The Washington Capitals signed Darcy Kuemper over the offseason to a five-year, $26.25 million contract to be the team’s starting netminder through the end of Alex Ovechkin’s career. Kuemper was coming off winning the Stanley Cup with the Colorado Avalanche in 2022 and had played 10 seasons in the NHL.
With all that past publicity and importance to the team’s immediate future, you’d think all Capitals players would be able to spell Darcy’s last name by the time Training Camp rolled around.
Nope. You’d be wrong. The Caps’ Russians, Alex Ovechkin and Evgeny Kuznetsov, both got it wrong.
Dug deep into the Media Day archives for this one…
Enjoy the boys trying to spell 𝗞𝗨𝗘𝗠𝗣𝗘𝗥#ALLCAPS | @SociosUSA pic.twitter.com/7VdnOvui4H
— Washington Capitals (@Capitals) December 1, 2022
Ovechkin, who scored a goal on Darcy in 2016, was the only player to spell Kuemper with a C. Ovechkin spelled his name C-A-M-P-E-R.
A cackling Kuzy after asking, “the goalie, right?” began spelling it K-E.
Dylan Strome and Trevor van Riemsdyk were the other players to get it wrong. Their primary language is English and they don’t regularly use the Cyrillic alphabet so they have no excuse.
For the record, Darcy’s last name is pronounced Kemp-er and has a silent u. Thank you, Capitals players, for struggling through this so now we can all remember how to get it right.
Headline photo: Elizabeth Kong/RMNB
