{"id":104869,"date":"2021-03-25T18:58:46","date_gmt":"2021-03-25T22:58:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/?p=104869"},"modified":"2021-03-25T18:58:46","modified_gmt":"2021-03-25T22:58:46","slug":"pittsburgh-penguins-lose-kasperi-kapanen-to-injury","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/2021\/03\/25\/pittsburgh-penguins-lose-kasperi-kapanen-to-injury\/","title":{"rendered":"Pittsburgh Penguins Lose Kasperi Kapanen To Injury"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Pittsburgh Penguins have announced that forward <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/k\/kapanka01.html?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Kasperi Kapanen<\/a> injured his lower body and will miss time. This injury comes at a time where Pittsburgh is trying to fight its way up the standings in the competitive East Division. Coach Mike Sullivan announced the extent of the injury as week-to-week.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Coach Sullivan says that Kasperi Kapanen is week-to-week with a lower-body injury.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Pittsburgh Penguins (@penguins) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/penguins\/status\/1375203292716924930?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">March 25, 2021<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h2>Penguins&#8217; Kasperi Kapanen Injured<\/h2>\n<p>Kapanen has been a quality secondary contributor for Pittsburgh in 2020-21. The 24-year-old has seven goals and 21 points in 30 games. That production translates to a career-high scoring rate of .7 per game. Such a rate would probably produce a new career-best in scoring for the Finnish skater in a normal 82-game season. His Corsi For of 48.3 percent and -1.9 relative Corsi aren&#8217;t great possession numbers, but he is doing a fine job from a traditional perspective while averaging 15:47 of ice time per night.<\/p>\n<p>The Penguins originally drafted Kapanen in the first round of the 2014 Draft, but traded him the next year to the <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/category\/leafs\/\" target=\"_self\">Toronto Maple Leafs<\/a> in the huge <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/k\/kesseph01.html?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Phil Kessel<\/a> deal. He rejoined the Pens last summer in <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/2020\/08\/25\/toronto-maple-leafs-trade-kasperi-kapanen\/\" target=\"_self\">exchange<\/a> for several players including <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/r\/rodriev01.html?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Evan Rodrigues<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/a\/abergpo01.html?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Pontus Aberg<\/a>. Overall, Kapanen has 48 goals and 111 goals in 232 games. His development stalled on a deep Toronto roster, but he&#8217;s still just 24-years-old with ample opportunity to excel moving forward. He is the exact sort of secondary piece Pittsburgh has used to great success during the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/c\/crosbsi01.html?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Sidney Crosby<\/a> era.<\/p>\n<h3>How Pittsburgh Replaces Kapanen<\/h3>\n<p>It won&#8217;t be easy to replace Kapanen&#8217;s numbers given his apparent breakout this year. The best option might be to promote Evan Rodrigues to Kapanen&#8217;s spot and back-fill with skaters like <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/c\/currijo01.html?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Josh Currie<\/a> or Sam Miletic. This injury could also push the team to find a trade partner despite having very little cap space. The team still has firepower, but this injury thins their depth scoring considerably.<\/p>\n<p>Main Photo:<br \/>\n<a id=\"e_ASV7KgSoN3l5M_dBoFZg\" class=\"gie-single\" style=\"color: #a7a7a7; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal !important; border: none; display: inline-block;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/1304762234\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><script>window.gie=window.gie||function(c){(gie.q=gie.q||[]).push(c)};gie(function(){gie.widgets.load({id:'e_ASV7KgSoN3l5M_dBoFZg',sig:'KRqr288WNsz9ILrtHYBgfXimaWXmKcXHoKv4SnTtz7s=',w:'594px',h:'382px',items:'1304762234',caption: true ,tld:'com',is360: false })});<\/script><script src='\/\/embed-cdn.gettyimages.com\/widgets.js' charset='utf-8' async><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Pittsburgh Penguins have announced that forward Kasperi Kapanen injured his lower body and will miss time. This injury comes at a time where Pittsburgh is trying to fight its way up the standings in the competitive East Division. Coach Mike Sullivan announced the extent of the injury as week-to-week. Coach Sullivan says that Kasperi [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3127,"featured_media":104920,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4547,6671,34,4548,12],"tags":[5738,2220,955],"class_list":["post-104869","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hockey","category-injuries","category-news","category-nhl","category-penguins","tag-hockey-news","tag-kasperi-kapanen","tag-nhl-news"],"modified_by":"Josh Erickson","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104869","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3127"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104869"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104869\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/104920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}