Jonathan Lekkerimäki didn’t score a goal for the Abbotsford Canucks on Tuesday night, though he did get an assist on the game-tying goal in a 3-2 win over the San Diego Gulls.
Most nights, Lekkerimäki has put the puck in the net. The 20-year-old sniper has 15 goals in 26 AHL games this season, which places him fifth among AHL rookies in goalscoring while playing far fewer games than the players ahead of him.
Lekkerimäki is on pace for 31 goals in 53 AHL games this season, which would tie him for the sixth most goals by a 20-year-old in the AHL in the last 20 years.
Just how impressive is Lekkerimäki’s goalscoring pace? Consider this: Lekkerimäki is scoring goals in the AHL at a higher rate than Thomas Vanek, Claude Giroux, Kyle Connor, and Jason Robertson did at the same age. It’s the fourth-highest goals-per-game pace by a 20-year-old in the AHL in the last 20 years.
That’s just a sampling of the stars that had comparable goalscoring to Lekkerimäki in the AHL at the age of 20. The list of players with similar goalscoring is littered with quality NHL players: Kyle Palmieri, Josh Norris, Logan Stankoven, Tyler Toffoli, Markus Granlund, Logan Couture, Dylan Strome, etc.
Not bad.
Video of Lekkerimäki's 17 goals so far this season
Let’s take a look at Lekkerimäki’s 15 AHL goals — and two NHL goals — this season.
Some of Lekkerimäki’s goalscoring has come from being in the right place at the right time. His first AHL goal, for example, was just a case of a rebound popping out to him on the power play with an open net.
But there’s an art to being in the right place at the right time and some of Lekkerimäki’s goals illustrate that he has no qualms about getting to the front of the net and taking some punishment in the process. Goals 8-10 are all a result of Lekkerimäki showing quick hands to control a rebound or deflected puck in front of the net.
The most eye-catching goals, of course, are the ones where Lekkerimäki simply beats a goaltender with his shot. That’s the case in his 2nd, 5th, 11th, and 15th goals in the AHL and both of his goals in the NHL.
Lekkerimäki has also shown that his hands are good for more than just shooting the puck, as his dekes on two breakaway goals — his 6th and 7th — and have been simply sublime. More than that, his 6th goal showed some of his defensive game, as he’s the one who stole the puck in the neutral zone to create the breakaway.
What impresses me the most, however, are the goals where he’s deflecting the puck more than shooting it, getting it off his stick remarkably quickly to put the puck in before a goaltender can come across.
His 4th goal in the AHL this season is remarkable. There’s no catch-and-release — it’s all release. Nils Åman passes the puck down low to Lekkerimäki and he lifts it just under the bar in one smooth motion.
Lekkerimäki has a similar release on his 13th goal, which was one of two game-winning goals he’s scored for Abbotsford in the final minute of regulation. After keeping the puck in along the boards, Lekkerimäki gets open for an Aatu Räty pass that comes across his body. That’s a tough one-timer to pull off and Lekkerimäki doesn’t try to kill the puck, just smartly redirects it high enough that the goaltender can’t snag it with his gloves.
Perhaps the most encouraging element of Lekkerimäki’s goalscoring is that it’s coming in multiple different ways. He’s scoring not just with his wristshot and one-timer but also with tips and redirects, going to the net for rebounds, and breakaway dekes.
That’s the kind of multi-faceted goalscorer that should be able to find a way to put the puck in the net at the NHL level.
Tempering expectations for Lekkerimäki
Before getting too high on Lekkerimäki, some perspective is necessary. While he’s scoring at a higher rate than several players who went on to become NHL stars, there are players who scored at a similar rate at that age who haven’t done much at all in the NHL.
There are players like Luke Adam and Nick Merkley, who could never quite translate their scoring to the NHL, or someone like Daniel Sprong, who can clearly score in the NHL but has too many other flaws in his game.
The closest comparable to Lekkerimäki is Jack Quinn of the Buffalo Sabres. Quinn was similarly a first-round pick and scored 26 goals and 61 points in 45 AHL games as a 20-year-old in 2021-22 — a nearly identical goalscoring pace to Lekkerimäki, though he’s tallied more assists.
In his rookie NHL season in 2022-23, Quinn scored 14 goals and 37 points in 75 games. That’s solid production for a 21-year-old rookie but not major-impact-as-a-top-six-winger production. That should temper expectations slightly, particularly for the “Lekkerimäki can replace Brock Boeser’s production” crowd.
Quinn’s subsequent seasons have also been rocky, with injuries limiting him to 27 games last season and he’s on pace for 14 goals again this season, so hasn’t shown the progression the Sabres might have hoped.
Still, Lekkerimäki’s development in the AHL is encouraging. He showed flashes of looking like a legitimate top-six winger in his 11 games in the NHL this season, although those games also showed he still has plenty of room to grow.
Lekkerimäki's goalscoring is driven by plenty of shots
There’s one last encouraging statistic from Lekkerimäki’s first season in North America: his shots.
It would be one thing if Lekkerimäki was just getting lucky and riding an unsustainable shooting percentage but that’s not the case. His shooting percentage of 15.6% is higher than average, certainly, but about what you might expect for a player who can shoot the puck the way he does.
Instead, Lekkerimäki is scoring goals because he’s taking a lot of shots.
Lekkerimäki has 96 shots in 26 games, averaging 3.69 shots per game — the highest rate among AHL rookies and a top-five rate among all AHL forwards.
Compare that to Jack Quinn in his 20-year-old season, where he also had a decent number of shots with 143 in 45 games but that’s an average of 3.18 per game — half a shot fewer per game than Lekkerimäki. Quinn had an 18.2% shooting percentage, which is heading into unsustainable territory.
That kind of shot rate, more than anything else, suggests Lekkerimäki has a legitimate NHL future. It’s not just that he’s scoring goals but that he’s consistently putting himself in a position to get shots on net.
That NHL future might not be this season but there’s reason to believe it’s not too far off.
