Penguins A to Z: Kasperi Kapanen offers more than a familiar face

As the NHL prepares for a new season scheduled to start in mid-January, the Tribune-Review will offer Penguins A to Z, a player-by-player look at all 48 individuals under NHL contract with the organization, from mid-level prospect Niclas Almari to high-profile trade acquisition Jason Zucker.

Kasperi Kapanen

Position: Right winger

Shoots: Right

Age: 24

Height: 6-foot-1

Weight: 194 pounds

2019-20 NHL statistics: 69 games, 36 points (13 goals, 23 assists)

Contract: Second year of a three-year contract with a salary cap hit of $3.2 million. Pending restricted free agent in 2022.

Acquired: Trade, Aug. 25, 2020

Last season: It is fair to say Kasperi Kapanen has developed at the rate Penguins scouts envisioned when they encouraged general manager Jim Rutherford to select him in the first round (No. 22 overall) in the 2014 draft.

He spent a season in his native Finland playing in that country’s top league against grown men as an 18-year-old then made his way to North America, refining his skilled game with a handful of seasons in the American Hockey League (AHL).

After some growing pains with nearly half a season at the NHL level in 2017-18, Kapanen showed he was capable of living up to his considerable potential by emerging as a 20-goal scorer in 2018-19 while playing with one of the world’s top centers feeding him the puck.

Yup, Kapanen mostly progressed just as Penguins management thought he would.

It’s just that the vast majority of that growth took place in Toronto.

The centerpiece asset the Penguins sent to the Toronto Maple Leafs in the 2015 blockbuster trade to acquire eventual two-time Stanley Cup champion Phil Kessel, Kapanen has spent the past half-decade up north and was expected to be a key contributor to a grand renaissance for one of the NHL’s legacy franchises.

But instead, he was simply an above-average player on a mediocre team that was incapable of winning a playoff series.

After his breakout campaign in 2018-19 when he scored a career-best 20 goals while skating with franchise center Auston Matthews, Kapanen regressed in 2019-20. While the Maple Leafs as a team struggled last season — so badly a coaching change was made by November — Kapanen was emblematic of those woes.

Bumped to a third-line role at times throughout a tumultuous season, Kapanen saw his ice time drop by an average of 50 seconds per contest from the previous season.

After the Maple Leafs were bounced from the playoffs in the preliminary round, Kapanen was dealt back to the Penguins a few weeks later in another multi-player trade. For the Maple Leafs, the trade’s primary benefit was dumping salary. For the Penguins, they added a familiar face they view as a viable top-six winger (to say nothing of the contract control they will have for several seasons).

The future: Kapanen appears to be entrenched on the right wing of the Penguins’ top line alongside franchise center Sidney Crosby, even before training camp has opened.

On paper, he appears to have the base components required to play with Crosby, namely a breakneck skating style and the ability to find open ice that can lead to scoring chances.

While no one ever will confuse Kapanen with former Penguins forwards Chris Kunitz or Carl Hagelin, he is a pretty enthusiastic forechecker and can serve as the lead forechecker on the team’s top line, which will include Jake Guentzel on the opposite wing.

Additionally, Kapanen figures to be an asset as a penalty killer as he averaged 1 minute, 39 seconds of short-handed ice time last season and scored two short-handed goals in each of the past two seasons.

It might have taken six-plus years, but Kapanen is finally ready to be a major piece of the Penguins’ puzzle.

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