Toronto Maple Leafs: Realistic Expectations For The New Guys
By Gordon Munro
David Kampf
Since Keefe took over, you’ve seen him try to make a “shut-down” line, luckily for him David Kampf seems to fit that mold to a tee.
Over the course of his 235 game career so far, he has started in the defensive zone 69% of the time. He’s faired quite well in those minutes generating 49% of shot attempts* while he’s on the ice and 47% of expected goals*. Accounting for his extreme usage, those are really solid numbers. If he’s doing that against top lines, he’s freeing up his team’s best players for easier matchups, so he is very valuable.
This as you can probably guess, means that David Kampf isn’t a high scorer. Over his career he’s averaged 0.25 pts/gp or 20 points over an 82 game season. His actual career high is 19 points in 63 games, his career high in goals is 8. His highest points/gp over a season is 0.30. Now, his early pre-season success got some fans excited but that should be taken with a Texas sized grain of salt. He’s never been a scorer and likely won’t get a golden opportunity to be one in Toronto.
As of right now, it looks like he’ll be spending most of his time on the Toronto Maple Leafs with Ondrej Kase (who we’ll get to next). Kase can generate offence at a high level so for this purpose I’ll assume Kampf will hit close to his career high in points/gp of 0.30 or 25 points over 82 games. As we all know, Kase can be injury prone so there is a good chance he doesn’t spend a whole season on the same line with Kampf.