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The Incredible Shrinking Ovi: Snapshot 2

By Peter Hassett

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November 21, 2016 1:52 pm

With an 11-5-2 record, the Washington Capitals are off to another good start. They’re not amassing standings points at quite the same torrid pace as last year’s Presidents’ Trophy outing, but they’re still a damn fine hockey team.

Around this time last year, I wrote an article with the headline, “These Capitals are The Team.” What I should have said is “These Capitals are The Team that will certainly disappoint you in the playoffs once again.” That would’ve been a wordy headline, but it would have articulated something we’ve seen with the Trotz Caps every year: they are faders.

Hi, my name is Peter, and I’ll be your host for this biweekly snapshot.

Here’s how the Caps have started under Barry Trotz, and how they’ve finished. This is score-adjusted possession according to the great puckon.net:

 Season First 20 Games Remainder of Season
2014-15 53.2 51.6
2015-16 53.7 50.8
2016-17* 53.6 TBD

Note: Only 18 games for the most recent season.

The Caps have looked like an elite, contending, top-5 team at the start of each of the last three seasons. But both the 2014-15 and 2015-16 teams slipped as the season wore on, becoming merely good instead of great. These weren’t slow declines, but rather periods of brilliance punctuated by mediocrity. Will the 2016-17 Caps do the same? I suspect so.

Now the numbers.

Forwards

Player GP TOI SA% Rel SA% GF% PDO
Eller 17 198.5 60.3 +8.0 55.4 99.8
Burakovsky 18 221.4 57.7 +5.3 44.5 97.4
Connolly 10 93.1 56.0 +1.0 62.5 101.7
Williams 18 225.2 55.5 +2.2 45.3 97.6
Johansson 18 246.1 55.5 +2.1 70.5 105.1
Oshie 17 205.0 55.0 +0.5 80.1 108.2
Wilson 18 198.7 53.3 -0.6 71.9 106.2
Backstrom 18 243.3 52.8 -1.6 62.5 103.0
Kuznetsov 18 247.0 52.0 -3.0 60.5 104.1
Winnik 11 97.7 51.9 -1.5 100.0 107.5
Beagle 18 173.6 50.7 -3.9  67.8 104.4
Sanford 16 159.3 50.0 -4.1  57.3 101.9
Ovechkin 18 246.6 49.3 -7.1 54.7 102.1

Defense

Player GP TOI SA% Rel SA% GF% PDO
Schmidt 16 222.5 54.8 +1.12 55.7 101.3
Niskanen 18 307.9 54.8 +1.4 62.8 102.0
Orpik 18 252.4 54.4 +0.7 68.6 104.5
Orlov 18 302.2 54.3 +0.6 62.3 103.0
Carlson 18 298.5 54.0 +0.2 56.9 101.9
Alzner 18 297.5 51.7 -3.2 69.0 104.3

Observations

  • The Caps are currently ranked second in score-adjusted possession, behind only Boston. But the top 6 teams (including St. Louis, L.A., San Jose, and Carolina) are all tightly clustered. And I have a feeling that we’ll see a ton of shake-up happening to those rankings in the next 20 games.
  • So here’s a problem right off the bat: Alex Ovechkin is worst among Caps forwards, and alas, Caps players overall, at shot-attempt percentage. He’s the only player who is getting out-attempted. Is this a result of Ovechkin’s lowered ice time and new partners, or were those Trotz’s reactions to some underlying cause of Ovi’s diminished possession? Meanwhile, Ovechkin’s 5v5 rates (shots and attempts) are all at career lows, which is alarming. Injury, age, deployment, linemates, tactics — the root cause could be anything, including a benign distortion from a small sample size, but let’s agree on one thing: This is a red flag.
  • Two weeks have passed since Pat’s inaugural snapshot, and the defense has returned to normal. Your boy, Nate Schmidt, sits atop the stack ranking, with Brooks Orpik — in his refreshingly lessened role — somewhere in the middle. Curious though, that the Caps’ best possession (SA%) defenseman has the lowest goal percentage (GF%, 55.7) and their worst possession defenseman, Karl Alzner, has their highest goal percentage (69.0%, nice).
  • TJ Oshie is week-to-week with an upper-body injury, which is devastating for the totally real bet I have going on with Pat, but also for Washington’s offense. Oshie has put up 8 goals in 17 games this season, but let’s be real: his output was driven by a monster 21.6 shooting percentage. At 5v5, Oshie’s individual shot-attempt volume has barely budged, so unless he had discovered a totally novel form of scoring, it would not have lasted long.
Oshie offense
  • By the same token, there’s Nick Backstrom, who is slaying it with 5 goals and 12 points. Kinda the same story there.

  • I expect, as our sample matures, that Eller and Connolly will drop from the top of the Forwards table. Right now, they’re enjoying 60% and 56% shot-attempt percentages. I’d expect those to drop, and an evergreen stud like Justin Williams to reign atop the table before long.
  • I keep thinking about Barry Trotz’s “businessmen” quote from last week. Are there players in the league who artificially inflate their possession scores with low-quality shots that benefit the individual but not the team? I can’t think of a good statistical test for this. If I did, I bet I’d get a whole bunch of the Los Angeles Kings (great possession, lower shooting percentages) at the top of the list. In Washington, I can think of two players who might fit the bill: the aforementioned Williams and Schmidt. But those are also two players I’d peg as market inefficiency/moneypuck players, which is also to say I like them both very much.

Glossary

  • GP. Games played.
  • TOI. Time on ice. The amount of time that player played during 5v5.
  • 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 difference of shot attempts the Caps had when the player on the ice as opposed to when the player is on the bench.
  • GF%. Goals-for percentage. The share of goals that the player’s team got while he was on the ice.
  • PDO. (A meaningless acronym.) The sum of the player’s on-ice shooting percentage and his goalies’ on-ice save percentage. Above 100 means the player is getting fortunate results that may be reflected in goal%.

Headline photo: Patrick Smith