Caps Get Set in Net

At noon on Wednesday, the NHL's indiscriminately stocked free agent emporium opened for its annual summer shopping spree. Just over an hour after the doors opened, the Capitals breezed into the store and grabbed their next starting goaltender off the shelves. Darcy Kuemper, who earned 10 of the Colorado Avalanche's 16 playoff victories in the team's run to a Stanley Cup championship last month, inked a five-year deal with Washington, a pact that will carry an annual salary cap hit of $5.25 million. The 32-year-old Kuemper is coming off a career best season in which he notched 37 regular season wins and played a career high 57 games.

A bit later in the day, the Caps filled out their goaltending tandem with the addition of veteran journeyman Charlie Lindgren, who is expected to be Kuemper's partner in the Washington crease in 2022-23. The 28-year-old Lindgren signed a three-year deal with an annual salary cap hit of $1.1 million.
Washington also signed defenseman Erik Gustafsson to a one-year deal worth $800,000. Gustafsson would appear to be a candidate to fill the third pairing vacancy created earlier in the day when Justin Schultz signed a two-year deal with Seattle. Schultz skated on Washington's third pairing and played on the team's second power play unit for the last two seasons.
The 6-foot-5, 215-pound Kuemper was originally a sixth-round choice (160th overall) of the Minnesota Wild in the 2009 NHL Draft. He made his NHL debut during the lockout-shortened 2012-13 season with the Wild, the first of five seasons he spent in Minnesota where he mainly worked in a backup or tandem role behind/with Niklas Backstrom, Josh Harding and Devan Dubnyk.
Kuemper signed as a free agent with Los Angeles on a one-year deal in the summer of 2017, and the Kings subsequently shipped him to Arizona just ahead of the 2018 trade deadline. In three seasons with the Coyotes, Kuemper elevated his game to the point where he finished in the top seven in Vezina Trophy balloting in each of his first two full seasons in the desert. Starting 55 games for Arizona in 2018-19, he posted a 27-20-8 mark with a 2.33 GAA and a .925 save pct.
Although he missed 28 games with a lower body injury in 2019-20, Kuemper improved upon his qualitative numbers with the Coyotes the following season. Arizona made the playoffs only once in Kuemper's four seasons with the team, but he managed a 55-48-15 mark to go along with 10 shutouts, a 2.43 GAA and a .920 save pct. in 121 starts with the team.
Kuemper's impressive body of work with the Coyotes ultimately led to Colorado dealing a first-round pick, a conditional third-round pick and defense prospect Conor Timmins to Arizona for the big netminder last July 28. The Saskatoon native did not disappoint, starting a career high 57 games and posting a 37-12-4 mark with five shutouts, a 2.54 GAA and a .921 save pct. in his lone season with the Avs, and helping to backstop Colorado to its first Stanley Cup championship in just over two decades.
A native of Lakeville, Minn., Lindgren played collegiate hockey at St. Cloud State, where Caps center Nic Dowd was among his teammates. After three seasons with the Huskies, Lindgren signed as a free agent with Montreal. During his first two seasons in the Habs' organization, Caps' goaltender Zach Fucale and Lindgren were teammates together in the AHL, first at St. John's and then at Laval.
In five seasons as a depth goaltender in the Montreal system, Lindgren got into 24 games with the Habs and posted a 10-12-2 mark with a couple of shutouts, a 3.00 GAA and a .907 save pct. After signing a two-way deal with St. Louis last summer, Lindgren turned in a solid season with AHL Springfield and he also won each of his five starts with the Blues in 2021-22, posting a 1.22 GAA and a .958 save pct. in the process. After becoming the first player in Blues' franchise history to win each of his first five games with the team, Lindgren had a lot of teams interested in his services this summer.
For the Caps, Wednesday's twin crease additions complete a rather sudden sea change in the crease and the deals are likely to interrupt a long and prosperous run of team success with homegrown goaltenders, netminders drafted and developed here in the District.
Back on Jan. 27, 1995, Olie Kolzig earned his first NHL win over the New York Islanders and Washington's first victory of the young and lockout-abbreviated 1994-95 NHL season. The Caps have totaled 1,081 since the outset of the '94-95 season, seventh most in the League over that span. But the Caps lead the NHL with 886 wins from "homegrown" goaltenders over that time frame, wins from goalies that were drafted by the team. And the gap between Washington and second place New Jersey (800 wins from homegrown goalies) is the largest between any two teams on the ledger.
Eighty-two percent of Washington's win total since '94-95 can be attributed to homegrown goalies, but the Caps are set to hit the pause button on that count in 2022-23. After trading Vitek Vanecek to New Jersey on Friday and allowing Ilya Samsonov to become an unrestricted free agent by opting to not issue a qualifying contract offer for the upcoming season, the Caps will cast their lot with a pair of free agent goalies in Kuemper and Lindgren in '22-23.
The last time the Caps went through a full season without any victories from homegrown goaltenders was more than three decades ago, in 1988-89.