Eyes On The Prize: Week 13 Snapshot

Photo: Patrick Smith

The snapshot is a weekly colmn that isn’t focused only on the previous week but also on the season-to-date. But let’s talk about Saturday night in Buffalo.

The Caps threw up a dud. They looked lifeless for much of the game and lacked the sharpness we’ve come accustomed to seeing from them as they’ve run roughshod over the rest of the league.

I couldn’t be less concerned. The Caps were due for a bad performance with a bad result. Heck, the Caps are probably due for a 5-10 game stretch where they throw up multiple duds, simply because it’s very hard to keep up the pace they were on for 82 games. And that’s okay.

Our eyes should still remain fixed on the prize: Winning 4 sets of 7-game weighted coin flips in the spring.

The numbers are current as of noon on Sunday.

Forwards

Defense

Observations

• The Caps sit 9th in the league with a 52.1 percent score-adjusted shot attempt percentage. They are shooting 8.7 percent at 5v5, which ranks third, and stopping 93.4 percent of shots on net, which ranks fifth.
• With a goal differential of plus-49, the Caps lead the next closest team (Dallas) by 19 goals.
• The Caps special teams continues to play an important part in their success, as the power play is ranked second in the league and the penalty kill is ranked fifth.
• Speaking the power play, the Sabres did a great job disrupting the Caps man advantage last night. They pressured the puck and dared the Caps to move the biscuit quickly and accurately enough to make them pay for the aggressive approach. I thought the PP adjusted and looked better as the game went on, but this serves as a reminder that a well-prepared team, which every team will be in the playoffs, can disrupt even the best of opponents.
• The Sabres disrupted the Caps PP zone entries, too. They did a good job of cutting off the preferred entry on the right-side wall. This disturbance made it that much harder for the Caps to get to their preferred setup once they got the puck in the zone.
• Welcome to the snapshot chart, Stan Galiev. I’m still skeptical that Galiev is going to blossom into a full-time, productive NHL player. But that’s not to say that he can’t or that, even if he doesn’t, he won’t provide the team with effective stretches of play. His possession numbers are strong, he has obvious skill, and I’d like to see what he can do if given a sweater more consistently.
• Zach Sill continues to get a sweater more consistently than I anticipated. I think he’s been okay. In very limited minutes, he’s rocking a shot-attempt percentage of 52.1, minus-4.1 percent relative. In his first couple of games he looked surprisingly adequate. In the five games since, I think his performance has been uneven. He’s looked slow and out of place at times. Saturday night in Buffalo he was part of a fourth line that looked solid. My current thought: He’s been fine enough but I’d rather see Galiev or Brooks Laich in the lineup.
• It will be interesting to see what happens with Laich over the next stretch of games now that Barry Trotz has a lot of healthy fourth line options. If Laich is on the roster, I think he’s one of the best three options for the fourth line and should get a sweater. That being said, we all know his contract is eating up too much cap space for his role on the team. If the team was somehow able to rid themselves of his cap hit, players like Galiev, Sill and Mike Richards are a more efficient use of cap space for a fourth line forward.
• The third line has worked well with Marcus Johansson at center. He’s playing with two wingers who often struggle with possession, but in their 20 minutes together so far, the trio has posted a 52.9-percent shot-attempt percentage, plus-3.66 percent relative. The scoring chances don’t paint nearly as nice of a picture at just 37.5 percent. But these things can happen in 20-minute samples. The trio has looked good but, like I’ve said all season, an upgrade at wing could do wonders for the line.
• Credit where credit is due to Jason Chimera. He’s been a productive player. Some of this is due to Evgeny Kuznetsov’s magic on the power play. Chimera’s underlying numbers suggest the pace likely isn’t sustainable moving forward, but that doesn’t take away from his performance to date. His speed on the wings has been a great weapon for the second power play unit on zone entries. He sure doesn’t skate like he’s 36, does he? Oh, he’s also been the most efficient forward in the NHL on the power play when it comes to point production.
• What if Dmitry Orlov and Nate Schmidt are the best defensive pairing on this team, he said in a whisper.
• This has been noted before, but if you had told me at the start of the season that Taylor Chorney was going to play in 35 games by mid-January, I would have had a look of mild panic on my face (well, as much panic as my face is going to show over something as silly as sports). Overall, he’s been quite adequate, and maybe better. But lately he’s looked overwhelmed at times. His penalty differential has sunk to minus-6 and he’s been a negative relative possession player in three of the last four games. Any player can have a rough four-game stretch during a season, but given that it’s reasonable to think Chorney isn’t a good long-term solution as the team’s fifth defender, this is something to keep an eye. Get well soon, John Carlson.
• Matt Niskanen and Karl Alzner are carrying too much of the load. Niskaken is playing over 27 minutes a night since Carlson’s injury and Alzner is skating over 22 minutes. Alzner’s relative shot-attempt percentage over that stretch is minus-8.2 percent and Niskanen clocks in at minus-6.7 percent. There are a lot of factors that go into the pair’s possession performance, but I’m hesitant to make any strong takeaways about the quality of their play given the size of their workload. They are playing too many minutes and this could be why they’ve been underwhelming. John, we said get well soon.

Glossary

• 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.
• rel SA%. The percentage more or less of the overall shot attempts the Caps see with the player on the ice as opposed to when the player is on the bench
• GF%. Goal percentage. The share of goals that the player’s team got while he was on the ice.
• 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%.

All numbers, unless otherwise cited or linked to, are from War on Ice.