Living the Dream

On a starlit summer's eve in the Czech Republic, Caps defenseman Michal Kempny hosted a Stanley Cup celebration in a lush, green outdoor garden in Brno, where he spent the bulk of his European playing career. Late that evening, as his time with the Cup was winding down, Kempny carried it up a hill and spent several minutes alone with it, seemingly deep in thought.
What was going through his head as he sat there?

"My whole story, of how I got here," says Kempny. "I was thinking of everything that's behind the hard work. Every day, I am trying to work really hard and I am trying to be a better person and a better player."
It's quite a story.
Last February, Kempny was the seventh defenseman on a Chicago Blackhawks team that had spiraled out of the playoff picture in the Western Conference. In his second season with the Hawks and in the NHL, Kempny was being used sporadically and his presence in the lineup when the Caps visited Chicago on Feb. 17 had all the earmarks of a showcasing. The NHL's trade deadline was less than two weeks away at the time, and the Hawks were buried deep in the NHL's Central Division standings.

In his mind, Kempny had already decided. Come summer, he would return to Europe to play out the rest of his career. He signed with the Hawks in 2016, hoping to establish himself on this side of the Atlantic, but wasn't given much of an opportunity to do so. Like most hockey players, Kempny just wanted to play the game. If he had to finish out his career closer to home, so be it.
But less than five months after his last game with the Hawks, there was Kempny, at the top of that hill in Brno, arms wrapped around the Stanley Cup, and with a four-year, $10 million contract extension to remain in the States and in the NHL, but in Washington, where he quickly became a critical piece of the Caps' springtime drive to their first Stanley Cup title.
Top of the hill, and top of the world. But it wasn't an easy climb.

For Kempny, everything about his hockey career was delayed a few years compared to most of his peers. While most NHLers tell stories of being on the ice as toddlers and falling in love with the game before they even started going to school, Kempny came to it a bit later. He was a schoolboy when the NHL first opted to participate in the Olympic Games in 1998, and the Czech Republic team won the gold medal that year, giving Kempny his entrance to the sport.
"[Jaromir] Jagr, he is a legend," says Kempny quite simply, in explaining the allure of the game for him as a kid.
Ironically, Kempny finally got a chance to play against Jagr in the middle of last season when the big winger was winding down his NHL career with Calgary. With Florida in 2016-17, Jagr played twice against then Hawks in Kempny's first season with Chicago, but the defenseman was a healthy scratch in both games. He didn't know it at the time, but Kempny - who was born a couple of months after Jagr was drafted into the NHL - played against his idol in the final game of his storied, 1,733-game NHL career on Dec. 31, 2017 in Calgary.
"I had a chance to play with him on the national team for a couple of games," recounts Kempny. "He is a legend, like I said. He is unbelievable, and he is an unbelievable player. He is a really good guy, too."
Playing against Jagr was a dream of Kempny's, and it came true after another dream of his, which was to play with Jagr.
Kempny uses the word "dream" quite liberally, almost as if he is able to make things happen simply by dreaming them. Once he got hooked on hockey, the dreams came quickly, one right after the other. He has managed to bring every one of them to fruition.
"I lived year-by-year," he says, of his existence before coming to the NHL. "My first dream was to play in the Czech League, and my other dream was to play on the national team. And then my next dream was to play in some other countries in Europe, like Russia, Sweden, Finland - it doesn't matter [where]. I got the opportunity to play in Russia, and I think it's a better league than in the Czech Republic, so I didn't think about it a long time, I took it."

Unlike most up-and-coming players, Kempny wasn't on anyone's draft radar. During what would have been his draft season, he played one game for Skalica HK 36 in the Slovak League, going minus-2 as the youngest player on a team that featured former NHL star Ziggy Palffy.
Two seasons later, he turned up on the roster of Brno Kometa in his native Czech Republic. As a 19-year-old he was the team's seventh defenseman, playing in 24 games without recording a point. He was also a minus-13.
The next two seasons brought more of the same; Kempny was on the Brno roster, but played sporadically. In three seasons as Brno's seventh defenseman, Kempny recorded one goal and two points, both points finally coming in his third season there. He was a minus-30 while playing in 68 out of a possible 156 games, and he would turn 22 just before the start of the 2012-13 season.
"I was trying to figure myself out and find my way," says Kempny of those years.

At this stage of his career, absolutely no one anywhere would have predicted that Kempny would land in the NHL in half a decade. But Kempny was also moving on from Brno; he was going to Slavia Praha, a much better team. Able to play regularly for the first time in his pro career, Kempny played in 51 of 52 games, and he totaled five goals and 14 points to finish third on the team in scoring among defensemen.
"Probably the big change for me was that one year in Prague," muses Kempny. "I had a really good guy for strength and conditioning coach. He got me to the next level physically, and after that season I was working out really hard every day. I was trying to get better every day, and I wanted to be better and stronger than the other guys in the Czech League. That is probably what got me to Russia and then to the NHL."
Finally established as a legitimate defenseman in the Czech League, Kempny went back to Brno and had two more strong seasons, leading the team in scoring among defensemen with eight goals and 29 points in 2014-15.
Almost 25 by this time, Kempny was starting to attract the attention of scouts of teams in other leagues, including the NHL. He moved on to Russia's KHL to play for Omsk Avangard in 2015-16.
"It was a little bit of a step up," recalls Kempny of the move to the KHL. "And after my first season in KHL, I played in my first World Championship in Moscow, and then I got the opportunity to go to the NHL, and I signed the NHL contract."
Teams in the NHL are always seeking late bloomers from European leagues. Scouts started coming around during Kempny's last season in the Czech League in 2014-15.
"The scouts from NHL teams were coming in my last season in the Czech League," says Kempny, "and I was in touch with scouts during my season in Russia, so there was a lot of contact with me and with my agent."
Up to that point, had he ever even thought about playing in the National Hockey League?
"No, never," came the quick reply. And then after a pause to consider, Kempny lets out a laugh. "It's crazy."
It really is. Kempny started knocking off his dreams, one by one. Playing in other countries, playing for the national team. In the KHL, he was the top defenseman on the best team in its division that season.
"In Russia, I was first defenseman," says Kempny. "I played on the [power play] and the [penalty kill]. I spent a lot of time on the ice and my average was for sure over 20 minutes every game."

Kempny was an alternate captain on the Czech Republic team at the 2016 IIHF World Championship, despite the fact that he had yet to play in the NHL at that point. His team was eliminated in a 2-1 loss to the United States on May 19, 2016, and five days later, Kempny signed a one-year contract to come to the NHL and play for Chicago.
But before he donned a Hawks sweater for the first time, there was more national team play, at the 2016 World Cup of Hockey in Toronto that fall.
"And then I came to Chicago, and it was after World Cup," says Kempny. "World Cup was bad for me; I didn't play well and I didn't feel good there, but it doesn't matter now. I came to Chicago and I played as maybe the sixth [defenseman] and I didn't play on the [power play], so it was a little bit different."

Kempny played sporadically for Joel Quenneville's Blackhawks in 2016-17, skating in just 50 of 82 games while averaging just under 15 minutes per night in ice time. He scored his first NHL goal on Dec. 30, 2016 at Carolina, beating Cam Ward.
When the Hawks were swept aside in four straight games at the hands of the Nashville Predators in the first round of the 2017 Stanley Cup playoffs, Kempny watched the first three games from the press box. He suited up for the finale, a 4-1 Chicago loss, but played less than nine minutes that night.
"It was really tough for me to play this game because I didn't play the last probably maybe seven games in the regular season," says Kempny. "And then they told me, 'You're playing today.' So it was really tough for me. My legs didn't feel well and I was slow; it was a bad game. We lost, and that was it. End of the season."
His first season hadn't gone as expected, but it wasn't a disaster, either.
"I was just thinking that I was in the NHL and playing with and against the best players in the hockey world," recalls Kempny of his mindset then. "I had big respect. But I felt like I was just waiting and waiting for something.
"I played 50 games my first year and then one game in the playoffs. I took it because it was my first year. And then the GM [Stan Bowman] was happy with me, so we decided to sign a contract for another year. When I had a meeting with the head coach, he told me 'I give you more time, more ice time. You will get your chance.' But after seven games [in 2017-18], I was a healthy scratch."
Kempny played just four games in November and just five in December of last season. The Blackhawks were going nowhere, and Kempny's career was clearly stalled, too.
"I was a healthy scratch all the time, almost," he says. "I didn't play for 13 games in a row, so it was really tough for me. But then I got traded here."

Washington was in Chicago for a Feb. 17 game, the second game of the Caps' annual mentors' trip. The Caps ended up on the wrong end of a 7-1 drubbing at the hands of the Hawks, a lopsided setback that left them with just six wins in 15 games as the trade deadline and the season's final quarter approached.
Kempny didn't know it then, but the reason he was in the lineup that night was so the Caps' braintrust could get a good look at him up close. Washington was bleeding goals against; the loss to the Hawks left the Caps with 33 goals against in eight games, and they were in need of mobile, puck-moving defenseman and had very little salary cap space with which to work.
Washington's pro scouting staff identified Kempny as a guy who might be able to help, and the price was right. Two days later, on Feb. 19, the Caps shipped a third-round pick to the Hawks for the 27-year-old blueliner.

"We were so disconnected at the time, as a five-man unit," says Caps coach Todd Reirden, "Credit to [Caps general manager Brian MacLellan] and the pro scouts for finding him. I watched him play at least six games [before the trade] as well, and you certainly could see things."
It is not an overstatement to say that the Kempny deal is one of the best in franchise history; it's difficult to imagine the Caps winning the Cup last spring without him. But it's a two-way street. Without the Caps rescuing him from the Windy City, Kempny would not be in the NHL today.
"For sure, for sure," agrees Kempny, who had already made up his mind to return to Europe for 2018-19. "Probably not Czech, but I don't know, maybe Russia or Sweden or Finland. The trade saved my career in the NHL, for sure.
"I wanted to be traded. I was talking during the season with my agent, and I told him that I wanted to be traded, and that after the season I'm gone from the NHL. He told me to be strong and things like that, so I was trying to be strong. Some days, it was really tough. But at the end, I got traded. But I wanted to be traded for sure. In Chicago, I felt like the last bottle on the bench. My teammates were really good to me and they supported me, but I didn't feel respect from the coaches. It was really tough."

Getting traded midseason is never easy in the NHL, either. You've got to pick up your entire life and move it somewhere else on short notice. You've got to integrate yourself into a new locker room with new teammates as seamlessly and as quickly as possible. You've got to learn your new team's system of playing the game, and you've got to develop some on-ice chemistry with your new teammates. You're going to have new living arrangements, and you're going to a city where you don't know your way around.
Oh, and the team that acquired you? Yeah, they need you to be at your best right away. The season is winding down, and they gave up assets to get you.
Kempny watched his new teammates lose to Tampa Bay on Feb. 20, and he was in the lineup for the first time against the Panthers in Florida two nights later. Aside from an early season injury and missing a game because of illness last month, he has been there ever since.
"When I had a bad game in Chicago, the next game I didn't play," says Kempny. "I was a healthy scratch. So it was a big difference for me between Chicago and Washington."

Kempny and John Carlson played together throughout the Stanley Cup playoffs, and they've been an extremely strong pairing for Washington this season. But initially, Kempny was placed on his off (right) side, on a pairing with Brooks Orpik.
Late in NHL seasons, practice sessions tend to be few and far between. The schedule is tight, and rest and off days are much more important in March than in November. Kempny got some hands-on instruction from Reirden, then the Caps' associate coach and the coach in charge of the team's defensemen, and he spent some time watching video, getting a crash course on the Washington way of doing things.
"We had a plan together," recalls Kempny. "He told me when I got here, 'You are going to play the first couple of games with Brooksie, and then you will get a chance to play with Carly.' It was the first time that I knew something good was going to happen. I knew where I was and what I was supposed to do, and that is something that is important to me. I need to talk with my coaches and I need to know that he trusts me. It's something important to me in my play."
It was not an instant success, but the Caps were patient. Kempny played well enough to remain in the lineup, but he did not record a point until his 18th game with Washington. His possession analytics weren't great, but neither were those of most of his teammates. The Caps spent last season in the bottom third of the league in that regard.

"Once he got here, it was just a matter of putting him in situations where he would have a chance to succeed," says Reirden. "I didn't mind putting him on his wrong side to start with, letting him get his feet wet and then getting to work on him. I saw that he hadn't thought about the game the way that our other defenseman have been taught to think about the game, so I knew there was going to be more work than expected.
"I figured that even though we believed that he and John would make a nice pairing, I thought we would let it go for a little bit to let him get his feet wet because otherwise he was going to make the same mistakes, and then John would lose confidence in him. And then the next thing you know, everyone else is going to lose confidence in him. So let's let him play on the wrong side for a bit, and then there is an easy answer as to why it's not working."
Once the Caps were able to get Kempny established as a legitimate partner for Carlson, the rest of their blueline corps fell into place, too. They had Matt Niskanen and Dmitry Orlov already set as a top-four pairing, and Kempny's arrival put Orpik and rookie Christian Djoos into better slots on the team's third pair. The team's five-on-five game got tighter, and Kempny averaged almost 17 minutes a night while skating in 22 regular season games with the Caps.
Washington won 12 of its last 15 regular season games, and it went 15-7-0 with Kempny in the lineup.

"Really, he had to be taught how to play our style," says Reirden. "So I let it go, and then when the time was right I started slotting him in a little bit with John, and we began to build it that way. You don't put the guy on the spot right away, because more often than not it's going to fail, especially when you know what he was doing [wrong]. I was like, 'This isn't going to work with how our team is playing.' I kind of let it be bad for a little bit, and then once he got up to speed I moved him in."
Washington's possession analytics remained mediocre during the playoffs, but it didn't matter. The Caps also put together a plus-14 goal differential at five-on-five, the best of any of the league's 16 playoff entrants. In the end, it was enough to win the Cup in Vegas on June 7. Kempny contributed two goals and five points to the cause, skating nearly 18 minutes a night and playing in all 24 games.
He was set to become an unrestricted free agent less than a month after hoisting the Cup, and although he and his agent shopped around some, Kempny knew he wanted to continue his career in Washington, and that was especially true after Reirden was elevated to the head coaching position in the District later in June, after Barry Trotz departed for Long Island.

On June 29 of this year, two days before he would have been an unrestricted free agent, Kempny achieved something he likely never dreamed of when he signed a four-year contract worth $10 million to remain in Washington with the Capitals.
"I signed the contract because I knew that Todd was going to be here and I wanted to play under him," Kempny declares. "He helped me a lot when I got here. I had a couple of bad games and I still played. So I am really excited to be here and play under him."
It's a new season now, and Carlson and Kempny are thriving together. They lead the NHL in plus/minus among defensemen; both are at plus-21 just 33 games into the campaign. With 10 points (two goals, eight assists) in just 30 games, Kempny has already matched his NHL single-season high in that category.
"I think that I'm a little more aggressive at defending on the rush, and so is he now," says Carlson of his partnership with Kempny. "But in-zone I would say that I'm a little more defensive and I try to pick good angles and spots where he is more of an in-your-face defender.
"I think that helps the blend of us together. We are able to break up a lot of plays and get pucks into the hands of the players that we have in front of us. He is such a good skater that we can get up and down the ice pretty good. When you break the puck out well, you're going to get chances as a defenseman. It's usually the opposite; if I break it out he is going to get a chance, and if he breaks it out I'm going to get a chance on the rush. That's our team mentality right now, and it's been working for us."

Washington has won 12 of its last 15 games. During that span, Carlson is plus-15 and Kempny is plus-12 at five-on-five. Among the rest of their teammates, only Alex Ovechkin (plus-14) is in that neighborhood.
"We are trying to get better every game," says Kempny. "I try to make simple first passes. Johnny is a machine for making points; he is unbelievable. I really appreciate to play with him. He is a really good guy and a very good person, and I enjoy playing with him. Hopefully we are better than last season. We are trying to build up our game and keep it up."
Carlson is eight months older than Kempny, but by the time the Czech defenseman made his NHL debut in 2016-17, Carlson had already logged 454 games in the league. Not everyone develops at the same rate, but as a guy who didn't register on the radar of NHL scouts until he was nearly 25, Kempny is extremely rare among players in the league.

"It is bizarre," says Caps goaltender Braden Holtby. "I don't know what kind of player he was back then, but it's hard to believe that there has been that big of a change because he does everything well. I think his biggest attribute is his work ethic. He doesn't quit on any play, and that's something that a lot of times you just can't teach, it's something guys naturally have. But you put that together with skating ability and puck ability, too, and he is a complete player. I think that's why he suits John so well, because John is strong in every aspect of the game as well. So they can read off each other and feed off each other, and I think that's why that partnership is so strong."
Kempny's skating is certainly a keystone asset and he wouldn't be here without it.
"I think because Kemps can skate so well, he really complements John well," says Niskanen. "It helps with their breakouts, because Kemps can skate the puck out of trouble on his own. He gets back quickly, he's pretty skilled, and good at making reads and they work well with each other. He is an efficient puck mover too, so they don't have to defend a lot when they're playing well.
"They both have good gap control and quickly turn pucks the other way and are efficient at starting the rush, and that plays to John's strengths. When he is moving the puck quickly and joining, and he is being dangerous offensively, John is a top, top player. So it's a good fit because he moves the puck so well and he skates so well."

Besides the skating and the work ethic, Kempny is also one tough hombre who doesn't mind getting his nose dirty, or getting it scraped up. In a recent game against Buffalo, he took a couple of costly penalties early in the game. But when the Sabres' Sam Reinhart took one extra whack at Holtby's glove, Kempny erupted, taking Reinhart to task and - fortunately - taking the Buffalo forward to the box with him.
"He is competitive and he is tough as nails," says Holtby. "He is a guy who could play in any era. He is not scared of anything, and obviously as a goalie you really appreciate those guys.
"I think that's why he had the ability to change our team when he came in last year. He blocks shots and he is one of those guys that if he makes a mistake, he'll do everything he can to work his way back or at least take in the play, and that's huge because everyone makes mistakes; it's what you do after it. And he almost thrives after that and works even harder to make up for it, and that's an amazing ability."
Now established as an NHL regular and under contract for three seasons beyond the current one, Kempny hasn't changed. His work ethic still drives him, and he is committed to improving.
What areas of his game does he want to work on?
"I can go up in everything," says Kempny."I feel like I have some space, and I want to get there. I just want to be better every year, every practice, every game, every day. And I wanted to make sure that whatever time I spend here, I would be working at being a better player."

Whatever he does in his NHL career from here, it will be hard to top what he has done in the last year, and really, in the last five or six years.
"That is something crazy," Kempny freely admits. "I had this story in my dreams, just in my dreams. I couldn't imagine that it was going to happen. And it was something crazy, to win the Stanley Cup.
"When I was a kid, I had pictures of players from NHL. And then I'm here, and I'm playing in the NHL. To win the Stanley Cup is something real big for me and I really appreciate it.
"I have always a dream in my head, and I'm going for it."