When he has generational hockey IQ, which he for sure doesn't have. To be a truly generational player the player must absolutely have more completely elite skills than puck protection and dangling. I absolutely don’t see it in Kakko, or any other Finnish prospect now or from the last years. The players with the best hockey IQ for Finnish young players at the moment are Aho, Teräväinen and Kotkaniemi, and probably Barkov is pretty close too, although I see him dominating more with excellent hands and puck controlling, in a bit similar way as Kakko. Sorry, but Kakko is clearly behind each of them with his hockey IQ.
I’m not saying that Kakko isn’t still special, but he isn’t in any kind of a different league as a prospect than Laine, Barkov and Aho, and not even more special than Teräväinen, as Teräväinen had clearly the better hockey IQ than Kakko as an 18 year old. Of course he was miles behind Kakko physically, but that is a changing variable for all prospects, as you can’t say for sure that Kakko will be right away physically dominating in the NHL already next season. I do very highly doubt that happening, but only time will tell.
This Kakko fanboyism is seriously getting a bit out of hands. I see that he is definitely special in similar class as Laine, Barkov and Aho were, but seriously, if anyone thinks that Kakko has better or even equal hockey IQ as Aho, Teräväinen or even Laine or Rantanen, then they are out to lunch.
Kakko is pretty much a dangler and a puck hog. To some people that kind of playstyle equals as being absolutely dominating. I don’t see it really that way. If you are good at holding the puck and scoring by yourself, you can definitely be a very good player in some situations, but still the best players are the ones that make their teams and team mates do really well with the end results.
People can blame Kakko’s team mates for not producing consistently and helping his team get wins with his high class play, like Laine or Aho did in the Liiga playoffs, but the truth is that both Laine and Aho did make their teams clearly better with their results and they made their team mates and line mates clearly better with their performances. Sorry, but Kakko hasn’t done yet anything like that, except in one playoffs game - which his team lost anyway.
And no, Laine’s Tappara team wasn’t much better altogether with their roster with players like Ilomäki, Karjalainen and others pretty high in their roster. Tappara was probably better coached though, but still Laine was after all the absolute sparkplug in the playoffs and he did seriously carry them to the Championship together with Kristian Kuusela. Palve is in fact a clearly similar caliber player as Kuusela. so Kakko does get to play with a real quality linemate.
Kakko is of course great as a prospect, but I do think that worshipping him is still getting pretty much out of hands here. The kid needs to still consistently dominate with his end results, which his great finish to his Liiga regular season was a good start with, but he has still some ways to go to be truly more impressive than Laine or Barkov with his draft season as a whole.
