Photo: Patrick McDermott

The Caps’ power play is rightfully considered one of the most dangerous in the NHL. As of the All-Star break, the Caps sat third in the league with a 24.4 percent conversion rate when up a man and they generate more unblocked shot attempts than just about any team on record.

But that’s not to say that the PP doesn’t have its cold spells. In December, the team went just 6 for 43 during the man advantage. Japers’ Rink touched on some of the possible explanations for the December PP struggles, primarily focusing on how the Caps’ lack of PP face-off success related to the lack of PP conversions.

Another important aspect of a power play is zone entries– that is, how a team enters the offensive zone. This generally happens in one of two ways:

1. a controlled entry, when a player crosses the offensive blue line with control of the puck, or
2. an uncontrolled entry, dump-and-chase style.

The Caps’ recent hot and cold streaks have had a lot to do with how they enter the zone.

Types of Entries (GIFs)

This is what a controlled entry looks like:

via Gfycat

The Capitals pass or carry the puck into the offensive zone. In the example above, Marcus Johansson has the puck on his stick as he crosses from neutral into the offensive zone.

This is an uncontrolled entry:

via Gfycat

At some point between center ice and the offensive-zone blue line, a Capitals player shoots the puck into the opponent’s zone as other players chase it down, hoping to regain possession.

And this is a failed entry:

via Gfycat

The Capitals’ attempt to get the puck deep into the offensive zone– either with sturdy possession or without– has been stopped by the opposing team.

Capitals PP Zone Entries

I tracked two different five-game segments of Caps’ PP zone entries. The first segment, from December 20th until December 29th, was when the Caps’ PP conversion rate was bad. The second segment, from January 12th until the 20th, was when the Caps’ PP conversion was very good.

Small-sample rules apply. Instead of having to reiterate this throughout the post, consider this a blanket small-sample warning.

The number in parentheses is the team’s rank compared to other teams’ season-long numbers. If the team is 30th, that doesn’t mean they’re 30th among all teams within that five-game segment; it means that the team is 30th when compared to season-long numbers for the 29 other NHL teams.

In summary, the Caps went from worst to first in conversion rate and 11th to first in shot-attempt rate.

Here are the zone entries for those two segments:

• One third of the Caps’ zone entries during the bad five-game segment were uncontrolled, which resulted in just 0.26 unblocked shot attempts per uncontrolled zone entry. Put another way: the Caps got one shot attempt for every four times they gained the zone without clear control. Three out of every four times they did this, the Caps got nothing out of their effort. That’s a formula for failure.
• During the Caps’ good five-game segment, they dumped the puck in far less– just once in every nine entries, but they did not get a single shot attempt when dumping the puck in over these five games. The lack of shot attempts is easier to stomach when uncontrolled entries only occur one in every nine entries, 22 percentage points fewer than during the bad segment.
• The Caps generate a lot more shots when they enter the zone with control of the puck. Over the whole 10-game sample, the Caps generated over three times as many unblocked shot attempts on controlled entries compared to uncontrolled entries (0.70 shot attempts per controlled entry vs 0.23 shot attempts per uncontrolled entry).
• The Caps failed to enter the zone a tad more during the good segment than the bad one, but failed entries almost always occur on a controlled entry attempt. So, at least the Caps were trying to enter the zone with control more often in the second segment. Over the course of the five game sample, the risk paid off, as the the PP was more successful and had a higher percentage of controlled entries.

If you’ve read this far and are tiring of the numbers, stick with me. The remaining charts will lead to a few follow-up posts in which I’ll look at specific game play examples of individual Caps’ players and their role in PP zone entries. 

On-ice entries: how many team zone entries that individual player was on the ice for

Individual entries: how many team zone entries in which that individual player was responsible for the puck upon entry

Individual entry percentage: The player’s number of individual entries divided by on ice entries

Note: You may notice that the number of on ice-entries doesn’t compute with the individual entries. That’s because I didn’t always assign five players on-ice entries to every zone entry. If a player was changing during the entry, I didn’t count that as an on-ice entry.

• Marcus Johansson is clearly Plan A for zone entries on the first PP unit. He’s the player responsible for the puck on entry 42.4 percent of the time he’s on the ice. The next closest player on the top unit is Backstrom at 22.6 percent.
• Evgeny Kuznetov is Plan A for zone entries on the second PP unit. He’s responsible for the puck on entry 53.8 percent of the time, with no other regular on the second PP unit being above 16.6 percent.

Now, here’s how successful the individual players were on those zone entries. For the sake of simplicity, I’ve included four players from the first PP unit plus Kuznetsov. There are no particularly worthwhile takeaways from the rest of the players tracked. 

iUncontrolled %: Percent of individual zone entries by player that were uncontrolled

iControlled %: Percent of individual zone entries by player that were controlled

iFailed %: Percent of individual zone entries by player that ere failed

• Alex Ovechkin dumped the puck in 60 percent of the time (6 out of 10) during his individual entries. This was particularly interesting to me, as this entire tracking process was inspired by a conversation with my dad, who first remarked how Ovechkin seemed to be dumping the puck often during the PP. While 60 percent of entries being uncontrolled is bad for overall PP success, Ovechkin was responsible for just 14.3 percent of the entries he was on the ice for.
• Nick Backstrom does pretty well on zone entries (71.5 percent successful), but he also fails on individual entries more than any other player on the top unit (14.3 percent).
• Marcus Johansson, AKA Plan A, had more than twice as many individual entries as any other player on the top unit. He’s very effective at entering the zone, as he had control 89 percent of the time (25 out of 28 individual entries). Johansson had just two uncontrolled entries and one failed entry in 28 entry attempts. 2014-15 MJ90 is the best MJ90.
• Mike Green does pretty well with zone entries. I expected his failed entries to be higher, as he normally enters after looking for both Backstrom and Johansson. In the majority of cases, Green being the player responsible for the puck on entry is Plan C, often used when the opponent’s PK unit is doing something to disrupt passes to Backstrom and Johansson.
• Kuznetsov was responsible for 53.8 percent of the zone entries when he was on he ice, primarily with the second unit. The second PP unit needs another entry plan. He only entered with control 28.6 percent of the time he was responsible for the zone entry. Further, Kuznetsov’s percentage of failed entries was twice that of the next closest player. This is not a guy you want responsible for over 50 percent of all entries when he’s on the ice.

I’ll have more posts coming on the Caps PP zone entries, looking at the role of particular players.

In the meantime, what do you see in regards to the Caps PP zone entries? What do you find interesting here? Let me know in the comments. If you have questions about how I tracked the entries, leave them in the comments and I’ll answer them as best as I can.

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