concede against top competition. Lemieux is in the 2nd tier, but he does it against much weaker competition. That line really demolishes other bottom lines.
