After spending the last two seasons exclusively in the minors, veteran free agent Steven Kampfer has decided to go back overseas. Traktor Chelyabinsk of the KHL announced that they’ve reached an agreement with the defenseman for the upcoming season.
The 35-year-old is a veteran of 15 professional seasons, getting into 231 NHL games over parts of nine years. The bulk of those contests came with Boston who acquired him from Anaheim back in 2010; he wound up with two separate stints with them, bookmarking his time at the top level. All told, Kampfer has 15 goals and 24 assists along with 305 blocks and 328 hits in just under 16 minutes per game at the NHL level.
Kampfer has spent the bulk of his professional career in the minors, however, spending parts of 11 seasons in the AHL, spanning 370 games. 45 of those came last season with Tucson where he was fairly productive offensively, collecting 22 points.
But with his last NHL appearance coming back in the 2020-21 campaign, Kampfer has decided that his best bet is to return to Russia where he spent the 2021-22 season with Ak Bars Kazan. With them, he logged nearly 21 minutes a game while collecting 30 points in 45 appearances and returning to the KHL might give him a chance at playing a bigger role than he was in Arizona’s system as a veteran mentor.