Week 7 Snapshot: Erosion and Corrosion

Photo: Darren Calabrese

The primary source of frustration last season was knowing that, deep down, the Capitals had the potential to be a good team. Knowing that the Caps had decent players and that they merely needed to be freed of bad coaching was vexing, but it was also comforting in a strange way. We could wave away game-by-game results because careful, informed analysis told us they’d soon be better.

And when Barry Trotz’s Caps started the season as one of the best teams in the league, we felt vindicated. But for ephemeral reasons, the wins didn’t come in October. That’s okay; we knew they would.

Except then they didn’t. The reasons for the Caps’ losses were not static. The goalies got better (wayyyyyy better), but then the offense’s shooting percentages plummeted. Then the team stopped possessing the puck so much. And now, who knows.

The Caps just aren’t as good as they were in October. Punishing losses to the Sabres and Leafs this week have led to some quiet reflection and some not-so-quiet caterwauling from the community. And rightfully so.

In this week’s snapshot, let’s do some reflecting of our own.

Previous snapshots: week 1, week 2, week 3, week 4, week 5, week 6 (skipped!)

Let’s do the numbers. These are current as of noon on Sunday, November 30th, even though tech problems delayed this story until the evening. The sample is restricted to 5v5 hockey when the score is within one goal. There’s a glossary at bottom with an explanatory video.

Forwards

Defense

Observations

• A note on methodology: the hockey stats illuminati’s jihad against the close-score industrial complex continues. War On Ice no longer supplies close-score stats; just “within 1” goal stats. That’s probably for the best.
• That chart of possession segments above? The Caps ranked 5th, 6th, 9th, 12th in in score-adjusted possession in each of those quarters. Overall, they’re now barely in the top 10, sitting below Detroit and above St Louis. This part is important: the Caps are still underperforming their underlying numbers, but their underlying numbers are eroding as well.
• But yeah, for the most part, the tables still look mostly okay. I love seeing Alex Ovechkin and his top line leading the team in shot-attempt percentage (SA%), and they were clearly the best line in Toronto last night. If Alex Ovechkin ends the season above getting 55 shot attempts for every 45 the other team gets, it’s gonna be a banner year for him.
• Tom Wilson has vaulted to the top of the table. Having spent his rookie season with some of the worst teammates and ice time in the league, Wilson has flipped the script in 2014-15, spending 80 percent of his 5v5 ice time next to stud Nick Backstrom. I don’t think there’s sufficient isolation to conclude that Wilson is himself awesome, but it’s at least safe to assume he won’t ruin a top scoring line. I’d still prefer someone else up there (see the next bullet), but Wilson has done just fine as Ovi’s off wing.
• Eric Fehr is now underwater in shot-attempt differential (159 to 157), so my whole “he’s bacon bits; he makes everything better” argument is officially dead. Fehr has played about half his ice time as the pivot for Jason Chimera, whose continued presence on the third line despite overwhelmingly negative results hints at an accountability problem for this team.
• Did anyone predict that Karl Alzner would be the first Caps defender to dip below 50-percent on-ice shot-attempt percentage? Surely everyone had guessed Brooks Orpik or John Carlson, but those two have actually made meager improvements over the last two weeks. I haven’t noticed if Trotz is changing deployments for the D yet, but if that’s the case Alzner’s dropping numbers might actually be a good thing. We’ll keep an eye on it.
• I haven’t added him to the snapshot yet, but Jack Hillen has been solid so far while filling in for injured Mike Green. In 40 minutes of 5v5 action, Hillen has been neither outshot nor outscored. I don’t know if that surprising or not; poor Jack is probably a serviceable NHL 7 D, but he had spent much of the last two seasons sidelined by awful, freak injuries that I forgot.
• A quick study in about ice time. Along the horizontal axis is Caps forwards’ ice time per game. Alone the vertical is their relative possession (comparing differential when they’re on the ice vs off the ice).

• Note how the 2a and 2b lines (not “second” and “third”!) are all clustered in the center– that’s sorta good. They’re not getting more ice time than their possession deserves or vice versa …with the exception of Jason Chimera, who is getting smoked on the ice without seeing ice time shortened. No consequences for that. But, like I said above, you gotta like Alex Ovechkin‘s line sitting pretty at the top right of the chart.
• And then there’s Michael Latta and Liam O’Brien at top left, where they’re getting less ice time than their performance merits. An easy tweak for this team would be to increase the usage of those fourth liners and destroy the Chimera-based 2b line.
• So if everything looks “mostly okay,” what happened in Toronto and Buffalo? The quick goals against after scoring? The dumb defensive breakdowns? The passive crease defense? The stymied scoring? This might piss you off, but a not-insignificant amount of those losses can be chalked up to just crummy luck. Some of it is the poorly optimized lineups and unwise deployment strategies from coach Barry Trotz. But I cannot and will not dismiss these losses out of hand in the same manner I would have in week 1 or 2. There does appear to be something truly wrong there, corroding the team’s performance, and the coaches and players share responsibility in fixing it. But the team is neither bad nor broken.
• Goalie bullet bonanza! This will be fun.
  • Did you see that shot last night that Braden Holtby didn’t save? He totally should of had that. Zero-percent save percentage on that one shot. He’s not a franchise goalie. A franchise goalie has to have that.
  • Remember all 12 shots Holtby faced last night? He let three by! That’s a .750 save percentage! He’s going to be a wash out.
  • Remember the last 250 shots Holtby has faced this season? He has a .927 save percentage over those! He’s going to win the Vezina for sure!
  • Remember all 3572 shots Holtby has faced in his career? He’s saved .918 of those! Maybe he’s an above-average goalie perfectly capable of backstopping a successful team!
  • We are ants on chandelier. Ants on a chandelier screaming on twitter, convinced that their perspective is Absolute Truth. It is not.

Glossary

• 5v5 Within 1. Our sample. The portions of games when each team has five skaters and the score is within one goal.
• GP. Games played.
• TOI. Time on ice. The amount of time that player played during 5v5 close.
• SA%. Shot-attempt percentage, a measurement for puck possession. The share of shot attempts that the player’s team got while he was on the ice. Also known as Fenwick. Above 50 percent is good.
• Goal%. Goal percentage. The share of goals that the player’s team got while he was on the ice. Above 50 percent is good.
• PDO. A meaningless acronym. The sum of a player’s on-ice shooting percentage and his goalies’ on-ice save percentage. Above 100 means the player is getting fortunate results that may reflected in goal%.
• ZS%. Offensive zone start percentage. Excluding neutral-zone starts, the share of shifts that the player starts in the offensive zone, nearer to the opponent’s net.

Thanks to War On Ice for the stats.