Rangers' Kaapo Kakko gets a vote of confidence from coach Peter Laviolette

DALLAS – To hear Peter Laviolette tell it, Kaapo Kakko is doing just fine. The 22-year-old Finnish winger is playing well, the Rangers coach says, even if he did have just a single goal, and a single assist (two points) in the first 15 games of the season.

“For me, it's not about points,’’ Laviolette said Monday morning, after the Rangers’ morning skate prior to their game against the Dallas Stars. “It's about creating. It's about defense. It's about being effective 5-on-5; on the power play. There's lots of things that I think [about]. It doesn't necessarily have to be 'Oh, I scored two goals tonight.' "

And yet, Kakko, the second overall pick in the 2019 NHL draft, entered Monday’s game not having registered a point in his last 10 games. That’s a frustratingly long drought. His last point came when he scored his only goal of the season Oct. 21 in Seattle, in a 4-1 win over the Kraken in the opener of the Rangers’ five-game road trip through the Pacific Northwest and Western Canada. That goal was his 100th career point.

The drought, and the lack of scoring chances, prompted Laviolette two weeks ago to drop Kakko from the first line, where he’d played the first 11 games of the season, to the third line. Blake Wheeler, who took Kakko’s place on the top line, has scored two goals and an assist in the four games since the change was made. (To be fair, one of Wheeler’s goals came on a power play, and the other was into an empty net.)

Kakko, though, won’t say woe-is-me.

“I mean, we’re winning games [4-0 since the line change, 12-2-1 overall], so I’m happy for that,’’ he said. “I think the team’s playing well.’’

He admitted, though, that it is hard to keep his confidence up when he hasn’t been able to score.

“I mean, it's not the highest right now,’’ he said of his confidence. “It’s coming when you score a goal and you play a good game. So, the next step is to just play better and better.’’

“Confidence is probably the biggest struggle in this league – for me, at 35, and for a kid at 22,’’ veteran Nick Bonino, Kakko’s centerman for the last four games, said. “When the puck doesn't go in, it's hard to manufacture that confidence. You’ve got to remember that you're doing good things, and you're making good plays, and you're not hurting the team.’’

Coming off his best season, when he scored 18 goals and 40 points in playing 82 games for the first time in his career, Kakko spoke at breakup day last spring about needing more ice time and greater opportunity than he’d been afforded in his first four years. Laviolette promised, after taking over as coach this summer, that he would give opportunity to Kakko, Alexis Lafrenière and Filip Chytil, the former Kid Line. And he did. Kakko, who had a strong preseason, started on the top line, with Mika Zibanejad and Chris Kreider, and Chytil and Lafrenière started on the second line, with Artemi Panarin.

But Chytil got hurt – he missed his sixth game Monday, with an upper-body injury – and Kakko never seemed to click with Kreider and Zibanejad. On Monday, Kakko was playing his fifth game on a line with Bonino and rookie left wing Will Cuylle.

“I think it's been good,’’ Kakko said of his new line. “It's a little different… Not that much time out there, and usually we're not getting there for the ‘O’ zone faceoffs. But still, I think it's been feeling a little better. We've been getting in the [offensive] zone a little more, [and they’re] good players. I think ‘Bones’ [Bonino] is very good In the ‘D’ zone. He's more defensive. But hopefully we can create something in the ‘O’ zone, also.’’

By Colin Stephenson

colin.stephenson@newsday.comColinSNewsday

Colin Stephenson covers the Rangers for Newsday. He has spent more than two decades covering the NHL and just about every sports team in the New York metropolitan area.