Grading Darcy Kuemper’s first season in Washington

The Washington Capitals had two options last summer at goaltending. Go big or go home. They went big. Swung for the fences and landed Darcy Kuemper for a lot of money. So how did he do in his first season in Washington?

Well not worth the money his first year. But the good news for him like our contributor CJ wrote, he has four years left to prove that it’s still worth it.

Still it’s a steep price and the goalies the Caps opted to say goodbye to are in the playoffs while the Caps are on their couch watching that or the Defenders.

Kuemper went 22-26-7 with a bad defense in front of him and better competition across the Caps Metropolitan Division rivals. Just look at the New Jersey Devils and the Carolina Hurricanes. He had a goals against average of 2.87 and a save percentage of .908.

Lucky for him those weren’t career worsts. But they weren’t great either. I won’t put Ilya Samsonov or Vitek Vanecek’s stats from this season with their respective teams. CJ already did that so there’s no need to repeat it.

One positive stat from Kuemper was this, his five shutouts tied a career high from the previous season with the Colorado Avalanche and 2018 19 with the Arizona Coyotes so he still knows how to blank opponents.

Kuemper’s price came at a cap hit of $5.25 million. It was hailed on the first day of free agency as the biggest signing. I mean when isn’t it when you sign a Stanley Cup winning goaltender from the previous year?

Kuemper, like all of us, was disappointed in how his first season turned out:

"“We had a lot higher expectations for how our season was going to go. It doesn’t feel good that it’s done already, but that’s how it went.”"

Grade C-: I hate to do this to the new guy but the five shutouts at least saved him. Hopefully he will have a much better next four years. I am much more confident in the defense in front of him next season than I was even last summer.