Should the Toronto Maple Leafs Pursue Darcy Kuemper?

There’s a few Stanley Cup winning goalies available for free this summer; should the Toronto Maple Leafs pursue one of the newest members of the club?

Of course, with Marc-Andre Fleury and Braden Holtby also free agents, there’s plenty of options for the Toronto Maple Leafs, but maybe they should renew their interest in newly-crowned Cup winner, Darcy Kuemper.

Kuemper, of course, has historically been rumoured as an option for the team and on the back of a run to the Stanley Cup; he’d certainly lift the locker-room, you’d expect.

The challenge will obviously lie with seeing his true value and working out whether he really offers a cheaper and safer option than convincing Jack Campbell to hang around.

Would Darcy Kuemper Drastically Improve the Toronto Maple Leafs?

The obvious question is whether Darcy Kuemper is actually a step-up on Jack Campbell and whether he’d command a financial outlay significantly higher than Campbell.

Looking to his regular season statistics at even strength, there’s no denying that Kuemper was a top-five goalie in the league, at least based on his Save Percentage and Goals Saved Above Average. (stats naturalstattrick.com).

Jack Campbell, by comparison was a top 40 guy on both those specific statistics at even-strength last season.

Of course, you can make certain arguments for the Colorado Avalanche having better team defense than the Toronto Maple Leafs, but the gap between the two goalies’ numbers is significant enough to not be able to put it solely on team performance.

Even more significantly, only Ilya Sorokin and Vezina Trophy winner, Igor Shesterkin had better High Danger Goals Saved Above Average.

Suffice to say, looking at the analytics picture, Darcy Kuemper was a better goalie than Jack Campbell in the regular season and indeed saw more Stanley Cup Playoffs action and thus automatically should be seen as a better bet in the post-season.

At 32 years old and with injury concerns, the question is whether he has increased his value from his expiring $4.5 million deal.

Adding a Stanley Cup to the resume certainly does allow you to open negotiations at a higher price, but given he did end up sharing the net during the Avalanche’s run to the Cup, you have to wonder whether he’s going to get a major raise.

If a new deal comes in higher than $4.5 million, it’s questionable whether there would be an appetite for the Toronto Maple Leafs to attach such a cap hit between the pipes.

It’s a bit of a dilemma really if you’re the Toronto Maple Leafs; if you’re left with $4.5 million to spend and that turns out to be enough to renew Jack Campbell, who is two years younger; do you act on that?

Or do you head to free agency and hope you can secure someone like Kuemper, who has the results but also has a bit of a injury history and may or may not be available for the same price.

With a largely empty net currently, the Toronto Maple Leafs need to make some decisions sooner rather than later, otherwise they will find themselves starting the season with a duo of Joseph Woll and Erik Kallgren.