Before the bye week, the Washington Capitals had been on a 119-point pace. Since the bye week, with just one loser point in two games, the Caps are now on a 20.5-point pace, making them the worst team not just in the league, but in the history of the league — edging out the 1974-75 Capitals by half a standings point.

Yes, one weekend of shooting 4.3 percent has been devastating for what was once the league’s best team. As we all know, taking a week off from hockey has a well documented depressive effect on shooting percentages. Now we’re left to reconcile with the post-Valentine’s Day Caps, who — it turns out — are still really good.

In this week’s snapshot, let’s take a look at what happens if and when the bottom falls out.

Forwards

Defense

Observations

• Adjusted for score and venue, the Caps own 52.8 percent of shot attempts during 5-on-5 play. Only two teams fare better: Boston, who fired their coach, and Los Angeles, who did not. The Caps are a smidge better than the Canadiens, who fired their coach and replaced him with the coach the other team fired. That is confusing, and so is this: 1.3 percent separate the Caps from 10th place in the league. It’s a tight field near the top; without excellent PDO stats (shooting and saving percentages) the Caps are not so dominant.
• This far into the season, the numbers are pretty stable. But there has been some movement. Fresh-faced Daniel Winnik has dipped below 50 percent shot attempts (SA%), That’s not good, but stand by.
• There’s never a bad time to point out that bad numbers don’t mean bad players. They also don’t mean “I don’t like this player.” They just mean what they mean: the Caps are getting outshot during Winnik’s shifts. If you were to build a case against him, Winnik would have some compelling exculpatory evidence. In the 80 minutes he’s played apart from Jay Beagle, the Caps take 55.3 percent of the shot attempts; that’s around what the Chicago Blackhawks got in 2013-14. When Winnik plays with Beagle, that number drops to 45.5 percent, which is about what the Arizona Coyotes get as a team this season. For context, when Beagle plays apart from Winnik, the Caps get 43.8, which is just plain Buffalo Sabres territory.
• Meanwhile, Alex Ovechkin‘s possession gently ticked up over the past two weeks, especially after outshooting opponents 30 to 18 over the weekend. But the scoring percentages have not been kind, dropping Ovi’s goals-for percentage from 62.8 to 59.3 (GF%). That’s not a big drop, but it suggests what our stretch-run Caps might look like if the shooting stats abandon them. They’ll still be good, and I’m sanguine for Ovechkin’s scoring to tick up.
• Hey, congrats to Brett Connolly, reigning PDO king of the Washington Capitals, higher even than Jay Beagle. While Connolly’s on the ice, the Caps are shooting 11.1 and their opponents are shooting 4.1 percent. There’s either a crash coming, or people will talk for years about how good/lucky the Caps third line was in 2016-17. I’m fine either way.
• Zach “not Andre Burakovsky” Sanford has scored two goals in his 233 minutes of ice time this season. I’d write more about the underlying numbers, but the stat sites can’t seem to decide if his name is Zach or Zachary. Anyway, if Andre is really out until the end of the regular season, maybe it’s time to add Sanford to the snapshot.
• I’m not gonna use the snapshot to pick on Karl Alzner. I already did that twice last week (harping on how players do uniformly worse with him, and then noting how his deployment is outsized). Alzner’s 48.6 shot-attempt percentage (SA%) is rough, but his 2013-14 outing with the Oates!Caps was worse —  a horrid 46.8. I wish I could better understand what portion of Alzner’s lacking play is due to his assignments and what portion is due to other factors, like his speed.
• I wanna talk about Beagle again. Among all forwards with at least 500 minutes of 5-on-5 play, Jay Beagle has the 21st largest positive gap between expected goals and actual goals. The implication is that Beagle doesn’t deserve his outcomes — that’s he’s lucky beyond reason.
• But here are some players who have even larger gaps than Beagle: Ovechkin, Kuznetsov, Oshie, Burakovsky, Backstrom, and Johansson. They’re all in the top 10, pulling in 14 to 20 goals more than Emmanuel Perry’s expected goals model would project. Expected goals is the most provocative model in hockey lately, and it’s not a fan of the Capitals. You can process that info in a bunch of ways — as a failing of the stats; as an important, substantial critique of the Caps; as an acknowledgement that the Caps are shooting hot and saving lights-out. Let’s just hope the team processes it as a challenge to keep improving.
• I just noticed Pat’s snapshots do not include decimals in the time on ice. That just seems reckless to me.

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%.

All stats from Corsica unless otherwise noted or linked