Thats a fair criticism. My concern is that we are relying on Kakko & Chytil to come back and save our 5v5 play. Im fairly confident in Chytil but Kakko does a lot of stuff that makes his charts look good, but nobody shoots the puck willingly when hes on the ice. That doesnt translate in the playoffs.
My hot take (probably more lukewarm) is that Othmann is going to come up and look better than Kakko immediately. Kinda like Cuylle did. They play a style more suited for the games we want to be playing in.
I feel the same way about Kakko. Tools are all there, he has the size and good hands and he's a skilled player with great puck protection skills. Even with his slow skating, he has skills that could make up for it and still be a top line guy. However, I just don't think he has it in him to put it all together and be a top line scoring player. His hockey sense is just lacking that killer instinct, for lack of a better term, that the top players have. He just seems to not know when to shoot vs when to double back vs when to pass vs when to one time it and so on. He's just a second behind on his processing most time it feels like.
He could end up putting it together but it's really starting to feel like this is just who he's going to be. A solid defensive forward who can pot 15-20 goals and 40ish points. That's a valuable player and can be a key cog in a lineup, but if you can use him as a piece to upgrade his place in the lineup with a guy who can produce more during this contending window I think you have to explore it. Not a rental or an over the hill guy, but someone in their prime who is at least signed for the next season after this one.
Just watch Kakko on the PP, he'll hold the puck too long and try and process while holding and doubling back and then coverage has had time to adjust and he just dumps the puck off on someone else. Compare that to, for example, Brodzinski on that play a few games ago vs Toronoto where he made a quick one time touch pass to Lafreniere throught the PK box and Laf scored. Has Kakko ever shown the ability to make a quick decision like that? And that's Brodzinski, a fringe NHLer, making that play. If that's Kakko in that spot he holds and holds and looks and holds and goes back to Gus at the top.
Everything in the NHL these days has to be fast fast fast, not just the skating. It's the decision making more than anything else. Kakko has the talent and skills to be a star, even with his average speed, but his decision making and pace he plays with just aren't fast enough. I'm not saying he'll never put it together, but if we're looking at this contending window it's not totally unreasonable to see what a Kakko centerpiece could fetch you in a trade for an upgrade over the next 2 seasons.
