From Alexeyev to Wilson, we’re taking a look at and grading the 2023-24 season for every player who laced ‘em up for the Washington Capitals for a significant number of games during the campaign, with an eye towards 2024-25. Next up, Darcy Kuemper.
The Bio:
#35 | Goaltender | Catches: Left
Height: 6’5” | Weight: 215 | Born: May 5, 1990
Birthplace: Saskatoon, Saskatchewan | Acquired: Signed as a free agent, July 13, 2022
Cap Hit: $5,250,000 | Signed Through: 2026-27 | Expiry Status: Unrestricted Free Agent
The Scouting Report (via CapFriendly):
Report: November 2023 | Rating: 80 | Projection: #1B
- Big body in the net
- Butterfly / hybrid / paddle down on occasion style
- Rarely outside the blue paint. Size affords him the opportunity to play deep in his crease
- Tracking, from side to side, ranges.
- Generally squares up to the play from distance – resulting in pucks finding him through traffic.
- There are times he struggles to time his ‘drops’ into his butterfly – exposing space over his pads and between his legs
- A #1B more than a #1A.
The Stats:
The Charts:
The Key Stat: HockeyReference.com has Kuemper’s 2023-2024 season has his worst Goal Saved Above Average with a -12.1GSAA. He didn’t have a negative GSAA since 2020-2021 and that was a measly -0.6 with Arizona. It was certainly a rough ride for Kuemps this past season.
The Good: Honestly, there wasn’t too many good things that went well for Kuemper. He certainly had his ups, but mostly downs. I’m a fan of Kuemper and certainly felt like he was hung out to dry way too often or a victim to just bad luck or pure snipes he couldn’t do anything about it, but you don’t put up the numbers he did without also just not having a good season.
One positive is his High Danger Unblocked Shot Attempt Save % Above Expected according to MoneyPuck was 0.095, which was good for 13th in the league among goalies that played at least 30 games (there were 46 total). That was better than Andrei Vasilevsky, Jake Oettinger, Connor Hellebuyck, Thatcher Demko and Juuse Saros among others. That’s good stuff.
The Bad: But the bad is when you change those stats from High Danger to Medium Danger he jumps from 13th to 40th. And when it goes from High Danger to Low Danger he drops to 35th. Very odd. Basically he did quite well in those high danger chances, but when the shots got “easier” he got much worse – just look at that third HockeyViz chart, where Kuemper yielded 14.7 more goals than expected on shots that were below 15% likely to end up in the net. Yikes. Just throw that on top of the list of the very weird 2023-2024 Washington Capitals.
It will be interesting to see how Kuemper rebounds with the Caps next season (if he’s here). You can tell his glove was especially bad this season, giving off multiple rebounds a game. You have to start to wonder if that eye injury he suffered with Colorado in the playoffs might be affecting him still. It would explain all the glove issues.
The Video:
The Discussion: Do you think Kuemper will be back next season? If so, do you think he will bounce back like General Manager Brian MacLellan suggest? And finally, what would it take for you to give Kuemper a 10 next season?
The Vote: Rate Darcy Kuemper below on a scale of 1-10 (10 being the best) based on his performance relative to his potential and your expectations for the season – so if he had the best year you could have imagined him having, give him a 10; if he more or less played as you expected he would, give him a 5 or a 6; if he had the worst year you could have imagined him having, give him a 1.