As you might’ve noticed from our podcast this morning, the Capitals are twenty games into the season so it’s time for us to do some reconnoitering. I’ve dusted off an old standby, Tyler Dellow’s forward x defense possession visualization, to help us better understand what’s working (i.e. a lot) and what’s not (i.e. not a lot) for the 2015-16 Caps.
Hope you like the color green.
This is how it works:
- List defensemen along the top in order of average 5v5 ice time per game.
- List forwards along the left in the same order.
- Where each forward and defensemen meet, show the Caps’ 5v5 on-ice shot-attempt percentage when those players are together.
- Color code the cells. I chose great (60+), good (52+), okay (49+), and not okay (below 49)
The result is a pretty-looking approximation of what/who is working and how often they’re being used, with most frequent at top-left and least frequent at bottom-right.
Enough talk. Here’s the data.
| Niskanen | Carlson | Alzner | Orpik | Schmidt | Orlov | |
| Ovechkin | 55.5 | 50.5 | 54.6 | 50.7 | 60.2 | 57.3 |
| Backstrom | 59.0 | 60.0 | 58.1 | 54.1 | 63.4 | 69.9 |
| Johansson | 53.9 | 53.6 | 55.1 | 52.6 | 55.5 | 54.8 |
| Kuznetsov | 52.2 | 46.4 | 51.3 | 49.7 | 50.8 | 58.9 |
| Oshie | 53.7 | 50.0 | 54.6 | 49.0 | 63.7 | 61.3 |
| Williams | 57.6 | 54.9 | 55.2 | 66.2 | 53.8 | 59.3 |
| Beagle | 49.6 | 47.0 | 47.2 | 46.2 | 52.8 | 50.4 |
| Burakovsky | 53.4 | 47.5 | 55.9 | 41.9 | 52.8 | 58.8 |
| Wilson | 50.0 | 44.2 | 46.8 | 43.8 | 44.0 | 49.5 |
| Chimera | 46.5 | 47.9 | 46.8 | 44.0 | 52.9 | 50.5 |
| Laich | 62.0 | 46.4 | 58.8 | 51.0 | 50.0 | 58.7 |
My observations:
- In short: This team is really, really good. That’s a lot of green, and a lot of it is clustered at the top-left, where it signifies lots of ice time. There is some trouble, but much of it is among depth forwards or among players who we suspect face tougher competition.
- Fun exercise: compare with last year’s visualization. Maybe print these out and share with your fam at the table on Thursday. #blessed
- Matt Niskanen and Karl Alzner are the Caps’ best defensive pairing. They’re getting more ice this season against (marginally) tougher opponents, and, frankly, they’re dominating.
- Ice time distribution among defensemen has changed from last season. Even before Brooks Orpik‘s injury, Niskanen and Alzner are playing more — and playing better — than the top pairing.
- John Carlson‘s struggles, with and without Brooks Orpik, don’t include the time he spends with the Caps’ most versatile forward, Nick Backstrom. Sixty percent of the shot attempts when your best forward and (probable) best defenseman are on the ice? Not. Bad.
- Dmitry Orlov and Nick Backstrom have controlled about 70 percent of the shot attempts and 70 percent of the goals in the 46 minutes they’ve spent together. We’ve died and gone to corsi heaven.
- Jay Beagle and Jason Chimera are a problem. Trotz’s current strategy appears to be putting them out together (about 80 percent of the time) and sparingly.
- Another mitigation strategy might be to use Michael Latta and Stan Galiev, who did not reach the ice-time threshold for inclusion, more, and to relegate 83/25 to the fourth line.
- Nate Schmidt. That is all.
- Not enough can be said about TJ Oshie‘s and Justin Williams‘ transformative effect on the Caps roster. Depending on how they’re deployed, they give the Caps one or two extra viable lines that they simply didn’t have last season. Brian MacLellan deserves a Christmas bonus.
What do you make of it?
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