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Jonathan Lekkerimäki | RW


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The promising trend for Lekkerimaki so far this year is through the first 2-4 games he was near the very bottom of the rankings for Djurgardens in terms of corsi, hovering around 42-44%. He's been slowly climbing and is now 5th among the team's forwards at a respectable 51%. The kid line of Ohgren-Ostlund-Lekkerimaki rank 1st, 2nd and 5th among forwards in corsi on the team, yet they're still playing about 10-12 minutes a night, although Ostlund is a fixture on the top powerplay and Lekkerimaki has been starting to see significant PP minutes as well.

 

Djurgardens is sitting 2nd in the league right now and they've been a very strict defensive team (they're 4-1 in their last 5 games with only 11 goals for in that span) so it's unlikely they're going to loosen the reins any time soon. The kids are just going to have to continue to gradually earn the trust of the coaching staff by playing a sound two-way game first.

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I caught the game this morning. Nothing particularly new to report on Lekkerimaki. As I've always talked about, he's a low-risk, possession-first player. Seems like he's starting to gain a little confidence at the pro level, there was a few times he held on to the puck for long walks, skating around in open space high in the offensive zone and you could see he was looking for soft spots to attack - little head fakes like he thought about going a couple times but ultimately ended up laying it into the corner for linemates to retrieve. I feel like his defensive game is definitely improving a little, at least in terms of effort level and trying to stay below the puck. Still by far his biggest weakness is just that, literally lack of strength; it is glaring at times when he's trying to play in the corners.

 

He's been playing right wing on that kid line for the past few games now and they've played really well against tertiary matchups, but with the team struggling to create offence lately - they were down 1-0 after the 2nd today - they completely juggled things up and all three were on different lines. After that it actually ended up being Ohgren that came to life in a big way on a line with Olle Liss. Ohgren scored a goal to tie the game and had a couple more high danger chances, wreaking all kinds of havoc in front of the net.

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Sounds like he's putting it together now.  He has an incredibly high ceiling, let's hope he gets close to it at a minimum.  If he does, he'll likely be a consistent 30 goal scorer in the NHL.  Hit his ceiling and 40 goal seasons are not out of the question.

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13 minutes ago, HKSR said:

Sounds like he's putting it together now.  He has an incredibly high ceiling, let's hope he gets close to it at a minimum.  If he does, he'll likely be a consistent 30 goal scorer in the NHL.  Hit his ceiling and 40 goal seasons are not out of the question.

Kid sure reminds me of Mike Bossey.  Both fell in their draft year.  Both are score and not do much else. 

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" but the effort is coming" - you would expect much more from a 1st round pick than that, especially in a tier2 league like the Allsvenskan. Advanced stats like corsi and expected goals for have improved mainly due to the great linemates Lekkerimäki is playing with as Noah Östlund and Liam Ohgren. Although i am hoping that Lekkerimäki starts producing. He is playing on the 3rd line of Djurgarden but on a top 3 team in the league.

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Not a great offensive start to the year with just 1 goal, it's hard to see the picks right after him scoring better than him. Ostlund, Kemell and Ohgren are having decent years whereas Jonathan is struggling to put up points.

 

I know we've invested so much into Swedish/European scouting but so far they're not looking good.

 

Meanwhile Pickering is scoring at a point per game on defence...

 

Could have snagged a decent playmaking center in Ostlund or a good puck mover in Pickering but instead go for yet another "sniper" winger who can't score...

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