Kirill Kaprizov Can Still Take His Game To Another Level

At first glance, all you can say when looking at Kirill Kaprizov's season is, Perfect. No notes.

You'd be insane to think anything else. With seven goals and 24 points in his first 13 games, Kaprizov is well on his way to an individual season that will be the best in franchise history. Heck, at this rate, he might have the best season of anyone this century. His 1.93 points per game heading into Sunday is the most of any NHLer with 10-plus games since Mario Lemieux in 1995-96. You couldn't ask for more.

Or... could you?

Maybe it's getting greedy to think that there's perhaps something left on the table for a player on-pace for a 158-point season. It feels ridiculous to say, but the elite of elite athletes are always maniacally trying to find ways to get better, even when it doesn't seem possible. And if any superstar is looking for a place to shore up his game, he might find it in his shot rate. 

You can't knock Kaprizov's results at 5-on-5. After Friday's game at Anaheim, Kaprizov sits alone at the top of the NHL with 15 points when both teams are at full strength. He's fully controlled the game whenever he's hit the ice.

But if you want to nit-pick, only three of those 15 points are goals, which ties him and 56 other players for 61st in the NHL. His goals per hour rate (0.77) isn't bad by any stretch, but it's noticeably lower than his usual standard. Kaprizov has scored at least 1.00 goals per hour at 5-on-5 in each season. A big reason for this small dip is that he's not shooting nearly as much as he typically does.

Kaprizov is shooting just 5.9 times per hour at 5-on-5, which currently ranks him ninth among the team's forwards. We're talking lower than Liam Öhgren (8.4), Freddy Gaudreau (6.9), Jakub Lauko (6.4), and Mats Zuccarello (6.1). Kaprizov's game has never been about extreme volume shooting. Still, he's averaged 8.4 shots per hour at 5-on-5 for his career coming into the season, so this is a significant step back, albeit over a pretty short sample.

Or is it? As great as Kaprizov has been in the past shooting more than eight times per hour at 5-on-5, maybe he's figuring less is more. Is it more effective for him to hand off a shot to another player facing less attention from the defense and goaltending?

Right now, that sort of feels like the case. Kaprizov's not getting soft assists by any stretch of the imagination. He's setting up scoring chances left and right, and when they go in, it looks like he made the right play.

Kaprizov's 10 primary assists at 5-on-5 don't just lead the NHL; he's got four more of them than the next-best players (all high-end forwards in Evgeni Malkin, Sam Reinhart, Jesper Bratt, and Martin Necas). If we look at Corey Sznajder's early (and incomplete) player tracking data for this season, we can see Kaprizov's emphasis on playmaking. He's one of the top players in setting up scoring chances in the NHL.

How can you argue with the results? A goal off Marco Rossi or Zuccarello's stick counts just as much as one coming from Kaprizov's, and they're scoring a ton right now. The line has the second-most goals in the NHL (only the Ivan Barbashev - Jack Eichel - Mark Stone trio in Vegas has more) and are out-scoring opponents 12-to-6 on the season.

Obviously, that's great, but here's the thing: Kaprizov is often one of the best playmakers in hockey already. Through his first four seasons, Kaprizov's 66 primary assists at 5-on-5 were tied for ninth in the NHL. While he's on an uptick in assisting on scoring chances, it's not as big of a jump as compared to last season.

Well, it's about a 30% increase per hour. Still, it doesn't offset the total number of scoring chances Kaprizov creates at 5-on-5. Add his scoring chances + assists per hour last year, and you get a whopping 11.9. There weren't many players who did better, and the ones who did? Generally, you knew their names. Connor McDavid, Sidney Crosby, Nikita Kucherov, Auston Matthews... you get the picture.

This season, with Sznajder's small sample size, we see that number is 10.6 scoring chances plus assists per hour. That's a great number, but it's not better than last season's.

Obviously, it's working out now, and no one on earth will be mad if Kaprizov finishes the season and he has 120 points or more, even if he isn't shooting as much at 5-on-5 as he used to. But while nobody (as far as we know) can sustain a 158-point pace in today's NHL, Kaprizov's shot will be a tool he'll need to push his 2024-25 scoring to the limit.

As great as his linemates have been, Kaprizov's the one who's rocking a career 13.6% shooting percentage at 5-on-5. Taking it upon himself to fire the puck more often should only help in his quest to bring Minnesota back to the playoffs.