He’s excellent at maintaining puck possession and plays solid defense as a forward. There’s more to playing forward than just shooting and getting assists.
The Rangers should probably try moving Kakko to Center next season. He's played there before and he's a lefthanded shot. Sometimes it's the little things when you step up to the next level.
And THAT is now where we set the bar for acceptable level of play for a 2nd overall pick in the draft with three years experience? Puck handling and and solid defense? Why don't you go ahead and put that same standard on Sauce Gardner in three years? Hell, by your logic, Anthony Becht certainly wasn't a bust of a first round pick! The guy (legitimately) could block like a tank! Who cares if he couldn't actually catch a pass? This is NOT some late round pick we are talking about. After three full season, he should be capable of more, MUCH more. Stop making excuses for the guy and call him out for what he is: an utter disapointment. Say what you want about Alexis Lafreniere, but there is no question he has developed vastly further than Kakko, and has done so in one less season!
Lafreniere was a significantly better prospect than Kakko was coming out. Kakko got a shortened Covid season and missed half of this season. Kakko has not been an utter disappointment, he just isn’t developing his shot as fast as we’d all like him to. He’s been one of the Rangers best players this entire post season. He’s aggressively playing the puck in all 3 zones, plays good defense, and does make shit happen in the offensive zone. You haven’t said a word about him all playoffs until he missed that open net. Kakko has been one of the key pieces to the Rangers best line over the last 8 games. It’s obvious you just hate the guy and that’s okay.
Kakko was neck-and-neck with Hughes in his draft, so don't give this garbage that he wasn't a highly touted prospect. Another reason to be concerned: the guy is fragile. Again, you are talking about the second overall pick in the draft. Tell me how Sauce Gardner would be judged by the majority of this board if he has the same rate of development over three years. Courtesy of Hockey-Reference.com - https://www.hockey-reference.com/players/k/kakkoka01.html In Eight Games, he has one goal and one assist, with a +/- of -4. Two takeaways, Two Giveaways, Two hits, one blocked shot. You should be ashamed of yourself for posting that line above., That's because e Rangers have managed to hold on despite his incompetence. Monday changed that. Statistically and factually untrue I've never met him, so I have no feelings on him on a personal level. I am a New York Rangers fan. I want the New York Rangers to win. I have no confidence that Kaapo Kakko provides anything to help the New York Rangers win.
Kakko is still very young. He probably has a bit of room to fill out if the Rangers want him to play RW in the NHL.
That's fine, and you could be right, but let me just state for the record that just because a player is young, it doesn't guarantee that he is going to be good.
fans seem to ASSUME that a player is going to come in and GET BETTER at a steady rate... its a horrible fallacy
This is absolutely true. When a player is in an extended development phase, which we hope Kakko is in, it is important for the team to figure out what steps they need to take to assist the player in getting over the top. For Kakko the Rangers have tried a bunch of different line combos at this point including extensive time with Z and Kreider and also extensive time with Panarin. For the last twenty games or so they have tried the young line. All of these pairings were good attempts to unleash his obvious talent. Either something is going to click or somebody else is going to think they can get him going and make a trade offer that makes the Rangers move him. The reason I focus on a potential position shift is that Kakko is a lefthanded shot at RW and he's a bit rangy for a guy who will be in the corner a lot the way that NHL RW's are. If it's working it's working but if it's not probably better to find another spot on the ice for him.
It is however true that if a young player has talent and works hard he usually gets better in the process. Injuries screw things up and bad projections when you are evaluating the prospect screw the entire development process up.
You also get players who play really well out of the gate and then their career just snowballs towards stardom. Sometimes it seems like a couple of lucky bounces can make or break a guy early on. This is because the weight of expectations builds and builds on a guy who can't seem to catch a break until he is in the position Kakko is in now. I was thinking two things after that missed cross-ice shot from Kakko. One was that he would get a lot more of those opportunities if he wasn't normally a RW. The other was that if he had buried that goal or if he had been a lot more successful early on in his career the perception of him would be very different. He didn't make it and he hasn't scored very many goals so far and so it just added on to the list of missed opportunities for him. The weight of those failures has to be adding up for him at this point. Even if he won't openly admit it he has to be asking himself what is wrong at this point after so much success prior to the NHL. The sequence leading up to the miss was really strong for him. He used some burst on the left to get into the zone with the puck, then held it up and wound up putting it behind the net. Then he took the pass back to him in perfect position with Raanta having no chance to get back across the crease to defend. Then he just missed the shot and not by a little, by like a foot. All that good effort turned into zip in the end due to an unforced error. Was very frustrating for us but must have been crushing for him given the circumstances.
