We’ll continue this series by covering another goaltender. With Ilya Samsonov set to test the free agent market, the Leafs have been linked to Laurent Brossoit as a possible partner for Joseph Woll, but as you may have read I’m not the biggest fan of that move. The fact that Brossoit has never been the go-to guy for an NHL team at 31 years old is a reason I gave for not being sold on him. Kaapo Kahkonen has had that opportunity, but it hasn’t exactly gone to plan.
Kaapo Kahkonen
Kahkonen is a blocking style goaltender that shows solid athleticism in a pinch, as evidenced in this clip:
Obviously if he is making that type of save something has gone wrong already. Allowing those types of rebounds isn’t ideal, to say the least. However, when you watch him his rebound control is generally good to great, with pucks landing within a few feet of his crease and usually in places where he can cover up for a whistle. He plays a quiet game, where he doesn’t move a ton in the net and would thrive in a system that promotes big defenders that make life hard on their opponents around the blue paint. He’s one of the younger options among unrestricted free agent goaltenders, with Ilya Samsonov (6 months his junior) being the only UFA goalie that played at least 20 games last year being young than he is. For me, that means he has a ton of miles left on the odometer and after spending his entire career on poor teams, a want to play meaningful hockey in the spring.
Kahkonen will find himself on his 4th NHL team this summer, unless he somehow returns to the Minnesota Wild, San Jose Sharks or New Jersey Devils. He was drafted and broke into the league with Minnesota, where he was the backup to starting goaltender Cam Talbot. The Wild were enjoying a successful season that year and were hoping to make a deep playoff run. In an effort to switch things up they sent a then 25 year old Kahkonen to the San Jose Sharks in exchange for Jake Middleton and acquired veteran puck stopper Marc-Andre Fleury on the same day. Essentially the Wild found themselves with a veteran netminder that had won the Vezina trophy with the Vegas Golden Knights the year before and had backstopped his team to a Stanley Cup in the past, while also adding a big, rough defender that was the same age as Kahkonen, in Middleton, to boost their Stanley Cup chances. It was a tidy big of business for a team that wanted to push for it all and didn’t want to place their hopes in the hands of a goaltender that hadn’t been tested as a starting goaltender in the NHL before. Strange point of view, right? I mean, the Leafs would never dream of putting all of their hopes on a goalie that has never started more than 24 games in a single season. Anyway….
What San Jose received was a 25 year old goaltender that had been a backup for 2 years already and was showing signs of being a potential starter in the league. He was already pushing Cam Talbot, who would join the Ottawa Senators the following year, out of his way. They could offer Kahkonen the runway he needed to become a starter as well, as they were closer to the league basement than they were to making the playoffs. Kahkonen played 11 games for the Sharks after the trade deadline, posting a 2.86GAA and 0.916SV%. That was a high mark for him in terms of solid looking stats.
For the 2022-23 season the Sharks recruited James Reimer to take some of the weight off of Kahkonen’s shoulders. They all but split the games and neither fared very well on the stat sheet. The following season, which was this past season, the Sharks allowed Reimer go via free agency and obtained goaltender MacKenzie Blackwood, who once again split time with Kahkonen. Much like the Reimer/Kahkonen tandem, neither goaltenders stats told a pretty story, but for those that were forced to suffer through the games it became clear that Kahkonen was playing well and he started to draw interest from other teams as the trade deadline grew closer. After being sent to the New Jersey Devils at the deadline, Kahkonen played in 6 contests for the Devils, posting a 2.50GAA and 0.923SV%. It’s a very small sample size and not every game was a strong one, but on a stronger team that still missed the playoffs his goals against went down over 1 goal per game, while his save percentage skyrocketed.
In short, the story of Kahkonen is the story of a goaltender that was pushing to be a starter with the team that drafted him, who then opted to go for a veteran goaltender when the time came to contend. After being flipped to a very poor team he was trusted with more starts and, as it always goes on rebuilding teams, his numbers took a hit. He has spent the past 2 years playing well for a very bad team, but has been dismissed due to…. playing for a very bad team. The results are a Catch 22 situation for the player, but could be a terrific move for the team that decides to give him his bread on July 1st.
@AFPAnalytics is projecting a 2 year deal for Kahkonen with a caphit of about $2M, which is very reasonable for the potential he brings, while being an easy contract to move if things didn’t work out.
Kahkonen is basically the complete opposite of what I didn’t like about Laurent Brossoit.
Brossoit is a goaltender that has terrific stats playing behind very competitive teams that have notoriously played a defense first system, but he has never managed to push for more games. Kahkonen has managed to play more games each year (still not technically enough, but has played 37 in each of the past 2 years) but has done it behind terrible teams with terrible defenses, resulting in brutal numbers and results, but he has still developed and improved since the time of pushing Cam Talbot for the starters position in Minnesota. During all of that he has never missed more than a few days with injury, which should be something of value considering the fact that Joseph Woll misses a ton of time to injury.
At the end of the day it’s my belief that Kaapo Kahkonen should be the odds on favourite from the UFA class to enjoy a break out season. He’s paid his dues, he’s ready for the opportunity and he’s young enough and cheap enough to warrant taking a chance on him.
Lastly, enjoy this clip of one of his injuries, which he missed just 4 days over and involved taking a Roman Josi clapper to the undercarriage:
Sweet merciful, that gotta hurt!!