Who is David Kampf?! (Part 1)
Breaking down one of the newest Maple Leaf signings as part of my inaugural blog post
It was late in the afternoon on Wednesday, July 28th when the Maple Leafs announced they had come to terms with F David Kampf on a 2-year contract with an AAV of $1.5M.
If your first reaction was - who??? - I don’t blame you. As someone that likes to think they have a pretty good pulse on the game, this was a name that I wasn’t all that familiar with, and so it’s fair to say that many out there in Leafs Nation were probably feeling the same.
But before we get into the analysis and video, let’s take a step back to discuss how we even got here. And by here, I mean - what is “There’s a Stadt for That” and who am I?
My name is Adam Halberstadt and in addition to being a life-long Leaf fan, I’ve also had the great pleasure of spending the last 10 years within the Ticket Sales & Membership department at MLSE. I began my career as an intern during the 2011-12 season with the Toronto Marlies, and have grown into a leadership role where I now help coach and develop our next crop of sales superstars.
I’ve been blessed to have spent my entire career working for my dream organization, making life long friends, growing tremendously as a human, and winning championships!
Always having a passion for the game (some might even call it an obsession), it wasn’t until during the COVID-19 pandemic that I started to explore the deep realms of hockey analysis in my spare time. What started out as a few extra follows on Twitter quickly became way more than that as I immersed myself within the #HockeyTwitter community and truly became a student of the game.
Over the last 8+ months, I’ve taken in more information than I ever could have imagined, due in large part to a platform like Substack which has allowed anyone and everyone to share their thoughts, ideas and concepts with the world. I’m forever indebted to those that have shared their knowledge with me, and now it’s my turn to reciprocate.
I will never watch a hockey game the same again.
You’re probably now asking, “but wait, what does this have to do with David Kampf?”.
Well, like I’m sure most of you can relate to, I have a list of things that I’d like to do, but often find myself either delaying or putting off all together. Starting a newsletter dedicated to hockey analysis, and publishing my thoughts with the world has been on that list for weeks on end.
It wasn’t until I read the book “Linchpin: Are You Indispensable” - an excellent read that discusses the value of sharing your art with the world - that I finally worked up the courage to do the work and in the words of author Seth Godin - ship it out to each of you.
And what better place to start than by analyzing a player you and I had never heard of prior today, right?
So here we are.
My nickname at MLSE is Stadts - derived from the end of my last name Halberstadt. The joke has always been that it has nothing to do with statistics, even though most people I meet for the first time in business assume I must be some sort of math whiz to have gained such a nickname. I’ll save you the time - I’m not.
But maybe, just maybe, this was always meant to be. A kid that excelled at math growing up (I truly enjoyed my afterschool KUMON education), has watched seemingly every minute of Maple Leafs hockey since I can remember, and has a passion for coaching and developing others, would become a devout Hockey Analytics student and create a blog about stats, analysis and player development.
I have no idea where this might go, but alas, welcome to “There’s a Stadt for That”.
David Kampf - F
In Kyle Dubas’ media availability today, he acknowledged that Kampf had been a player the Maple Leafs had eyed for some time. When the Chicago Blackhawks did not extend the Restricted Free Agent a qualifying offer earlier this week, he became an Unrestricted Free Agent and inked a deal with Toronto the first day he hit the market.
So who is David Kampf and where does he slot in to this Maple Leafs line up?
Let’s start with the STADTS:
Playing for a Blackhawks team that finished the season 24-25-7, you can understand why most of his advanced stats do not appear to be favourable:
However, this is precisely the reason why the numbers are never the full story. While advanced analytics help inform decisions, the true analysis starts to take shape when you use the statistics to determine where to begin your research.
In Gail Kauchak’s end-of-season evaluation for thehockeywriters.com, she added important perspective to his numbers, grading his season an A- and drawing attention to the fact that he started over 67% of his shifts in the DZ against the opponents top players and logging the most penalty kill minutes of all Chicago forwards.
In addition to this, if there’s one number that jumps off the page when looking at the numbers above, it’s his PDO - a combination of his team’s on-ice shooting % + on-ice save %.
If this is your first time looking at PDO, it’s essentially a fancy way of looking at the role puck luck played in a team’s performance. Under the logic that 100% of shots on goal are either a goal or a save, a PDO below 1.000 suggests that Kampf was on the wrong side of the bounces in 2020-21.
Next, I like to look at his isolated summary on HockeyViz.com to get a visual understanding of his on-ice impact:
Again, if you’re looking at something like this for the first time - let me break it down for you. On offence (the top of the rink), RED = GOOD and BLUE = BAD. On defence, it’s the opposite. What these lovely blobs are showing you is the volume of shot attempts that he generates, and defends against, relative to the league average. So if we were to focus on this past season, what we see is that he essentially played at both ends of the rink at a rate that of a replacement level player.
However, look 2 rinks to the left and you can see why the Maple Leafs have likely coveted this player for a few years. See all that blue in the DZ? Kampf has clearly exemplified an ability to suppress high-danger shot attempts against. And his offensive impact has improved in each of the 4 seasons he’s played in the NHL.
So in summary, the numbers would suggest that Kampf is a 25-year old centreman that, for the most part, has held his own versus difficult competition and on the penalty kill. In 2020-21, he generated 55 scoring chances, and had an individual expected goals rate of 4.92 - numbers essentially identical to Tampa’s Anthony Cirelli - a name more fans would recognize and likely celebrate the acquisition of.
As for the fact that he only scored 1 goal in 2020-21, Kampf finished the season with a shooting % of 1.92% at even-strength, dead last amongst centres that played a minimum of 500 minutes. That’s roughly 8 percentage points below the league average. I’d be willing to bet he’ll get some more fortunate bounces next season, but the video will certainly add important perspective.
Stay tuned for Part II, when we turn to the video and marry the numbers to the eye test. Thanks for reading!
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