Is Oliver Kapanen’s Goal Scoring Sustainable?

With 6 goals in his first 15 games to start the year, Kapanen is shooting at a very unsustainable 30% percentage on 20 shots to start the year, but at the same time, he’s getting in the correct areas to give himself the best chances to score. Kapanen has shown that he has a very underrated shot when he’s coming down the ice, as he’s surprised goaltenders on numerous occasions. Even though the majority of his production lately is coming from just having a nose to get to the net and beat in the right areas for dangerous scoring chances.

Now he won’t score at a 30% clip at a sustainable level, but as he continues to gain experience throughout the season, he may be able to release more shots on goal and with where he shoots the majority of his shots, he could easily score 20-25 goals on an above-average shooting percentage. 14 of his 20  shots are of medium danger or higher, which gives him 70% of his chances being at least a medium danger, this is the highest percentage of any Hab. According to many experts scoring around 11-12% of your shots is about average for an NHL forward, but not everyone gets shots off in such dangerous areas like Kapanen and Newhook (scoring 6 goals on 23 shots) are getting theirs from as a result, it wouldn’t be surprising that both could score around 25 goals with a 17-18% shooting percentage. In terms of Newhook, he could have more than 6 goals if he didn’t hit the post as much as he has in recent games.

It also helps both Kapanen and Newhook a lot that Demidov is such a great playmaker who can help them get the puck where they want it most of the time. As a result, both Newhook and Kapanen are playing with a ton of confidence. The weirdest part of their confidence is that oftentimes, Demidov doesn’t even get a point on the play where his linemates score. However, Demidov is often seen battling in the corners, helping Newhook or Kapanen win the board battle, which ends with a quality scoring chance.

There was a stretch of games a week or two ago where the line stopped producing, but just when it was getting close to making changes to that line, they flipped the script and got hot again. As it stands, the Demidov-Kapanen-Newhook line is the clear 2nd offensive line on the team with their production over the last 2-3 games. However, the analytics for their line looks pretty awful despite their offensive success.

https://twitter.com/RiseFromTheAshZ/status/198647939

It will be interesting to see if they can maintain their scoring pace while improving on the little things and buildimg their chemistry together. As it stands, it just seems like Kapanen’s offensive output is unsustainable when looking at the averages, but when looking deeper, it shows the Canadiens may have a player who can score 20-25 goals when playing with the right players around him. At the end of the day, Kapanen will likely score less if taken away from Demidov, but in Newhook’s case, I believe he can create his own offence.

How many goals do you see Oliver Kapanen finishing the season with?