Week 25 Snapshot: This Was a Triumph

April 12, 2015 3:10 pm

I’m making a note here: huge success.

The Washington Capitals had a great 2014-15 season. That’s true for dozens of reasons, some of which I outlined in a thoroughly non-statty article on Friday. But here in the snapshot, we can look at this objectively.

Only two teams improved their shot-attempt differential from last season more than the Capitals: The Nashville Predators (boo) and the New York Islanders (hiss). With a 4.5 swing in score-adjusted possession, the trend has finally ended, and the Capitals are good again. Exactly how good– by the reckoning of the playoffs– remains to be seen, but looking back, I’m over the moon about this season.

But, in this week’s snapshot, the last of its kind, we ask, is the cake a lie?

But first, a look back on all the snapshots in case you’re feeling nostalgic. They really tell a story, don’t they?

The snapshot are current as of noon on Sunday, April 12, the day after the regular season ended. 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	53	456.1	55.1	61.9	102.5	63.6
Wilson	67	587.5	54.5	52.9	99.8	57.2
Glencross	18	130.8	54.3	62.5	102.2	51.9
Backstrom	82	975.1	53.4	48.7	98.7	55.6
Latta	53	328.7	53.4	57.1	100.9	47.9
Ovechkin	81	966.4	52.9	51.2	99.6	58.4
Laich	66	574.2	52.5	45.2	97.9	46.4
Beagle	62	538.4	51.8	57.5	102.1	48.5
Fehr	75	721.1	51.3	48.0	99.4	44.7
Ward	82	807.0	50.7	38.6	96.9	47.3
Johansson	82	772.4	50.6	45.8	98.9	56.3
Brouwer	82	719.5	49.7	51.9	100.9	55.4
Kuznetsov	80	657.9	47.8	53.7	101.7	54.8
Chimera	77	642.1	46.8	46.5	100.1	45.6

Defense

Player	GP	TOI	SA%	Goal%	PDO	ZS%
Gleason	17	150.7	53.9	69.2	105.5	61.1
Schmidt	39	406.4	53.9	45.5	97.9	60.8
Green	72	785.9	52.5	56.6	101.6	59.6
Niskanen	82	1094.4	52.4	52.9	100.4	51.3
Alzner	82	1020.4	51.3	51.6	100.4	49.1
Carlson	82	1095.3	50.8	46.7	98.9	50.6
Orpik	78	1093.1	49.9	47.3	99.1	49.9

Observations

The season is done, and the Capitals were good. According to Puckon.net, they had 52-percent 5v5 possession after adjusting for the score– 12th best in the league. Using War On Ice’s similar methodology, the Caps were still 12th with 51.9 percent, with 3503.2 shot attempts for and 3248.3 shot attempts against (the fractions are a result of weighting the different score situations). That’s good enough to go deep in the playoffs, but it’s no guarantee. [Reaches into hat, pulls out cliche] That’s why they play the games.
Regarding the New York Islanders: stay tuned. Pat and I will have a lot on them very soon.
A note on process: I chose close-score 5v5 hockey to mirror on the player and weekly level what Habs Eyes on the Prize did on the team-season level. That sample is useful in a lot of ways, but it also leads to distortion. Had I to do it over again, I would change the sample to all-score 5v5 and include all shot attempts (i.e. corsi instead of fenwick). There will be no snapshot during the postseason, but if I do it again next year I’ll change my methodology. Also, here’s a big-ups to War On Ice for packaging the data. I had prepared to cook my own numbers back in October, but they saved me tons and tons of hours over the course of the season. I didn’t even mind when they added and re-ordered columns in their data downloads (wink). Here’s one final Vollman player usage chart to wrap us up:

The final week of the season contained just two games, so our sample didn’t change much. That said, there are still a ton of important conclusions that we can make now that the season is wrapped up. And here’s where we get into the cake = lie situation, because as good as the Caps were, they could have and should have been so much better. For starters…
The lines are not effective. The tables above are sorted by on-ice shot attempt percentage (SA%), so the guys at top have better possession than the guys at bottom. Ideally you’d want Alex Ovechkin to be at the top of the list and your checking lines or low-ice-time grinders at the bottom. Instead we’ve got a kid who spent a good chunk of 2015 in Hershey at the top of the list, Ovechkin in the middle and dropping, and the second line at the bottom, underwater in shot attempts.
If you look at it month by month, you will see it a little better. Here’s how the team performed in tilting the ice each month. Dark red is with Alex Ovechkin on the ice; powderpuff pink is when Ovi is on the bench. For reference: Nick Backstrom left the top line on March 29.

Post script on that graph: The Caps played some pretty bad teams in March, but those were Cup-winning numbers. Is that cake a lie?
The biggest cake-lie mystery to me is Evgeny Kuznetsov. Frankly, there’s not much evidence that he’s a good possession player. There are some good anecdotes recently that he’s improving his play in neutral and in the defensive zone, but his with you/without you numbers show him dragging almost everyone down, especially the star winger he now centers, Alex Ovechkin, who falls from 54.2-percent possession to 47.1 percent when he joins Kuzy during 5v5.
I had wondered if Troy Brouwer might have been an anchor for Kuznetsov. That doesn’t appear to be the case, although both players do better apart from one another. I bet Caps analyst Tim Barnes noticed that (and I bet he had video examples of why), but Brouwer and Kuznetsov played 38 consecutive games together in the middle of the season– one factor in why the powderpuff pink portion of the graph above was under 50 percent for much of the season.
Biggest surprises to me this season, for good or ill:
- Andre Burakovsky, who looks more than ready for NHL competition both on paper and on the ice. He should never have been in Hershey. He’s better than Forsberg in my opinion.
- Evgeny Kuznetsov, who is astoundingly creative in the offensive zone but struggling everywhere else.
- Marcus Johansson, who transformed his offense this season and jumped from the 95th percentile in individual offense to the 51st.
- Jason Chimera, for whom “lost a step” is an overly polite euphemism.
Oh, and Alex Ovechkin. Get this: Ovechkin’s individual 5v5 shooting actually went down this season (1 attempt per 60 minutes) and his individual goals dropped slightly, but his possession improved by about 5 or 6 percent (depending on how you calculate). His overall 5v5 team goal rate increased by 48 percent and the opponent’s goal rate dropped by 24.5 percent. A lot of that was improvement in unreliable percentages (shooting and saving), but there’s no argument to be made that Alex Ovechkin didn’t transform his 5v5 game this season. He did. He was incredible. Bravo.
I was wary when the Capitals acquired Tim Gleason at the trade deadline, but that has worked out wonderfully. Poor old Jack Hillen left the club, Mike Green got some 5v5 possession back, and Gleason overperformed like a madman. The Caps outscored the competition 11 to 6 during 5v5 with Gleason on the ice, and Green was even in possession instead of the 45.8 he was with Hillen. Yes, Schmidt and Orlov would be better choices, but oh well.
That defensive logjam is only going to get worse by the way. Even if Mike Green leaves (and I’m very confident he will, sadly), the Caps have a lot of good talent in the pool– including my fave, Madison Bowey.
Final note on the defense, and the biggest possible cake situation of them all: The Capitals defense is better because of Brooks Orpik. I mean that compared to last season, when Julien Brouillette and Alex Urbom were getting ice time. This season, I’m not so sure. We could say that Orpik’s numbers are low because he went against the toughest competition, but then why were John Carlson‘s so much better when apart from Orpik (59.1 percent versus 49.7 percent [caveat: zone starts!])? And why did many opposing star players do better against Orpik than they did against Niskanen? You can say that Orpik added a lot of things to this team’s defense: physicality, seriousness, fitness. While that might be true, since there’s no evidence to back any of that up, I think you’ve got to end any statement about how Brooks Orpik has improved the Capitals with a “I hope” at the end. That’s not to say you’d be wrong though; it just means you’re possibly out on a limb.
And now we shift approach: I no longer care about any of this stuff. I hope the Caps don’t get massively outshot next week, but I’m not going to be searching the numbers for glimmers of possible future success. Results matter now. Crash the net. Score more goals. Go Caps.

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.