Photo: Chris Gordon

The Extra 2% is a book about the Tampa Bay Rays looking for every small, incremental advantage over their competition and how this philosophy helped aid the team’s rise from the bottom of the MLB to being a perennial threat in the American League.

Part of the Rays’ motivation in doing so was financial. As a team with a small budget, they looked to find value in market inefficiencies. Given that they weren’t going to outspend their competitors, they looked for ways to outsmart them.

But there are lessons in the Rays’ approach to all teams of all budget sizes across every sport. In the world’s best sports leagues, the difference between the best and the worst is so minuscule that any advantage gained, no matter how small, can pay big dividends.

Enter the 2015-16 Capitals. Having afforded themselves such a comfortable place in the standings, it’d be easy for the Caps to coast over the final two months of the season. But the team shows no signs of resting on their laurels, as they continue to seek ways to improve. Barry Trotz continues to tinker with his lines, the team took a chance on signing a veteran center in the middle of January, the power play continues to try different things (while seemingly going away from other changes, perhaps hiding them from opponents who will be prescouting for the playoffs), and here on RMNB, we’ve suggested ways the Caps can continue to look for competitive advantages.

Keep improving, keep trying new things, keep looking for part of that extra two percent. You never know what you may come across that could make the difference in a third overtime at 1 AM on a weeknight in May.

The numbers are current as of Noon on Sunday. Let’s do this.

Forwards

Defense

Observations

• The Caps sit ninth in the league with a 51.9 percent score-adjusted shot attempt percentage. After two less than stellar possession performances against the Stars and Kings, the team was comfortably above 50 percent against both the Isles and the Devils.
• The Caps PDO sits at 102.1, right about where it’s sat comfortably for most of the season. The team may very well end up posting a PDO ~102 on the season. As we’ve talked about in the snapshot before, mainly due to the goaltending of Braden Holtby, it’s realistic to think the Caps can run a PDO above the norm of 100. Holtby’s still obviously a top goaltender, but his MVP-caliber play he posted earlier in the season has slipped a bit. His 10-game rolling 5v5 save percentage tells the story.

• This is not to say that Holtby’s play is concerning. Much like the majority of things in life, there’s no assurance that he’ll bounce back, but this kind of dip he’s seeing happens to most every goalie over the course of a season that isn’t named Dominik Hasek or 2014-15 Carey Price.
• The point here is the PDO has been sustained because the Caps’ 5v5 shooting percentage has maintained an uptick, sitting at 10.3 percent over the past 30 days. So, it’s not as if the Caps have a looming PDO free fall coming, but it wouldn’t be shocking to see it drop some if Holtby continues to play below the elite level he was at earlier this season.
• One way Trotz is trying to keep things fresh is by changing up his top-six, as Alex Ovechkin and Andre Burakovsky flipped linemates this week. I’m not sure there’s a wrong way to put this top-six together, because the talent level is so high that any combo of these six is likely to pay dividends. The sample-size is essentially meaningless in terms of telling us what to expect in the future, but the new “second” line of Burakovsky, Nick Backstrom and TJ Oshie has struggled with possession in their 27 minutes together so far, posting just a 41.7-percent shot-attempt percentage. This doesn’t mean the trio is doomed to failure. But, if Trotz is going to continue to tinker to keep things fresh and/or search for an incremental improvement, I’d like to see Oshie rejoin Ovechkin and Evgeny Kuznetsov and Justin Williams skate with Backstrom and Burakovsky. We know from earlier in the season that 8-92-77 can give defenders fit, and a Williams/Backstrom combination would be interesting to see, given how cerebral and responsible both players are. Oh, and 14-19 have a 61.2-percent shot-attempt percentage in 121 minutes together this season.
• I’m still rooting for Mike Richards and I hope he finds his way onto the score sheet soon. He’s been fine as far as fourth line forwards go, but I don’t know that he’s done anything to separate himself from the pack of guys that will be fighting for a jersey once Jay Beagle returns.
• I’ve been championing this for a while now, but giving Stan Galiev more playing time makes sense. He doesn’t even have to get a jersey every night, but given the fact that the top spot in the standings is all but locked up, he should play more frequently down the stretch. His possession numbers are strong and he generates individual shot attempts at a rate better than every Caps forward other than Ovechkin. With a little puck luck, he could provide some welcome offensive production to the fourth line.
• Dimitri wrote about the Caps having the opportunity to rest some players down the stretch. This can be done through sitting guys out here and there or managing minutes of the top players. One thing that I’ll be keeping an eye on is Ovechkin’s ice time. Ice time can fluctuate over a span of multiple games due to a lot of factors, so a downward trend doesn’t necessarily mean Trotz is taking his foot of the Ovechkin-ice-time gas pedal. But here’s his rolling, 10-game average time on ice.

• Matt Cane is one of the most forward-thinking hockey writers out there these days (Timeout: If you aren’t already following Matt in Twitter, go fix that now). Earlier in the season, he wrote a supremely interesting piece on evaluating defensive play after an initial shot attempt. Reading that post will be very helpful to fully understanding the chart below, but essentially it looks at, from the individual player level, how many rebound shot attempts a team gives up after an initial shot attempt. Below are the Caps’ six most used defenders and the stats are current through sometime in mid-January.

• With a sample of only about half a seasons worth of games, remember that this chart is probably more descriptive than predictive. Meaning, don’t necessarily draw big conclusions about a player based solely on this, but it can be used as a really unique ingredient when cooking up an evaluation on a player. Are any of us surprised by the position on this chart of elite shot-suppressor Dmitry Orlov?
• Keeping in mind what I said about drawing big conclusions, it’s probably time we acknowledge the underwhelming season John Carlson has had. He’s 25th among defensemen in scoring, but some other areas haven’t been as impressive. Among the Caps seven defenders, he ranks sixth in score-adjusted shot attempt percentage and shot attempts against per 60. He’s seventh, AKA dead last, in scoring chances against per 60 and fifth in goals against per 60. A few people have asked me recently on Twitter what I make of Carlson’s season so far and here’s where I am on him as of now: this season has raised more questions about him than answers. He’s a good player who this team benefits from having, but relative to the expectations of him as a top-pairing defenseman, 2015-16 has been a bit of a disappointment.
• Worth keeping an eye on: Karl Alzner‘s score-adjusted shot attempt percentage since January 1st is 46.9 percent, minus-9.5 percent relative. Perhaps Alzner and Matt Niskanen‘s ice time should be managed down the stretch, as they’ve carried a very heavy load this season and their play hasn’t been as steady recently.
• Brooks Orpik has returned and, in a vacuum, I really like the experiment of him playing with Orlov. Orlov has the skating and passing skills, as well as the vision, that can help cover up for some of Orpik’s deficiencies when it comes to getting the puck out of the defensive zone. I’m not convinced the defensive pairs are optimized as they are now, but I’m also not convinced that they aren’t, so maybe there’s a piece of the extra two percent being revealed here.
• Orpik’s shot-attempt differential at 5v5 since returning is plus-8, and plus-18 over the last two games if you ignore the Kings game in which most Caps’ players were possession disasters. Oh, and he’s also pinching down from the blue line to score game-winning goals.

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.