Darcy Kuemper will show why he was brought here

We have one more Washington Capitals goalie left to predict and after that it’ll be just a handful of forwards. Obviously we waited until the roster came out but they will come like rapid fire. That goalie we will predict is Darcy Kuemper.

Kuemper as you remember was the Capitals offseason prize in the summer of 2022. He was the hottest free agent goalie on the market and was coming off backstopping the Colorado Avalanche to a Stanley Cup.

His first season with the Caps was a struggle. Part of the reason was a stacked Eastern Conference, way more stacked than what he dealt with out west. Another factor was injuries to a lot of guys and having different people in front of him nearly every night.

Kuemper played in 57 games with 56 of them being starts. He posted a 22-26-7 record with a 2.87 goals against average and a .908 save percentage. The save percentage and goals against average wasn’t his career worst but it was still a bad year for him.

Kuemper tied his single season career high in games played last season which he set the previous year. Among goaltenders with at last 50 starts last season, Kuemper ranked eighth in the league in goals against average and save percentage. His five shutouts were tied for the second most in the NHL.

When we predicted Charlie Lindgren, we gave him a sample size of 20 games before we predicted everything else. So for this exercise we’ll give Kuemper 62 games played with 60 being starts.

We predict Kuemper will go 35-16-9 with a 2.69 goals against average and a .920 save percentage. Good numbers for a good bounce back.

So now that the goalies is knocked out, we have two defensemen left to preview and a handful of forwards. We know what the roster looks like and this will be a lot easier than it was a few days ago.