Twenty Games In: Seeing Caps Forwards in Pretty, Color-Coded Context

Photo: Christian Petersen

There are lots of different ways to look at hockey information. The Sunday snapshot is just one of those ways, and it’s far from being comprehensive or fully circumspect. Sometimes the numbers sort of lose their meaning– as if in a vacuum.

Is a 2.14 CorsiRel good or bad? How good or how bad? Is it a percentage or a rate? How does it compare to the rest of the league? What is a CorsiRel anyway?

As a community, we need more and different ways of presenting and intuiting data that can sometimes be untidy and inscrutable.

Here’s one idea. Now that the Capitals have twenty games under their belt, let’s look at Cap forwards in the context of the whole league. No hard numbers here, just big-picture, stack-ranking stuff– a new way of looking at familiar stuff, but with pretty colors this time.

There are 378 forwards who have played at least 100 minutes this season. I ranked all those forwards by five metrics:

• time on ice per game;
• relative shot-attempt percentage (aka puck possession compared to rest of team);
• individual shot-attempt rate;
• PDO, which is the sum of on-ice shooting and scoring, as a proxy for luck; and
• offensive-zone starts.

I placed the Capitals into numbered and color-coded quintiles– buckets from “best” to “worst” although those adjectives are sort of insufficient.

The result is an at-a-glance understanding of how Caps forwards are playing and are being used and are getting bounces– all relative to the rest of the league. It’s nothing absolute– just one more angle from which to understand what’s happening.

Time On Ice

Five-on-five time on ice per game

• Alex Ovechkin and Nick Backstrom, obviously, are used whenever possible. They’re both seeing around 16 minutes of 5v5 a night, which is top-5 in the league. Because they’re fantastic.
• One note about the sampling here–  the Caps haven’t spent a lot of time on the power play, partially because they’re so good at scoring on the power play, which likely distorted Ovechkin and Backstrom’s place in the list upwards.
• There is some dispute about my “the third line is the second line” assertion. Looking at the information here, the difference is about five seconds per game. How about we just call them 2a and 2b?
• In my visualization of ice time and possession, I said I thought Evgeny Kuznetsov‘s spot in the bottom six was appropriate. I stand by that observation, but keeping Kuznetsov in the 7th percentile of 5v5 ice time, with fewer than nine minutes a night, is out of whack.
• The players in quintile II– Ward, Wilson, and Fehr– are also your part-time top liners.

Relative Possession

Difference in shot-attempt percentage when player is on the ice versus on the bench

• Alex Ovechkin is in the top quintile again, but he’s at the bottom of it– slot 74 of 76. That’s not a dig on Ovechkin, but rather an acknowledgment that the Capitals are pretty solid at puck possession throughout the lineup.
• …Or at least among forwards. As I noted the other day, the Caps have trouble in distributing ice time to their defense, but that trouble is spread out among all forwards– though the top liners are hurt more than others because of how much ice time they share with the shutdown-role defense.
• Troy Brouwer doesn’t move the Corsi needle either way, which he’s probably fine with. By now it’s clear his role should be as a finisher anyway.
• Jason Chimera and Jay Beagle are not just in the bottom quintile of relative possession; they’re in the bottom ten percent, seeing 7.4 and 8.4 percent of shots swing to the other team’s possession when they take shifts. Anchors.

Individual Shot Attempts

Shots, missed shots, and blocked shots by player per 60 minutes

• Alex Ovechkin is the 6th most prolific shooter so far this season. Above him are James Neal, Jeff Skinner, Cam Atkinson, and two fourth liners who I’m certain will drop off. Despite a lull a few weeks back, Ovi is still Ovi. The goals will come– and you’ll see how below.
• Marcus Johansson in any other season would be in quintile V along with the other reluctant shooters. Now he is firing 14.4 shot attempts per 60 minutes, with the top-100 forwards. Mojo is in beast mode, except unlike other beast modes, this one might last. Hockey, man.
• Nick Backstrom is always a bridesmaid, sitting in the 12th percentile in individual shot-attempt rate. Ovi really does suck up all his oxygen. The top line could become more dangerous if Backstrom were activated more– particularly if set up by that underrated passer, Alex Ovechkin.
• Here’s a stray thought that just occurred to me for the very first time: Eric Fehr, the 91st most aggressive shooter in the league, might be a good fit on the top line. I’m just planting seeds here.

PDO

Sum of the player’s team’s shooting and save percentages, a loose proxy for luck

• This is the first stat where Ovechkin isn’t in the top quintile.
• No Caps are in the top quintile.
• That stinks.
• Maybe this is why games have felt boring?
• Got to admit Eric Fehr has seen pretty cozy results so far, up in quintile II.
• Four Caps players occupy the league’s worst PDO quintile: three top liners and Jay Beagle. They’re all in the 7th percentile and lower. When combined with the knowledge that Alex Ovechkin is such an active shooter, his low percentages have been very unfortunate for the team– and hopefully they won’t last. When the bounces turn, Ovechkin will be in a lot of highlight reels.

Offensive Zone Starts

Percentage of shifts started in offensive zone out of all non-neutral zone starts, relative to rest of team

• The second line– sorry, the 2a line— has been given very favorable zone starts. Freshman stud Andre Burakovsky in particular has started near the opponent’s net more frequently than all but 15 forwards. Is that coloring his possession?
• In defense of Jason Chimera and Joel Ward, about whom I’ve been very critical (and will remain so), they get dumped in the defensive zone more than almost anyone in the league. Neil Greenberg raised a smart point about how good the twins have been at suppressing shots despite those lowly deployments.
• The Caps have started a lot of shifts in the offensive zone so far, indicating that they’re good at puck possession and/or forcing the opponent to ice the puck. That accomplishment isn’t reflected in these data, but it should be mentioned.

That was fun. I don’t think it’s as useful for decision-making and hard analysis as the ice-time visualization or the snapshot exercise, but it’s probably a more potent way of communicating the scope of these numbers– with a much lower cognitive burden.

Did I miss anything?