RW Kaapo Kakko - TPS, Liiga (2019 Draft) Part 2

[Lepardi]

Fantastic player with awesome skill set.
This guy won't play U18 WJC's this April mark my word.
Kakko belongs to Finland's men's world championships team.

If TPS doesn't make it to the finals, couldn't he possibly play at both the U18 Worlds and at the men's world championships? The men's tournament begins 12 days after the U18 final.

 

[ijuka]

Then what about the smarmy "NA" comment?

Professional scouts do not care about what country the player is from

Apologies if that's not what you meant though

They might not "care" in theory, but they certainly don't scout Finnish or other European players nearly as well. When you're exposed to something more it makes you think more positively about it, that's a real thing and is something that marketing music artists and even general advertizing for example are based on.

There have been numerous cases in the past where the European player was "surprisingly good" or where scouts mention they "didn't really know much about them". Many times in the actual scouting reports, the actual analysis of the Finns tends to be either completely incorrect or just copied from somewhere, or contain things that are completely untrue such as the position they play. Do you remember when Sebastian Aho in 2015 wasn't even ranked in top 75 by MacKenzie(REAL NHL scouts!)? Do you think he even was scouted? Feel free to ignore them and consider it a baseless conspiracy theory, though.

 

[Kiekura]

Then what about the smarmy "NA" comment?

Professional scouts do not care about what country the player is from

Apologies if that's not what you meant though

Sure most of them don’t do it intentionally. But they are all more or less exposed to a great amount of hype and information about the North American based prospects. And when a prospect has been as much hyped and well known all around North America for several years already, like Hughes has been, it is just perfectly normal for most of the scouts to keep ranking him ahead of all the European prospects in his draft, as they just didn’t get to see as much of games where Kakko was playing and they didn’t get exposed to clear hype about him for years already.

The European prospect has to be substantially better than a North American one or there has to be a huge positional need, for the only slightly better European prospect to get ranked ahead of the North American one. If Kakko is better than Hughes, he is better only slightly, so no way he will be ranked in this situation as the number one pick by the North American scouts, as the multi-year Hughes hype exposure has done it’s part efficiently already.

Well in past few years I was really suprised about E. Petterson and S. Aho drafts.In E. Petterson case C. Makar and N. Patrick was picked over him. Afterwards in many talkshows I had impression that GM's/teams didnt know so much of him. I dont underrate N. Patrick neither C. Makar, but if u18 makes 56p in 44g in SHL u really need already know something about him. And while he played in bad u18 u20 team he's skills was underrated for sure.

Then what comes in S. Aho. He was my fav from 15yo. He always made his lines bit better, but cause he played in Kärpät, Oulu (which was top team in Liiga at a time, when Aho played d-1 he played in 3th line and didnt play PP at all. On breakthro year he did play PP at second part of year and did 3 PPG and 2 SHG in whole Liiga career) he never becamed hyped player like Puljujärvi. Is this reason he was picked on second round?

And even today when looking NHL draft analytics I see that usually players from EU is mentioned with few sentences which are mostly straight copy from our mainstream media. So I could say that Ippenator and Kiekuras opinions are pretty correct. Also now in 2019 there is 19 NA players in top30 and in 2020 12 in top20. I dont say there should be more eu prospects, but still seems that EU players are bit underrated what comes in scouting and influenses of hypetrain at top picks.

They might not "care" in theory, but they certainly don't scout Finnish or other European players nearly as well. When you're exposed to something more it makes you think more positively about it, that's a real thing and is something that marketing music artists and even general advertizing for example are based on.

There have been numerous cases in the past where the European player was "surprisingly good" or where scouts mention they "didn't really know much about them". Many times in the actual scouting reports, the actual analysis of the Finns tends to be either completely incorrect or just copied from somewhere, or contain things that are completely untrue such as the position they play. Do you remember when Sebastian Aho in 2015 wasn't even ranked in top 75 by MacKenzie(REAL NHL scouts!)? Do you think he even was scouted? Feel free to ignore them and consider it a baseless conspiracy theory, though.

Those guys pretty much summed it up. I am just saying that if Kakko was from NA he would be hyped much more.

 

[Gordian Knot]

Question is that where do you guys would slot him in Oilers lineup 2019-2020 season?

 

[Snowsii]

If Kakko is easily better prospect why his ppg is lower compared to Barkovs? barkov was without the question more responsible player already back then and also playing harder role as 1st line center.

Well, maybe quality of teammates has something to do with it..

 

[FinPanda]

I think Kakko hasn't got as much hype as I would've thought overall and in this board. I mean Laine had like 7 threads and Kakko is in his second thread and playoffs are just around the corner.

For what he is done this year in Finland, I just thought maybe he should get even more hype. Well at least now he doesn't get haters too much.

 

[catnip]

Since it was brought up, Sebastian Aho is not a particularly good example of a European player drafted lower than he perhaps "should" have been if not for NA bias. Aho's prospect thread on this site had something like 20 posts before the draft and even Finnish homers weren't projecting him to become a star. Aho only blew up as a prospect once he was already drafted. Maybe people should've realised how good he was going to be earlier but that was not a case of NA scouts not paying attention to Euros; even Finns who presumably did pay attention didn't expect him to become what he is today.

 

[Albatros]

I don't think that narrative is completely accurate, especially after Aho had scored the championship-winning game seven overtime goal as a 17-year-old the hype was there alright. Maybe he's even better than expected, but he definitely had the attention.

 

[Operator123]

Well, maybe quality of teammates has something to do with it..

Well I just cant remember Barkovs another winger, but Ville Nieminen seasons in FEL:
09 - 10, 29 points
12 - 13, 50 points (career high) with Barkov
13 - 14, 22 points

Good grinder for sure but not really known offensive dynamo.
(Assume, Chris Connolly was another winger 0,72 ppg versus Barkovs 0,92)

For example Ilari Filppula over ppg last 3 seasons in fel. Dont really know with whom Kakko plays most.

Edit: I dont try to press down Kakko. For sure I would want him in Florida. But I just dont think he is easily better prospect than guy who had higher ppg, better defensive game and made his team mates better and already is arguably atleast top 15 center in NHL at the moment and havent reached his full potential yet.

 

[1OApick]

Kakko is great prospect and I personally think that he have higher probability to play center in NHL compared to Hughes.

 

[kelsier]

I don't think that narrative is completely accurate, especially after Aho had scored the championship-winning game seven overtime goal as a 17-year-old the hype was there alright. Maybe he's even better than expected, but he definitely had the attention.

Aho had some hype by the media as a 17 year old but was largely overshadowed by Puljujärvi (both products from the same organization). He did score that golden goal but that was also the only goal he scored in those playoffs. At the end of the day, he didn't really receive all that much hype from the Finnish fans until he was already drafted. No one really knew he had that kind of a ceiling and I can't even remember single person here who'd have consistently try to bump him (until the next season of course). Some youngsters get lots of praise and then there's the selected few who get the real hype and appear in the front cover or get the headline space in the tabloids. I would say in the draft year Aho fell to the former compared to lets say Laine, Barkov and now Kakko. Rantanen is another example, if not even a better one. Pretty much everyone who followed up on him regularly knew he had everything you'd expect from a future star player, but again there were others prospects coming with even higher expectations, so he never really received all the recognition he deserved, and now he's a borderline superstar in the NHL.

 

[jvr32]

Since it was brought up, Sebastian Aho is not a particularly good example of a European player drafted lower than he perhaps "should" have been if not for NA bias. Aho's prospect thread on this site had something like 20 posts before the draft and even Finnish homers weren't projecting him to become a star. Aho only blew up as a prospect once he was already drafted. Maybe people should've realised how good he was going to be earlier but that was not a case of NA scouts not paying attention to Euros; even Finns who presumably did pay attention didn't expect him to become what he is today.

There's lots of highly ranked Finnish prospects who don't get to the second page in here and that is a bad measurement of how highly a prospect was thought of. We could start that from the projected 1st or 2nd round Finns from this year's upcoming draft.

Aho was ranked #127 by hockeyprospect.com, #110 by Future Considerations, #61 by ISS Hockey, and was not ranked in Bob McKenzie's end of season poll where 10 scouts were asked.

There can also be NA prospects who also can slip in the draft for some reason, like Brayden Point, HOWEVER he was not missed by people who provide their rankings, he was #38 by ISS Hockey, #36 by Future Considerations, #43 by McKeen's Hockey. So NA players can slip in the draft, but that is a draft event issue and completely different issue than what people are discussing here.

 

[StiffSquid]

Question is that where do you guys would slot him in Oilers lineup 2019-2020 season?

I used to love the idea of Finnish players in Edmonton , but please God , no!

 

[Hokinaittii]

Well I just cant remember Barkovs another winger, but Ville Nieminen seasons in FEL:
09 - 10, 29 points
12 - 13, 50 points (career high) with Barkov
13 - 14, 22 points

Good grinder for sure but not really known offensive dynamo.
(Assume, Chris Connolly was another winger 0,72 ppg versus Barkovs 0,92)

For example Ilari Filppula over ppg last 3 seasons in fel. Dont really know with whom Kakko plays most.

Edit: I dont try to press down Kakko. For sure I would want him in Florida. But I just dont think he is easily better prospect than guy who had higher ppg, better defensive game and made his team mates better and already is arguably atleast top 15 center in NHL at the moment and havent reached his full potential yet.

First of all, I wouldn't either say Kakko has been easily better prospect than Barkov but I think he can be viewed as a player whose skillset allows him to surpass Barkov one day if everything works out for him.

Purely based on the stats, there is no denying Barkov has had better regular season in Liiga than Kakko. But it's weird how Barkov's numbers didn't really transfer well into NHL considering a merely 30 points Liiga player like Kotkaniemi is outscoring Barkov's rookie season in NHL. So as good as Barkov's point totals were in his draft year, they don't tell the whole picture about how good the player actually is.

I think when comparing Barkov and Kakko in their draft years, you had to respect Barkov's consistency and how he still managed to play very well defensively despite putting up good numbers offensively. But even though it's been a while, I don't recall Barkov showing as much dominance as Kakko has shown during some of his shifts.

I wish I had the footage of his one shift yesterday where he didn't score but in the span of 30 seconds Kakko did set up two nice plays behind the net, won a couple of board battles and showed such a great puck control that it seemed like even the opponent was just admiring his dominance. It was all Kakko in that shift and only exceptional players are able to do that as a teenager rookie against men.

It also seems like Barkov was way more mature player at 17-18, so he was probably more closer to his ceiling than Kakko is currently. I mean, we only recently learned that Kakko can actually play center without many problems and only recently Kakko has developed from "pass first player" into "shoot first player".

It's very encouraging to see how much Kakko has managed to modify his game and I think as the time goes on, we will find Kaapo Kakko being the best Finn playing in the NHL.

 

[Operator123]

Purely based on the stats, there is no denying Barkov has had better regular season in Liiga than Kakko. But it's weird how Barkov's numbers didn't really transfer well into NHL considering a merely 30 points Liiga player like Kotkaniemi is outscoring Barkov's rookie season in NHL. So as good as Barkov's point totals were in his draft year, they don't tell the whole picture about how good the player actually is.

I mostly agree with the post and I see it the same way.

However I would point out that Barkov had shoulder injury during the summer, so he almost missed the whole summer training. His PPG was 0.44, best in the Florida that year was 0.46 By Sean Bergenheim. Also Barkov was pretty much the number one center of Florida playing much harder match ups than Kotkaniemi who is playing third line.

 

[Masamies]

 

[Masamies]

 

[a mangy Meowth]

Those guys pretty much summed it up. I am just saying that if Kakko was from NA he would be hyped much more.

Who cares about # of threads lol that's just a popularity contest

 

[Ippenator]

Who cares about # of threads lol that's just a popularity contest

Who was talking about any number of threads? Why are you bringing up the number of the threads? No one was claiming anything about that being meaningful.

 

[a mangy Meowth]

Who was talking about any number of threads? Why are you bringing up the number of the threads? No one was claiming anything about that being meaningful.

You're right that was a different poster. Apologies

 

[JJTT]

Well I just cant remember Barkovs another winger, but Ville Nieminen seasons in FEL:
09 - 10, 29 points
12 - 13, 50 points (career high) with Barkov
13 - 14, 22 points

Good grinder for sure but not really known offensive dynamo.
(Assume, Chris Connolly was another winger 0,72 ppg versus Barkovs 0,92)

For example Ilari Filppula over ppg last 3 seasons in fel. Dont really know with whom Kakko plays most.

Edit: I dont try to press down Kakko. For sure I would want him in Florida. But I just dont think he is easily better prospect than guy who had higher ppg, better defensive game and made his team mates better and already is arguably atleast top 15 center in NHL at the moment and havent reached his full potential yet.

Barkov played with Haapala and Hansen(lockout) mostly, not Connolly.

 

[Frolov 6'3]

I think Kakko hasn't got as much hype as I would've thought overall and in this board. I mean Laine had like 7 threads and Kakko is in his second thread and playoffs are just around the corner.

The horror.

 

[FinPanda]

The horror.

True. It was ridiculous for Laine.

 

[JustAPleb]

Year 2019 stats to Kakko in Liiga:

10 games
9 goals
2 assists
11 points
+/- +2
47 shots, 4.7 per game

TPS have scored 31 goals in those games, Kakko got point 35.5% those goals

vs Hughes:

5 games
3 goals
7 assits
10 points
+/- +5
23 shots, 4.6 per game

USA have scored 42 goals those games, Hughes got point 23.8% those goals.

 

[ijuka]

Year 2019 stats to Kakko in Liiga:

10 games
9 goals
2 assists
11 points
+/- +2
47 shots, 4.7 per game

TPS have scored 31 goals in those games, Kakko got point 35.5% those goals

vs Hughes:

5 games
3 goals
7 assits
10 points
+/- +5
23 shots, 4.6 per game

USA have scored 42 goals those games, Hughes got point 23.8% those goals.

All-star team that scores 8+ goals per game... Yet Kakko still has scored more goals this season than Hughes.