Michal Kempny hasn’t looked 100 percent since that hamstring injury back in 2019.
By the Numbers
| 58 | games played |
| 18.6 | time on ice per game |
| 3 | goals |
| 15 | assists |
| 50.7 | 5-on-5 shot-attempt percentage, adjusted |
| 49.9 | 5-on-5 expected goal percentage, adjusted |
| 57.7 | 5-on-5 goal percentage, adjusted |
Visualization by HockeyViz
About this visualization: This series of charts made by Micah Blake McCurdy of hockeyviz.com shows lots of information for the player over the season. A short description of each chart:
- Most common teammates during 5-on-5
- Ice time per game, split up by game state
- 5-on-5 adjusted shot attempts by the team (black) and opponents (red)
- 5-on-5 adjusted shooting percentage by the team (black) and opponents (red)
- Individual scoring events by the player
- 5-on-5 adjusted offensive (black) and defensive (red) zone starts
Peter’s Take
Everything changed for Michal Kempny on March 20, 2019. His hamstring injury required surgery and months of recovery. Once he came back for 2019-20, he didn’t look quite as spritely as he did before. He stopped taking top-pairing minutes and started dragging his team’s performance down. The line graph below shows what percentage of total expected goals were generated by Kempny’s team when he was on the ice (solid blue line) and on the bench (light blue dashed line).
I held out hope for a long time that all Kempny needed was sufficient time to rest and recover, and then we’d seen his performance improved. But over time I became less confident that would happen. Todd Reirden apparently felt the same way, as Kempny’s ice time plummeted late in the season, as illustrated by Hockey Viz, with my annotation in pink.
But that downturn coincided with Kempny being paired more with Radko Gudas, which was a bad idea.
Kempny-Gudas is literally the only "avoid at all costs" pairing on the Caps roster pic.twitter.com/YSfJfgGtEE
— Peter Hassett (@peterhassett) February 21, 2020
So again I held out hope that the pandemic pause would give Kempny more time for recuperation, and maybe we’d see a renaissance in the bubble. That did not happen. During 5v5 play in the postseason, the Caps controlled 40 percent of expected goals and 42 percent of shot attempts when Kempny was on the ice.
Kempny has another year on his $2.5 million AAV contract. I’m not sure he’s capable of anything beyond third-pairing minutes anymore, but I’d be so happy to be wrong about that.
Kemps on RMNB
- We’re just about one year since Kempny returned to the ice for the first time since his injury.
- Kempny passed his conditioning test, but was held out of play for the first few games.
- In his first game back:
- Carlson to Kempny, without context: “Take your shirt off.”
- Here’s a great story about Kempny going above and beyond for the fans.
- Kempny was the team’s Masterton nominee.
I think, maybe we should just share some Kempny pics. I know my audience.
Your Turn
Can Kempny turn it around? Who would you pair him with?
Read more: Japers Rink
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