The discussion surrounding the Toronto Maple Leafs seems to suggest the Leafs need to make a couple trades this offseason.
And no I am not talking about trading Mitch Marner, Auston Matthews, John Tavares, or William Nylander because the Toronto Maple Leafs aren’t going to improve their team by trading elite players.
This player I am talking about here is the Finnish Speedster Kasperi Kapanen.
He NEEDS to be traded or else it will be a major mistake by the front office.It feels like it’s been years since we have been talking about Kapanen’s offense to blow up because of the obvious skill he possesses, speed. But after years of hoping it would pan out it really hasn’t whatsoever.
Time to Trade Kapanen
Kapanen is unable to make passes at a level better than a fourth-line player, his shot is about average, and he doesn’t gel with any of the Leafs players at 5v5. Just like many players who have his speed, his mental quickness isn’t fast enough to keep up and many Leaf fans hoped it would eventually be but it’s been years and it hasn’t worked out to any degree.
The only actual offensive thread he possesses is being able to get a breakaway maybe every 5 games, which isn’t good enough for what the Toronto Maple Leafs are paying him and especially when you take into account his horrid defensive impact which we’ll get to in a moment.
Not to mention, Kapanen isn’t a threat on the powerplay at all, he didn’t even score a goal this season on the powerplay.
Anyways back to Kapanen’s defensive game.
He is the Toronto Maple Leafs worst forward at even-strength defense. This is absolutely because of his laziness and lack of effort away from the puck. The number of blown coverages Kapanen has had throughout the season and the playoffs have cost the Leafs an enormous number of goals against.
Just recently in the Columbus series, I noticed Kapanen doing his usual lazy effort on the backcheck, in game 3 two of the goals scored were partly his fault.
If you watch the sequence at 4:20 and at 4:50 on the first and third goals you will notice what I am alluding to.
Kapanen’s lazily swings his stick in both sequences as if he’s a 5-year-old beginner hockey player. There is little to no effort by Kapanen to stop the chances against which is unacceptable at any level of hockey in my eyes.
Just this season Kapanen was among the worst forwards at defending at even strength with similar numbers to Alex Galchenyuk who has been a defensive wreck his entire career. Many have cited Kapanens penalty killing as an important part of his value, but I am confident that the Leafs have other players who can arguably do a better job at penalty killing and it’s also not terribly hard to find guys who are good at it.
With Kapanen’s poor defensive zone coverage or lack of defensive awareness, it doesn’t make him an effective enough penalty killer to be worth it. I understand his straight-line speed comes as a scoring threat but relying on scoring shorthanded goals should be the number one ideology for success on the penalty kill. The idea on the penalty kill is to keep the puck out of the net and Kapanen isn’t very effective at doing so.
Kapanen is the biggest problem with this team. Kapanen is the one who is the fastest yet we only see his top line speed up to once a game on offense, never on defense. If you watch any other effective fast player they are always using their speed (Liam Foudy Blue Jackets).
Kapanen doesn’t provide the secondary scoring to warrant being worth the price the Leafs pay.
Not to mention Kapanen’s issue during the season where the Leafs management left him out of the game for unspecified reasons. The Leafs need more guys like Nick Robertson who feel as if they’re bugging the strength coaches because they’re in contact with them so often. The Toronto Maple Leafs don’t need guys like Kapanen who don’t show up to work on time (assuming that’s what it was).
Based on Kapanen’s flashiness as a player I think the Leafs could get a decent player back for Kapanen. However I will settle for anything of positive value at this point, Kapanen dearly needs to get traded.