Washington Capitals: 2021-2022 By the Tens -- Defensemen: Michal Kempny

Michal Kempny

“For all sad words of tongue and pen, the saddest are these, 'It might have been'.”
-- John Greenleaf Whittier

Michal Kempny, an under-utilized defenseman with modest numbers playing for the Chicago Blackhawks, was arguably the last, not to mention surprising piece of the puzzle on defense tor the Capitals in 2018 when he was traded by the Blackhawks for a conditional third round draft pick.  Kempny helped stabilize the defensive pairs, the Caps went 15-7-0 with Kempny to finish the regular season, and the Caps went on to win the Stanley Cup.  Kempny appeared to have a bright future with the Caps.

Kempny had a pair of solid seasons after that, going 6-19-25, plus-24, in 71 games in 2018-2019 and then going 3-15-18, plus-19, in 58 regular season games in 2019-2020, but it was the last of the 71 regular season games in 2018-2019 when the promise of a prominent role blew up in the form of a torn hamstring suffered when he fell awkwardly in a dust-up with Cedric Paquette of the Tampa Bay Lightning. 

It would be the first of three serious injuries, all to his left leg.  He returned from his original injury to have a solid 2019-2020 season, despite a late start to the season (he missed the first eight games of the season), but he sustained a torn Achilles tendon in the same left leg in the 2020 off-season, and then in another freak injury, his left leg was injured when he was clipped by an ice shoveler during a stoppage of play in a game when he was skating for the Hershey Bears.  He missed the entire 2020-2021 season for the Caps and managed just two games played with the Bears after a lengthy rehabilitation before suffering the last of his injuries.

His 2021-2022 season started with his being placed on waivers, the club hoping he would clear so he could be assigned to Hershey.  He did clear waivers and skated 24 games with the Bears.  He did return to the Caps, but played only intermittently and was limited to 15 games overall.

Fearless’ Take… There just aren’t enough games on his resume for this season from which one could mine the positive elements of his performance.  The Caps were 2-1-0 in the three games in which he skated more than 20 minutes, they won both games in which he posted points, they won both games in which he recorded four hits.  But there just isn’t a lot of meat on the bone here.

Cheerless’ Take… His presence in the lineup was not a plus.  The Caps were 6-8-1 in the 15 games in which he played.  He had a plus rating in only three games, none of them better than plus-1.  His 45.4 percent shot attempts on ice at 5-on-5 was worst among the Caps’ defensemen appearing in at least 15 games.

Odd Kempny Fact… His minus-3 rating was the first time in five NHL seasons that he finished in minus territory.

Odd Kempny Fact II… Two Capitals dressed for more than one game this season and compiled more penalty minutes than games played – Tom Wilson (98 minutes in 78 games) and Michal Kempny (16 minutes in 15 games).

Odd Kempny Fact III… Kempny and turnovers did not mix.  His 1.51 giveaways per 60 minutes were the fewest in his career, as were the 0.25 takeaways per 60 for which he was credited this season.

Game to Remember… February 17^th at Philadelphia.  As much as if might be the case when visiting any opponent, when an opponent visits Philadelphia, one thing they want to do is take the crowd out of the game.  In their first visit to Wells Fargo Center in 2021-2022, the Caps did just that.  It took a while, but with less than two minutes to go in the first period, the Caps seized the lead.  Nic Dowd got the play started by entering the Flyers’ zone with speed down the left side.  It was the first thrust in what would become a sequence in which the Caps pinned the Flyers in deep with puck movement and retrieval.  The puck made its way back to Dowd in the left wing circle, and he fed it high to Kempny just inside the Flyers’ blue line.  Kempny stepped up and fired, his shot sailing through a clot of players in the shooting lane, beating goalie Martin Jones on the blocker side to give the Caps a 1-0 lead.  While the Flyers would take a brief 3-2 lead with less than five minutes left in regulation, the Caps would tie the game less than a minute after the Flyers took the lead, added a goal with just over a minute in regulation, and then tacked on an empty net goal with 49 seconds left to win, going away, 5-3.

For Kempny, his goal was his first – and only – goal of the season, making up for a penalty he took less than two minutes into the game that could have put the Caps in an early hole.  He would be penalized a second time later in the game, his four penalty minutes tying his season high.  He did record six shot attempts, two on goal, and logged 16:49 in ice time with one credited hit in what might have been his most event-filled game of the season.

Game to Forget… March 25^th at Buffalo.  This was another one of those 11 forwards/seven defensemen games that makes player rotation and combinations a movable adventure, and what that often means for the defense is that one player is left standing when the other six chairs are filled.  Michal Kempny was that odd man out in this game, skating only five shifts and logging just 3:17 in ice time.  He did not skate a shift over the last 34 minutes (29 minutes of regulation and the five minute overtime) in the Caps' 4-3 Gimmick win, which made it unsurprising that he did not have a crooked mark on his line of the score sheet save for a penalty he took late in the first period.  It was his low ice time mark for the season.

Postseason… Kempny did not suit up for any game in the postseason.

Looking Ahead… Kempny is entering the free agent market as a player who will be 32 years old on Opening Night and having played just 15 games over the last two seasons.  For a team looking to get younger and with players in the pipeline such as Alex Alexeyev and Lucas Johansen who seem ready to at least challenge for a roster spot, the cards are stacked against Kempny’s return to the Caps, even if he was to accept a pay cut from the $2.5 million he earned per season on his just expired contract.

In the End… It hardly seems fair – in fact, overkill, given the sequential nature of his injuries – that what should have been Michal Kempny’s prime production years and perhaps his role as a top-pair defender were stolen by those injuries.  He is now an unrestricted free agent, and his career with the Caps is possibly, if not likely, at an end.  His future is uncertain.  He has shown that he has, or at least had, the potential to be an effective two-way defender.  But whether his injuries have robbed him of speed and/or maneuverability is an open question, one that will determine if he can find a home for the 2022-2023 season.

Grade: C+

Washington Capitals 2021-2022 Previews -- Defensemen: Michal Kempny

Michal Kempny

“To have a comeback, you have to have a setback.”
-- Mr. T

 

When thinking of Michal Kempny, 2018 seems so long ago.  A trade deadline pick up in February 2018, from Chicago for a third-round draft pick, the transaction was almost an afterthought, the undercard to bigger things to come… “The 27-year-old Kempny is a rental addition, a pending unrestricted free agent with a $900,000 salary cap hit. Ahead of Washington’s game against the Buffalo Sabres on Monday afternoon, Trotz said General Manager Brian MacLellan could have ‘more under his sleeve.’”  But his addition stabilized the defensive pairings, and the rest is history. 

Recent history, though, has been unkind to Kempny.  The following season he put up fine numbers – 6-19-25, plus-24, in 71 games, and his 2019-2020 regular season numbers (3-15-18, plus-19, in 58 games) were almost as impressive.  But then, in the round robin/playoffs, he was 0-1-1, minus-2, into Game 2 of the first round matchup with the New York Islanders when he suffered a torn hamstring that ended his season.  He might have returned for the 2020-2021 season, but then he suffered an Achilles tendon injury that required surgery and wiped out his season.  It is a lost of rust Kempny will have to scrape off to be effective in 2021-2022.

Odd Kempny Fact… Kempny will enter the 2021-2022 season having gone 58 consecutive games (regular and postseason) without a goal. His last goal – or goals – came on October 25, 2019, when he potted a pair in a 6-5 Gimmick win over the Vancouver Canucks.

Odd Kempny Fact II… Put this one in your pocket for future reference.  The last goal Kempny scored on home ice was on Opening Night of the 2019-2020 season…against the New York Rangers.  The Caps open their 2021-2022 season at home against the Rangers on October 13^th.

Fearless’ Take… The good news here is that Michal Kempny is a 31 year old, with a level of maturity not fund in younger players, with not a lot of mileage on his body (four NHL seasons and 232 regular season games), so a comeback might be easier (which is not to say “easy”) than for a player with more wear and tear on his body.  The issue will be how quickly he can re-acclimate himself to NHL-speed in games.  But Kempny has been an effective contributor for the Caps in the 151 games he has played for the club so far.  It would be premature to write him off if he has a slow start.

Cheerless’ Take… Not one, but two major leg injuries that wiped out the end of a postseason and a full regular season?  Low mileage or not, that’s a lot to come back from.  Will he need a full season to fully rehabilitate himself and get back to something near 100 percent?  Can the Caps afford to accommodate that kind of extended recovery?  Just as his arrival stabilized the Caps’ blue line in 2018, the pace of his recovery could destabilize it in 2021-2022.

Potential Milestones to Reach in 2020-2021…

• 200 games as a Capital (currently 151)
• 300 career NHL games (232)
• 5,000 career minutes played (4,035)

The Big Question… Is there too much rust on Michal Kempny for him to be an effective player?

Assuming he is in the starting lineup against the New York Rangers on October 13^th, it will be 426 days since Kempny played a game that counted, that being August 14, 2020, in a 5-2 loss to the New York Islanders in Game 2 of the Eastern Conference first round matchup that the Caps would go on to lose in five games.  That is a lot of time for any player to spend on the shelf in injury rehab, a situation made more challenging for Kempny by virtue of having to rehabilitate two different injuries (torn hamstring, Achilles tendon), more challenging still by virtue of the position he plays, with its emphasis on mobility and skating, and yet again more challenging in that Kempny would likely be, under normal circumstances, part of a top pair (with John Carlson) logging a lot of minutes.

In the end…

Michal Kempny is one of, if not the biggest unknowns for the Caps heading into the regular season.  Odd to say about a 31 year old vet, but a 400-plus day hiatus from hockey will do that.  The pace of his recovery is likely to dictate how the blue line is managed this season.  A sluggish comeback or, worse, a setback, could open up opportunities for youngsters like Martin Fehervary or Alex Alexeyev.  Or, it could push a player like Trevor van Riemsdyk into a more prominent role with greater responsibility.  Down the road, it could make the Caps a player at the trade deadline in search of a defenseman, although for a team as tight to the salary cap as the Caps are, at least at the moment, it will be a challenge to go that route.  It makes Kempny’s comeback story line one of the more important topics to keep track of as the season unfolds.

Projection: 41 games, 3-8-11, plus-1

 

Washington Capitals: 2019-2020 By the Tens -- Defensemen: Michal Kempny

Michal Kempny

“Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears.”
-- Marcus Aurelius

 

The quote attributed to Marcus Aurelius is usually applied to matters of psychic injury, not physical ones.  But hockey players, like any professional athletes, are high-performance, finely tuned individuals.  And when Michal Kempny suffered a severe torn hamstring injury in a game against the Tampa Bay Lightning in March 2019, an injury that required surgery and a long rehabilitation, it was reasonable to believe that he would be something less than full strength when he returned to the ice.  Rehab takes a player only so far, the rest coming by playing one’s self back to full strength. 

In fact, Kempny was held out of the first eight games of the 2019-2020 season and did not make his debut until October 18^th.  When he did return, he did so with gusto, posting points in eight of the first 11 games he played, going 3-8-11, plus-9, while averaging more than 19 minutes of ice time per game and helping the Caps to a 9-0-2 record in those games.

That would be a torrid pace for a completely healthy defenseman to maintain, and Kempny was not likely 100 percent.  Over his next 21 games he recorded only a pair of assists and tok a minus-1 rating.  The Caps still went 14-6-1 over those 21 games, but for Kempny it was still a matter of playing himself back to full health.  He broke out of that slump with points in three straight games in early January for the first time in two months, but he could not sustain that mini-run, either.  He finished the season 0-2-2 in his last 23 games, although he did post a plus-10 rating, suggesting his two-way game made strides.

Fearless’ Take…

Kempny has become a bit of an underrated offensive contributor.  Although he was coming back from a serious leg injury, his per-game production did not suffer much of a fall off from the 2018-2019 season.  Last season he averaged 0.08 goals per game compared to 0.05 this season, and his points slipped slightly, from 0.35 per game last season to 0.31 per game this season.

Cheerless’ Take…

Kempny did not have a goal in the last 53 games he played (on 68 shots on goal), none after October 25^th.  He had an odd home-road split, too.  He recorded nine points at home and nine on the road, but he was a plus-17 on the road, while he was just plus-2 on home ice.  He also had 20 penalty minutes on the road while taking only two in home games.

Odd Kempny Fact… Wheh Kempny got minutes, the Caps won.  In 33 games in which he skated at least 19 minutes, Washington was 26-5-2.  Fewer than 19 minutes, and the Caps were just 10-11-4. And the Caps were just 5-4-2 in the 11 games Kempny missed.

Odd Kempny Fact II… In his two full seasons in Washington, Kempny has fewer giveaways per 60 minutes (2.01/60 minutes) that any other Caps defenseman who has appeared in more than ten games with the exception of Radko Gudas (1.93/60 minutes).

Odd Kempny Fact III… Kempny is one of 11 defensemen in Caps history to play in at least 150 games (151), record at least 0.25 points per game (0.30), and post a rating of plus-40 or better (plus-44).

Game to Remember… November 1, 2019.  Sometimes the memories are of goals scored, and sometimes the memories are of helpers.  For Michal Kempny, it was the latter to open the month of November when the Caps hosted the Buffalo Sabres at Capital One Arena.  Washington buried the Sabres under an avalanche of goals in the first period, scoring four times over a span of less than five minutes to take a 4-0 lead.  Kempny assisted on the third goal, picking up the primary assist on Jakub Vrana’s second goal of the game.  Buffalo got one back mid-way through the second period, but late in the period Kempny hustled to keep a loose puck in the offensive end and fired a shot from the left point that Tom Wilson redirected past goalie Linus Ullmark to make it a 5-1 game.  Kempny recorded his third primary assist of the game in the third period when he took a drop pass from Alex Ovechkin just inside the Sabres’ blue line and fired the puck to the front of the net where T.J. Oshie was closing.  Oshie chipped the puck past Ullmark, and the Caps had their final margin in a 6-1 victory.  It was Kempny’s first three-point game as a Capital.

Game to Forget… December 16, 2019.  We are of a mind that for an NHL hockey team over the course of a regular season, there are 20 games it will win, no matter what, and 20 games it will lose, no matter what, leaving the remaining games to determine whether the season is successful or a bust.  When the Caps visited the Columbus Blue Jackets in mid-December, it appeared to be one of those games they were going to lose, no matter what.  The Blue Jackets were not especially dominating, but they cobbled together a goal by Eric Robinson in the first period and a pair of goals from Oliver Bjorkstrand in the third period to deal the Caps a 3-0 loss.  For Kempny’s part, he was on the ice for all three Columbus goals to earn him his only minus-3 rating of the season.  He finished with two shots on goal and a credited hit in 14:18 of ice time (his third lowest of the season) in what was a rather empty line on the score sheet.

Postseason…

Things started poorly for Michal Kempny in the postseason, got worse, and then got very quiet.  He had one point in the three-game round robin phase (an assist in the Caps’ lone win, a 2-1 win over the Boston Bruins).  He then went without a point in Games 1 and 2 against the New York Islanders in the opening playoff round, posting a minus-3 in a 4-2 Game 1 loss.  His 19 minutes of ice time in Game 2 were his last minutes of the season; he was held out of the final three games of the series.

Looking Ahead…

Michal Kempny has two more years to run on his four-year/$10 million contract signed in June 2018.  He does not occupy a crowded cohort (cap hit of $2.0-$3.0 million, age 27-33), but he does compare favorably with the others in the group.  The difficulty is that he is in a crowded cohort on his own team.  Call it “The Uncertainty Group.”  The Caps have decisions to make with Brenden Dillon and Radko Gudas (pending unrestricted free agents), and even Nick Jensen, who is in the same age/cap hit cohort as Kempny, with three years left on his contract.

In the end…

Michal Kempny is a huge question mark heading into the off season.  Was his drop off a product of his being not fully recovered from a serious injury, or was the drop off a permanent regression in his level of play.  He came out of the 2018 Stanley Cup run being the darling of the trade-deadline acquisition crowd, the key final element that provided stability among the defensive pairs.  But this season was uneven in the extreme with respect to his performance, resulting in his being a healthy scratch late in the regular season and again as the Caps faced playoff elimination.  The Caps are going to be asked to make a bet on his returning to full health, and full production, next season.  Given the other question marks at the position, it might not be a bet they are willing to make and could look to move him elsewhere.  It is one of the story lines that bears watching in the weeks and months ahead.

Grade: B-

Photo: Patrick Smith/Getty Images