David Kampf Isn't A Marco Rossi Replacement

Marco Rossi has been sidelined by a lower-body injury, according to a report from The Athletic’s Michael Russo. As a result, Russo and I must (separately) write about David Kampf. 

It would be one thing to write about Kampf joining a team other than the Minnesota Wild. Kampf is a solid role player who delivers middle-six quality forward play from the center position. His defensive impacts are effective, and he can chip in on the penalty kill when needed. 

His skill in the faceoff dot is also solid. He’s won between 51% and 53% of his faceoffs in each of the past six seasons, something that any beat writer (or me) will have to take a sentence or two to tell you about. I almost wasted another 15 minutes in Excel providing more context on just how many extra possessions this comes out to, until I remembered: 

I don’t care, and you shouldn’t either. 

Here is a list of things that David Kampf simply does not do: 

• Drive offense
• Score goals
• Assist on goals
• Skate on the ice at the same time as his teammates have scoring chances

Sure, it happens occasionally. But Kampf does none of these things above a fourth-line level. That is to say, below the 25th percentile. That has been true each of the past two years, as confirmed by Dom Luszczyszyn’s analytical model. 

There are many incorrect responses you could make to these numbers. 

Analytics are unfair to role players. They don’t know he’s shutting down the top line every night! 

Luszczyszyn’s model specifically quantifies the offensive and defensive impacts of opponents and teammates for the 2024-25 season. Kampf actually gets deployed against his opponent’s best defenders and worst offensive threats. The net effect was about two goals for and two goals against. 

I don’t believe in those made-up stats. Kampf’s faceoff percentage is something you can take to the bank. 

Made-up, like “goals” and “assists?” I’ll concede that “offensive impacts” are more of a black box. However, if you want to get real, offensive impact is mainly made up by shot attempts, the King of Hockey, with context given to the location of those shots. 

Compare that to faceoffs. While they are always credited to one team or the other as the winner, there’s no context for the quality of a faceoff win. The team that wins the faceoff can turn it over on the next puck touch. 

It also lacks context for where a faceoff occurs. Most teams give their most valuable faceoffs to their best centers, meaning the quality of competition has a massive impact on faceoff percentage, which raw faceoff win rate doesn't capture. 

Do you know who this looks like? Do you know which player on the 2024-25 Minnesota Wild looked just like David Kampf, but a little bit better? Freddy Gaudreau. 

We did it. We recreated Freddy Gaudreau in the aggregate. 

Let me be clear: I think Gaudreau is a serious NHL player. He could fit on many NHL rosters. But didn’t Minnesota seek a fourth-line center in free agency? If Nico Sturm weren’t a serious upgrade, why else send out Gaudreau? If the Wild wanted both players, they could have kept both! 

They traded Gaudreau for a reason, and it isn’t that the 2025 fourth-round pick they acquired for him is going to help them win a Stanley Cup. It’s that another role-playing bottom-six forward does not fit on this roster! 

And, Freddy Gaudreau is better than David Kampf! The only area Kampf has Gaudreau beat is that he will win between three and five more faceoffs out of every 100 faceoffs they see. 

None of this even begins to drive at the heart of the issue. It’s not that David Kampf should never take an NHL ice sheet again. He just brings nothing to the Wild that they don’t already have, while addressing none of the issues that have Minnesotans questioning this team’s playoff hopes. 

Examine this Wild lineup without Rossi: 

Kampf would slot in at 3C. Perhaps Yurov gets to stay on the third line, but it doesn’t really matter when you look at the wingers in that bottom-six. 

What if, instead, the Wild addressed that problem? 

Imagine if this team played with the above lineup, waited to accrue cap space, and put it into a second-line winger. Does it really look that different from blowing a quarter of their current cap space on Kampf and handcuffing their options at the trade deadline? 

(By the way -- when was the last time the Wild acquired a second-line winger? Drafting Matt Boldy in 2019? Trading for Kevin Fiala in 2019? Signing Ryan Hartman in 2021? Don’t you dare count trading for Marcus Johansson at the 2023 trade deadline.)

Johansson slides into a third-line role next to Tarasenko and Yurov, replaced by Hartman when Rossi returns. Both versions of that line fit the mold of the line on which Tarasenko excelled in Florida. Some rotation of Foligno, Trenin, and Hinistroza keeps all three fresh and provides flexibility on the fourth line. 

Most importantly, though, this would address the two glaring weaknesses of the 2025-26 Wild: They don’t have a real second line, so they can’t out-score mistakes from their rookie defensemen. 

David Kampf could be Mikko Koivu 2.0, and it wouldn’t address that second weakness. No matter how good the other four players defend, there will be open space to the outside of Zach Bogosian. When Zeev Buium or David Jiricek’s brain falls out and he turns the puck over on the breakout, David Kampf’s faceoff win is not coming to the rescue. 

These things will happen many times over the next five months. It’s what happens when teams develop new defensemen. Without a serious secondary scoring threat, Minnesota will continue to give up leads and be unable to retake them. 

It’s time for the Wild to address the problem that has plagued this club since Kevin Fiala departed. The problem isn’t the depth forwards, and the solution isn’t another role player. David Kampf isn’t the answer for a team with Stanley Cup aspirations.