When Rafaël Harvey-Pinard went down with an injury last summer Oliver Kapanen had the opportunity to play with the Montreal Canadiens earlier than expected. He had been on the ice with Timrå for over a month and played pre-season games against quality opposition. Heading to North American in game shape, he played 12 games and had two assists in the opening month of the NHL season.
Timrå didn’t know what the plan for the season was with Kapanen, and in the end had to ask Montreal to clarify its position on the Finnish player. After that discussion, Kapanen returned to Timrå and made his SHL debut.
He went on an absolute tear in Sweden on a line with Jonathan Dahlén and Filip Hållander (now with the Pittsburgh Penguins). At the end of the season all three hovered around the point-per-game mark, a very respectable number in the SHL.
Elite Prospects
Listed as a centre on the lineup sheets, Kapanen usually took that position in the defensive zone but could at times look like a floater, not really engaging especially in the board battles. One has to wonder if it had to do with the adjustment from NHL-sized rinks to Olympic-sized ice and trying not to be drawn out of position. However, he was Timrå’s best player in the playoff series against Frölunda, a series the team lost and made Kapanen available to the Canadiens once more.
In his second stint in Montreal and finally with the Laval Rocket, he looked fully involved in the action, more in tune with the game, and gave a solid impression of what management can expect from him this season.
Voting
Kapanen has a tight spread among the panellists, mostly between 13 and 16 with a couple of placements a few spots outside of that group.
The distribution of Kapanen’s community votes is exactly the same: a normal bell curve, with one solid peak at 15.
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