Analytics with Alison: Yamamoto Deep Dive

When Kailer Yamamoto signed with the Kraken as a free agent this summer, it was celebrated as a move that brought a player back to where his hockey career began. A native of Spokane, the forward played on a travel team in Seattle as a child and spent his junior years with his hometown WHL team (Spokane Chiefs).

But beyond the story of his homecoming, Yamamoto is a player whose usefulness up and down the lineup and on special teams means he can be an effective part of his new team.

“(Yamamoto will bring) a lot,” Adam Larsson, said. “It’s pretty well known around the league what he brings. I played with him in Edmonton for I don't know how many years…he will bring some feistiness to our team. I think that was a good pickup.”

So what should we expect from Kailer Yamamoto?

Let’s dig in.

One of the facets of Yamamoto’s game is that he can slot into a variety of roles in a team’s lineup.

In Edmonton, the forward’s primary deployment was within the middle six. Of the 821:54 5-on-5 minutes he played last season, the majority of that time was on a line with Leon Draisaitl and Evander Kane. He also spent 216 of his minutes keeping pace on a line with Connor McDavid.

The Spokane native also saw regular time on the penalty kill while in Edmonton and in the Kraken’s opening pre-season game in Calgary, Yamamoto was a fixture on the power play where he scored two goals.

That versatility to play with some of the best talent in the NHL, on different lines and in different situations makes Yamamoto so useful to Dave Hakstol and his staff.

And about those power play goals from the Calgary game. It’s worth noticing that both goals came from in close to the net.

The scoring chances did come on the power play (there was a lot of that in Monday’s road game with 12 total power plays being awarded throughout the game), but they exhibit an important part of how Yamamoto plays: getting to net front.

Even as a smaller player in the NHL (Yamamoto is listed as 5-foot-8), “he’s not afraid to go in there even with his size,” Larsson noted.

Take a look at the shot map below courtesy of HockeyViz.com which shows the location of every attempt that Yamamoto fired off his stick last season. We see that the vast majority of his scoring chances are coming from the most dangerous areas of the ice. According to Sportlogiq, Yamamoto ranks in the top ten percent in the NHL in terms of creating a net front presence.

But getting to those areas of the ice isn’t easy as it’s also the part of the zone that defenses often protect most aggressively. How does Yamamoto do it?

“I think it’s just my will to win,” Yamamoto said. “I want to get to the front of the net, and not a lot of smaller guys go to the front of the net. But I find that’s where you score the most goals. That's where the most opportunities are. So, that's how I've played my game since I've been growing up. I don't think it's going to change.”

With just over half of training camp left to go, Yamamoto continues to do his best to cement a spot on the opening night roster. In addition to showing his ability to play a complete game, he’s constantly working on his shot – specifically in terms of his release and puck placement. But so far, Hakstol has seen promise in the young player.

“He's a competitive guy, he's a confident player,” Hakstol said. “We threw a lot at him the other night in terms of special teams. He was on the PK, he was on the powerplay, and he played a lot of minutes five-on-five. He handles it very well. His intelligence is really apparent. He understands the game and (has) grasped (our) basic systems really quickly.”