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With five games in the books, I survived my first week of logging scoring chances, including DVRing the game Saturday night and catching up Sunday. If you haven’t read it already, my first post explains what I consider a scoring chance. As always, you can see this spreadsheet on Google Docs where I update them every week.
The Caps are getting their money’s worth for Jeff Schultz, who hasn’t had a goal against yet – and that includes leading the Caps in PK minutes with only allwoing a paltry three scoring chances against a man down. When he signed the contract extension this summer, I wrote Schultz could be “one of the NHL’s best bargains two to four years from now. If not sooner.” So far, so good.
On the flipside we have John Erskine, who is the only Capital with a negative scoring chance differential in double digits. Put another way, the Caps give the opposition 2.5 more scoring chances for every 15 minutes Erskine is on the ice. Some of this can be explained because he is being used mostly in the defensive zone as Coach Bodreau’s shutdown blueliner. When John Carlson, the other half of this new shutdown pair is only a minus 2, what explains the rest of it?
Backstrom is struggling to get points at 5v5 (only 1 assist through 5 games) despite having the best scoring chance differential per 15 min of ice time (SC +/- per 15) for all Washington forwards. I consider scoring chance differential a leading indicator (more chances = more points), so the boxcar stats will come (unless Holly is thinking of trading him to me in our fantasy league — in which case: it’s going to be a loooong season for the Swede.)
Looks like logging each game is (finally?) showing Boyd Gordon does all the little things that help the team get scoring chances 5v5 – second to Backstrom among forwards. Worth the $800k so far.
The team has lit the lamp 45% of the 5v5 scoring chances when Hockey Hero Brooks Laich is on the ice. It’s been a strong couple of games (3G/2A/5P) for everyone’s favorite tire changer. Just in time for him to be a UFA this summer. Crap.
| Player | 5v5 TOI | SC+/- per 15min | PP TOI | PP SCF/2min | PK TOI | PK SCA/2min | |||||
| Jeff Schultz | 89.7 | 0.84 | 2.0 | 0.0 | 14.9 | 0.4 | |||||
| Nicklas Backstrom | 75.6 | 0.60 | 22.7 | 1.7 | 7.0 | 0.3 | |||||
| Boyd Gordon | 36.6 | 0.41 | 1.5 | 1.3 | 9.7 | 0.6 | |||||
| Eric Fehr | 49.0 | 0.31 | 14.4 | 1.4 | 0.0 | 0.0 | |||||
| DJ King | 4.7 | 0.00 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | |||||
| Karl Alzner | 70.9 | (0.21) | 3.6 | 0.0 | 4.9 | 1.2 | |||||
| Matt Hendricks | 41.8 | (0.36) | 0.4 | 0.0 | 8.9 | 0.5 | |||||
| Alex Ovechkin | 80.8 | (0.37) | 29.3 | 1.7 | 1.3 | 0.0 | |||||
| John Carlson | 77.9 | (0.39) | 10.1 | 2.0 | 9.7 | 1.2 | |||||
| Tyler Sloan | 37.5 | (0.40) | 0.0 | 0.0 | 1.1 | 3.8 | |||||
| Tomas Fleischmann | 54.8 | (0.55) | 16.4 | 1.0 | 2.7 | 0.7 | |||||
| David Steckel | 25.3 | (0.59) | 0.0 | 0.0 | 5.4 | 1.5 | |||||
| Mike Knuble | 73.3 | (0.61) | 15.8 | 1.0 | 1.1 | 1.8 | |||||
| Mike Green | 72.1 | (0.62) | 23.3 | 1.4 | 13.4 | 0.4 | |||||
| Brooks Laich | 55.8 | (0.81) | 18.1 | 2.1 | 10.1 | 1.0 | |||||
| Alexander Semin | 60.4 | (0.99) | 19.9 | 2.2 | 8.7 | 0.7 | |||||
| Jason Chimera | 56.9 | (1.32) | 1.5 | 0.0 | 5.3 | 0.8 | |||||
| Tom Poti | 28.4 | (1.58) | 4.5 | 0.9 | 5.5 | 0.4 | |||||
| Marcus Johansson | 39.7 | (1.89) | 2.2 | 0.0 | 3.5 | 1.1 | |||||
| John Erskine | 72.0 | (2.50) | 1.3 | 1.6 | 10.8 | 1.1 | |||||
| Matt Bradley | 24.1 | (3.12) | 0.1 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | |||||
| Brian Fahey | 8.3 | (3.61) | 1.5 | 1.3 | 0.0 | 0.0 |
