The Washington Capitals will open the 2022-23 season on Wednesday, October 12. Before then, it’s critical that you prepare yourself for all the incoming narratives. The only way to be safe is to read my season preview series. The hard part is already over; you are reading it now.
Today’s episode of Uncle Good Tweet Pete’s Preseason Season Preview is about Washington’s promising new goalie, Darcy Kuemper.
The deep dark secret about the 2021-22 Washington Capitals was that they were actually pretty good at defense. If you measure how many goals opponents were “supposed” to get on the Capitals before actual goaltending comes in to play, the Caps would have been 10th best in the league, just a smidge behind the Colorado Avalanche. Put a pin in that.
But when you compare opponents’ all-situation expected goals to their actual, the picture got bleaker. Capitals goalies allowed 17.6 more goals than expected, putting them in the bottom half of the league — i.e. in the company of non-playoff teams.
This is not the space for me to further thrash departed goalies, Vitek Vanecek and Ilya Samsonov. The place for me to do that is on twitter and on the RMNB discord and at garden parties and in the carryout line at Chipotle with total strangers. Instead, here is the place where we will ponder the maybe glorious future of Darcy Kuemper.
Kuemper had a bad playoffs, I’m obligated to say up front, though I’m also obligated to point out that he had an eye injury. I have had a serious eye injury before, and I didn’t win any Stanley Cups at all during it. Before Kuemper’s injury, during the regular season, he was fantastic.
In 57 games, Kuemper faced 104.8 expected goals, but he allowed just 97. That makes him the 10th best goalie in the league in Goals Saved Above Expected and the 5th best in Goals Saved Above Average. He had the fifth best save percentage on high-danger shots, and the fourth best save percentage during five-on-five play.
So he was a very good goalie, though obviously he was on a very good team. A-ha! I have tricked you again. You have fallen for my feint. Sure, Colorado was indeed a very good team, but defensively they were eerily similar to Washington.
These heatmaps from Micah McCurdy show where opponents took shots against each team, with blue blobs meaning that’s a spot on the ice where the opponents shot less than average. The lack of red blobs suggest good defense overall. McCurdy’s model measured them both as slowing opponent offense by five percentage points.
If we take for granted that Washington’s goalies were a limiting factor last year, and I freaking hope we’re at consensus on that by now, then the chance for improvement this season is real. I think, save for signing Kuemper, the Caps had a thrifty offseason. My inclination and hope right now is that they spent money in the right place.
