Hockey legend Igor Larionov captured the hockey news cycle on Monday with a provocative article in the Players Tribune. Larionov’s thesis is that coaches are so stuck on hockey orthodoxy or so fearful of risk that they stifle and select against “creative” players.
The pullquote: “There’s a reason why Pavel Datsyuk went undrafted in 1996 and 1997.”
I’m skeptical about that example, but I think Larionov is spot-on about conservative coaching in general. We see it in all sports, but hockey seems to have a particularly pernicious strain of Goodoldboysclubitis, wherein exciting, finesse players are considered too “European” and risky, and safe and pedestrian players are wildly overvalued. I suspect that disease is behind symptoms like Top-line Beagle.
It’s a chronic infection that takes the form of valuing of a player’s characteristics over his actual effectiveness. Adding hard-working, “spark”-y Jay Beagle to the Capitals scoring line despite an embarrassingly convincing body of evidence that he actually hinders scoring– that’s an acute case.
If the point of hockey is to win games, why do so many people care more about a player’s description than a player’s production? The only answer is Goodoldboysclubitis.
We’ve seen it create necrotized flesh on the Philadelphia blue line after an injection of Andrew MacDonald, and in coming years we will see similar morbidity with the addition of Brooks Orpik in Washington.
“The effect is not going to be in goals and assists,” Brian MacLellan said in July. “It’s going to be in culture and winning and attitude, and that’s what Brooks Orpik does.”
That quote, likely uttered in the throes of a Goodoldboysclubitis fever, sums up the affliction perfectly. It’s like the brain is not able to separate the ways we talk about players (“gritty,” “hard-working,” “last name is also a breed of dog”) from the things those players do to actually help win games.
The teams who can rid themselves of the disease are the ones who do best in this league.
The only cure is information. Let’s do the snapshot.
Previous snapshots: week 1, week 2, week 3, week 4, week 5, week 6, week 7, week 8, week 9, week 10, week 11, week 12, week 13, week 14, week 15, week 16, week 17
These are current as noon on Sunday, February 22nd, though you’re not reading this until Monday. 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
| Player | GP | TOI | SA% | Goal% | PDO | ZS% |
| Burakovsky | 45 | 409.5 | 55.1 | 61.5 | 102.7 | 65.3 |
| Ovechkin | 61 | 776.0 | 54.3 | 51.5 | 99.1 | 57.5 |
| Backstrom | 61 | 768.5 | 53.9 | 49.2 | 98.6 | 56.0 |
| Wilson | 48 | 462.9 | 53.4 | 50.0 | 99.4 | 55.3 |
| Laich | 46 | 447.1 | 52.4 | 43.3 | 97.5 | 46.4 |
| Ward | 61 | 647.8 | 51.9 | 40.5 | 97.0 | 46.7 |
| Latta | 40 | 272.4 | 51.7 | 61.5 | 102.4 | 44.7 |
| Beagle | 56 | 498.2 | 51.0 | 55.6 | 101.9 | 46.8 |
| Johansson | 61 | 582.9 | 50.5 | 46.7 | 99.1 | 57.1 |
| Fehr | 57 | 588.6 | 50.5 | 47.4 | 99.2 | 45.4 |
| Kuznetsov | 59 | 492.4 | 49.2 | 59.3 | 102.4 | 55.2 |
| Brouwer | 61 | 561.1 | 48.7 | 52.4 | 101.5 | 57.4 |
| Chimera | 56 | 503.8 | 46.2 | 48.4 | 100.4 | 46.5 |
Defense
| Player | GP | TOI | SA% | Goal% | PDO | ZS% |
| Schmidt | 33 | 346.6 | 53.3 | 51.9 | 100.0 | 59.3 |
| Green | 52 | 593.5 | 52.8 | 52.5 | 100.8 | 59.2 |
| Niskanen | 61 | 866.4 | 52.5 | 55.6 | 101.0 | 51.7 |
| Alzner | 61 | 810.5 | 51.6 | 53.2 | 100.6 | 49.4 |
| Carlson | 61 | 877.1 | 50.6 | 48.6 | 99.5 | 50.3 |
| Orpik | 61 | 913.1 | 50.2 | 48.0 | 99.1 | 51.4 |
| Hillen | 34 | 329.5 | 48.4 | 47.4 | 100.1 | 58.2 |
Observations
- The Caps had another winning week, but according to Puckon.net, their score-adjusted shot-attempt percentage took a slight dip from 52.1 down to 51.8. As far as I know that could be noise; I’m mostly happy with how this team looks heading into the trade deadline– with one exception. That’s the subject of the next bullet.
- Andre Burakovsky looks fantastic– seeing a larger share of shot attempts (SA%) belong to the Caps inside our sample than any other forward. (Also worth noting: He’s seeing the most offensive-zone starts on the team.) When Alex Ovechkin and Burakovsky combine during 5v5, the Capitals own 55.6 percent of the shot attempts and 65.0 percent of the goals. So when I hear that Jay Beagle will get the top-line spot instead of Burakovsky, I’m bummed and confused (but never irate). But it wasn’t until I saw this next tweet by Muneeb Alam, who really should be hired by an NHL team, that I realized it’s a bigger problem.
https://twitter.com/muneebalamcu/status/569604964328312832
- Top-line Beagle isn’t just making the first line worse. It recently has meant that Jason Chimera appears in the top six. Here’s a table to help us appreciate what that means for the scoring lines, using common forward pairings as representations (and some fuzzy math, so please suck back a grain of salt with this tequila shot).
| 1st line SA% | 2nd line SA% | |
| Top-line Beagle | 43.5 | 48.2 |
| No Top-line Beagle | 55.6 | 50.8 |
- Minor process note: I don’t think it’s helpful to use the WOWY data from when the various 1RWs are apart from Ovechkin and Backstrom for comparison. They’re in such different circumstances. Burakovsky has spent most of his non-top-line time as second-line center, Wilson has almost exclusively been a light-minute fourth liner, and Beagle often spends his time apart from Ovechkin with Jason Chimera instead. It’s apples and grinders.
- Everyone is complaining about Brooks Laich lately:
https://twitter.com/dbt100/status/569557855474458624
@russianmachine really wouldn't mind laich being dealt. Not just bc of the penalty obviously but he gets paid way to much to do nothing.
— Kyle Landau (@Kyle_Landau_88) February 16, 2015
@russianmachine the laich Fehr ward line has been frightful recently. The bad thing is the caps can't do anything about it either
— Chris Raine (@RainemanC) February 19, 2015
@russianmachine Is anyone ever gonna mention the absolute astonishing invisibility of Brooks Laich? Its just so disheartening at this point.
— Dom Simonetta (@dasimonetta) February 22, 2015
https://twitter.com/atwingard/status/567494243326115840
- There’s some merit to this. In the last 10 games, the Brooks Laich – Eric Fehr – Joel Ward line has been outshot (about 44 to 48 percent score-adjusted possession depending on which player you look at), and they’ve been outscored 5 to 3. But it’s important to appreciate that the third line has increasingly been the team’s shutdown line: going against the best opposition and doing pretty well considering. Here’s a timeline of competition for representative players from each line, visualized by War On Ice:
- And it’s also important to appreciate that the line is also getting crushed in PDO— the stat that measures volatile shooting and saving stats that aren’t typically within a player’s control. No forwards are lower than Laich’s line inside our sample, mostly due to an abnormally low shooting percentage. A few months ago some were crowing about the number of scoring chances Laich was generating, but now he’s in the pits. That’s hockey. In the longview, Laich really is a player transformed from the dreary guy we saw struggling with injury following his time in Kloten during the lockout. He was never going to be fully worth that contract, but I assure you: Laich is good again.
- Flip side: Chimera and Troy Brouwer are actually sporting 5v5 shot-attempt percentages that are worse than their numbers under Adam Oates, which stuns me. I expected everyone to improve across the board once they escaped from Oates, but I was wrong. I hate being wrong. While Brouwer is still pretty terrific in the slot during the power play, his even-strength play is deeply concerning. He’ll get a 100-thousand dollar raise next year. So. Yeah.
- I just want to mention this because I like the guy. Karl Alzner had a great week: on the ice for 3 Caps goals and zero opponent goals, plus two assists. Plus, his shots are three times more dangerous than they were in the past, which would be more impressive if he hadn’t been shooting just 2.1 percent in the past. Whatever: I like the guy.
- The Capitals are exploring new options instead of Jack Hillen (48.4 SA%) as the 6th defenseman. With Schilling, Oleksy, Schmidt (when he’s healthy), Orlov (one day) as options, consider me in the “all of the above” camp.
- R.I.P. Corsi. Long live shot attempts.
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 and being generally awesome.
