During training camp, I asked Ron Hextall if the decision to re-sign Kasperi Kapanen on a two-year contract was a way of giving the speedy winger a bit of a confidence boost heading into this season after a largely disappointing 2021-22 season.
"No, it just kinda made sense for us," Hextall said. "He had two restricted years, so when you look at your arb case and everything, that’s kinda how your numbers flesh out, quite frankly."
Instead of dealing with a potential arbitration case next offseason with Kapanen as a restricted free agent, the Penguins are walking him to unrestricted free agency at the end of his contract.
But just 13 games into his contract that pays him $3.2 million this season and next, Kapanen is slated to be a healthy scratch Wednesday night in Washington against the Capitals, as he skated on the Penguins' fifth line during practice on Tuesday and stayed out on the ice for extra work after morning skate on Wednesday.
Last season, Kapanen put up nearly identical production to his 2020-21 season in twice as many games. The one redeeming quality of his season was that he actually graded out as a slightly above-average defensive player after having replacement-level impacts in his own end for his entire career. Once the postseason rolled around, Mike Sullivan was pleased with the way Kapanen was "using speed to his advantage" despite not scoring and putting up just three assists in seven games against the Rangers.
The same day Hextall told me about Kapanen's contract, Sullivan told me the Penguins know Kapanen is a good player.
"We know he’s capable of more," Sullivan said. "Kappy and I have talked about that. I gotta do a better job coaching him. And I’m gonna try to do that this year to try to help him. But we believe in him. … He can play the game we’re trying to play here. I’m excited to watch him this year."
Kapanen started this season with a goal and four assists through five games and seemed to be on his way to being a decent option on the Penguins' third line -- even if he wasn't flashing the high-end potential that he visibly possesses -- but since then, he has gone without a point in seven consecutive games, registering just six shots on goal in that time.
What's even worse than Kapanen's offensive production or impact not changing from last season is that his defensive impacts have reverted back much closer to his career-norms. With him on the ice at 5-on-5 this season, the Penguins are giving up 3.28 expected goals against per hour, the third-highest rate on the team. For reference, that figure sat at 2.16 last season.
The raw on-ice numbers are influenced by teammates and competition, but the isolated impact model from JFreshHockey shows that Kapanen's defensive impact from a season ago might have been nothing more than a flash in the pan. (The column on the left shows Kapanen's isolated impact in various components of the game from last season, and the column on the right shows those same components as a combined sample from this season and last):

JFreshHockey
Data expressed as percentile. Left side = 2021-22 only. Right side = 2021-23.
The Penguins have scored only 39.4% of the goals with Kapanen on the ice at 5-on-5 and have controlled 48.2% of the expected goals this season. Both marks are team-lows. Individually, the rate at which Kapanen is attempting shots during 5-on-5 play has dropped from 11.5 per hour last season to 10.4 per hour this season, and the rate at which he's generating expected goals has dropped slightly from 0.57 per hour to 0.53 per hour.
Unsurprisingly, the vast majority of his shot attempts are coming from the not-so-dangerous areas of the ice, evidenced by HockeyViz:

HockeyViz.com
And one of those looks that actually came from a quality area somehow missed the target entirely even though it was yawning at Kapanen:
You could have rationalized Kapanen's contract by presuming he would rebound from last season and settle into a performance-level somewhere between what we saw last season and the flashes of brilliance we saw in 2020-21. If he did so, the Penguins would have him locked in at an acceptable cap hit for another season. But that was a massive gamble to take, and so far it's falling on its face.
It's a little ridiculous how much "bad money" this team has tied up, and quite a bit of Kapanen's salary falls into that category based on what we're seeing right now. Are we really to believe Kapanen will finally turn a corner and stay at that level after two-plus seasons of showing all of us what kind of player he is?
Kapanen has a ton of speed and a pretty nice shot, but he has yet to figure out how to channel his entire game toward leveraging those skills. It doesn't help that he's turning away opportunities to get the puck to the net when it's far-and-away the best option:
That clip is microcosm of the frustration that is Kapanen's performance. He retrieved a loose puck, identified a passing lane to Kris Letang, completed a really nice pass to find him, and then just a moment later when the puck was on his stick with the goalie scrambling and the net wide-open, Kapanen wasn't even so much as looking at the net. Instead, he stared into the abyss of nothingness in the slot before backing himself into the corner and making another pass up to the point, as he does so often.
Not putting yourself in position for shooting opportunities is one thing. Not taking the shot when you have it, as we saw above, is a telltale sign that the confidence isn't there. That's extremely concerning for someone who has admitted that low confidence was a big reason for his lackluster impact a season ago.
There are plenty of other indicators that Kapanen hasn't found his confidence, like him deferring to the outside with a pass into shin pads when he had the opportunity to take the middle of the ice and gain the offensive zone with the puck on his stick:
To me, that looks like he's gripping his stick too tight and overthinking things out there. It's like he's trying to override his instincts and force plays that aren't there. Why else wouldn't he take the open ice?
Another issue in that clip that we'll see in the following clip, as well, is that Kapanen isn't very deceptive with the puck on his stick. His stick radius and range of motion while carrying the puck is extremely limited because the puck is always wobbling and bouncing around on him. Not exactly a great mix with his speed.
Just take a look at Kapanen retrieving another loose puck toward the corner. His route to the puck handcuffed himself by the time he arrived, which also allowed pressure to close in on him more efficiently. That wouldn't be as big of a problem if Kapanen didn't seem to cough the puck up or stumble any time someone breathes on him:
And sometimes it's just a matter of not even being able to handle a pass that should have led to getting the puck out of the defensive zone, at the very least:
I'm not going to sit here and say that pass from P.O Joseph was placed where it should have been, but it wasn't so off-the-mark to the point that Kapanen should have ended up in the situation he did. What did Kapanen do to adjust for the pass as he received it? Nothing. He didn't move his feet to try and put himself in a better spot, he didn't even put himself in a dynamic athletic stance so that his body positioning wouldn't be so straight-line. Just rolled his right wrist over to present the backside of his stick blade, the puck hopped right over, and that was that. More zone time for the opposition.
His play away from the puck is also leaving a whole heck of a lot to be desired:
What a glorious opportunity to push the pace and pull defenders back with your speed, only to take yourself away from the play to the outside and negate any sort of chance of creating a dangerous rush.
Kapanen is deserving of being scratched. It shouldn't feel like such a drag nearly every single time he touches the puck, but it does. It's very telling that a positive sequence involving the puck on his stick is chalked up to a success rather than him simply doing what he should be doing.
The one positive I have regarding Kapanen is that he's been OK on the penalty kill. As a whole, the Penguins' penalty-kill hasn't been good, but Kapanen's speed has been evident in that department:
I wouldn't say Kapanen is anywhere close to lighting the world on fire as a penalty-killer, though, and it would be nice to see his speed play a part in generating some shorthanded chances.
Either way, the Penguins don't need a $3.2 million forward who is adequate only on the penalty kill. They need his game to turn around in a big way, and I'm not so sure it's coming.
You just can't scratch him forever with that cap hit and, really, you don't want him playing on the fourth line, either. I heavily doubt there are even a handful of teams around the league that would take on Kapanen's contract, and that's quite an indictment considering there are -- checks notes -- 151 regular-season games to go before his contract expires.
The skill is there, but it may never be more clear than now that a "breakout" for Kapanen won't ever come to fruition.