Chris, Ian, and I had a spirited conversation about the Washington Capitals during their 5-1 loss to the Devils on Saturday night. The three of us spent a lot of time bemoaning how bad the Caps were playing before we all realized that they were still the best team in the NHL. We had cycled through our worries — Braden Holtby’s apparent downturn and Nick Jensen’s disastrous results in particular — and then we collectively noticed that the Washington Capitals of January 2020 are way better than the Capitals of January 2019 — and even better still than the eventual-champion Capitals of January 2018.

If you were handed a report card for the Capitals right now, there would be A‘s and smiley faces everywhere. Whatever anguish we’re feeling is because of the sharp contrast between the team’s bright, long-term success and some far more fleeting dark spots.

In this snapshot, we look at the shade while enjoying the sunshine.

Previously: Meet the new Caps, same as the old Caps, Backstrom’s back, alright

Forwards

Defenders

Glossary

• GP – Games played.
• TOI – Time on ice in minutes
• SA% – Shot-attempt percentage. The share of total shots attempted by Washington while the skater is on the ice. 50% means even.
• SA% Rel – Relative shot-attempt percentage. The difference in SA% when the player is on the bench versus on the ice. 0% means even.
• GF% – Goals-for percentage. The share of total goals scored by Washington when the skater is on the ice. 50% means even.
• PDO – The sum of Washington’s shooting percentage and saving percentage when the skater is on the ice. 1 means even. The acronym doesn’t stand for anything, and yes, that it is annoying.

Notes

• The Washington Capitals are on a two-game losing streak. They have looked messy on the ice lately. But, happily, they’re still tied for the league’s most points with St Louis and Boston. They’re a top-ten team in shot share (SA%, with ~52 percent), and just slightly lower in expected goals (51.6 percent, ranked 12th). They have a top-five penalty kill and their power-play, despite its recent troubles, is still in the league’s top half. They’re a very good hockey team. Whatever we discuss below, let’s acknowledge that these problems will be slighter than those of the pre-deadline Caps in 2018 and 2019.
• I wonder if the anxiety some folks are feeling right now isn’t just the product of percentages jumping around. Below are how the Caps have been shooting on offense (blue) and saving on defense (red) during five-on-five play this season.

• The Caps had some five-on-five scoring troubles around game 25 but kept winning through it. Then, after game 30, goaltending really started falling off. That’s when the Caps stopped running away from the pack in the Presidents’ Trophy race, and that’s probably the cause of most worries now. Those worries seem centered on a player not in the snapshot above: goaltender Braden Holtby.
• But first, I want to consider the possibility that maybe we’re just a little bit spoiled. For people who watch a lot of Capitals hockey, we’ve come to expect a goal on every fourth power play. We’ve come to expect that 93 shots out of 100 put on the Caps net get sent back. We’ve come to expect that trailing by multiple goals with one minute remaining is just an obstacle to overcome and not tantamount to defeat. I still don’t like it when the Caps play poorly, but “poorly” in this context is still really really good. It’s definitely good enough to make the playoffs, and it’s probably good enough to make some noise once there. Okay, enough perspective. Let’s be grumps.
• Of all the problems we could list with the team, nothing in my opinion would come close to Braden Holtby‘s recent performance. He has saved 90.6 shots during five-on-five play this season, below his expected save percentage of 92.3. He’s still getting tougher assignments than Ilya Samsonov, but the margin between them is narrowing. Holtby’s spot among NHL goalies is way too close to the fiascos that are Sergei Bobrovsky, who is singlehandedly sinking the goalie free-agent market, and Martin Jones, who is singlehandedly sinking the San Jose Sharks.

• The questions that arise here are simple to ask and hard to answer. How does Holtby’s recent performance suggest what his future performance will be? Is he getting worse in a manner that is unlikely to reverse? Is he, for example, slower in reaction time or in moving laterally from post to post? And how confident are we that Ilya Samsonov is truly a 93.2-percent goalie? That last one’s actually pretty easy to answer. After just 351 shots faced at the NHL level, we have practically no idea what his true talent level will be. I like what I see, but I’m not sure Samsonov will do better on his next thousand shots than Holtby will.
• Okay, after 1000 words and two graphs, now we can finally get to the snapshot proper. So, Nick Jensen. We’ve been over this a few times already, and I’ve shared more analysis on the RMNB Patreon. Jensen is a player who is doomed to be misunderstood. He’s a defensive defenseman and therefore lives and dies on the performances of his goalies. Jensen has virtually no direct offensive contribution. He has been an excellent transition player in the past, but breakouts have been a recurring problem for the Caps lately. And that’s all secondary to the real problem: shit luck. Below are the goal percentages for all Caps defenders, their expected goal percentages (using Natural Stat Trick’s reckoning), and the difference between the two.

• Jensen’s getting crushed, specifically, by Holtby’s save percentage. The Caps are also shooting a team-low 6.8 percent during Jensen’s shifts, which doesn’t help either. I wish Jensen would get better transition and neutral-zone results, but that’s not what’s driving his outcomes right now. Combine a gnarly plus-minus with a defensive role that makes him noticeable only when he makes a mistake, and that’s why you get all the Jensen hate lately.
• One additional Jensen point: He’s got the lowest game pace among all full-time defenders — ten percent lower than Carlson. Both teams take fewer shot attempts as Jensen slows the game down. There’s a virtue in that style, but it clashes with the team’s identity, making the contrast between him and his teammates easier to notice and magnifying the effect of bad percentages on his results.
• Meanwhile, Michal Kempny. Boy, I dunno. He really hasn’t looked the same to me since his injury. He’s the only Caps defender underwater in shot-attempt percentage (SA%). But because the Caps are shooting 11.6 percent when he’s on the ice (almost 2x what Jensen sees), he looks fine in results. I suspect he’s the team weakest defender right now.
• For the record, Kempny and Martin Fehervary both shoot left.
• After a few downers in a row, let’s just take a moment to appreciate the fourth line. Hathaway, Dowd, Leipsic, and even usual-scratch Travis Boyd have been fantastic. The fourth line controls 65 percent of expected goals and 69 percent of goals. I’ll just let that number pass by without comment.
• I suspect everyone is growing tired with my Evgeny Kuznetsov alarmism. The Caps own the puck ten percentage points lower when he’s on the ice (minus-9.6 SA% rel). He’s in some strange company among seemingly elite forwards who get crushed defensively: Mark Scheifele, Patrick Kane, and Leon Draisaitl. I don’t have anything else new to add this time around, so I’ll spare you the tedium. Here’s links to my prior analysis.

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