The Washington Capitals are in the bottom half of the Metro division standings, having just lost a winnable intra-division game to the Flyers. Their once-vaunted power play is in the league’s bottom third. They’ve lost every overtime opportunity they’ve had. And now they’re missing basically their entire second line for more than a month.

Today in the snapshot: This is fine. No, seriously. There’s lot of good news too.

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

• Briefly, at a team level the Capitals rank twelfth in controlling shot attempts with 51.8 percent and — weirdly —  sixth in expected goals with 54.9 percent. Washington has traditionally been the team outperforming their low xG stats. I consider this a mixed result and one we should come back to once we’ve got a few more weeks of hockey.
• Infant child Connor McMichael‘s process stats are superb (a team high on-ice shot-attempt percentage of 60.0, expected-goal percentage of 67.3) but he has an actual-goals-for percentage of 46.6 (five for the Caps, six for opponents), among the lowest on the team. Those meh results are primarily a function of a bad goaltending —  85.2 percent during five-on-five play. It’s too soon for me to draw conclusions about McMichael, though I’m optimistic about his future. Mostly this bullet was just a crash course in snapshot stats.
• If I resist characterizing McMichael’s good play, I must do the same for Hendrix Lapierre‘s bad play. He’s played just 52 minutes of five-on-five play, but the Caps have been out-attempted 53 to 37 in that time —  a team low of 41.1 percent. Factoring in quality with expected goals, Lapierre appears fine at 48.1 percent, which makes me feel better about resisting sweeping conclusions for now.  Sure, McMichael is tops of the list, and Lapierre is bottom, but let’s chill until they’ve got more ice time.
• That ice time will come quickly as the Caps will be without Nicklas Backstrom, Anthony Mantha, and TJ Oshie for an extended period of time. That’s practically their entire second line, which will force a lot of ice time on younger players, which is ultimately a good thing for a very old club. This is still an awful circumstance for the Capitals, but it’s coming at the best possible time: early in the season and when the schedule is relatively easy. Here’s Washington’s opponent strength using an unweighted average of many models’ projected standings points for opponents.

• The next two weeks will see the Caps playing Buffalo, Detroit, Columbus, Pittsburgh, Anaheim, Los Angeles, San Jose, and Seattle. Those are three bottom-ten xG teams, not including Buffalo and Detroit. The Caps should be able to go at least .500 through this stretch while missing a huge hunk of their hunky forwards. Injuries are never good — unless it’s the regular season and you’re Tampa — but if you have to be a bit banged up, better to be banged up now.
• Washington’s once-and-future fourth line has been elite for a while now. Carl Hagelin, Garnet Hathaway, and Nic Dowd take the toughest minutes and matchups possible, and they do great with it. I think you could argue that they’re snakebit too. Carl Hagelin is notorious for his lack of finishing skill, but he and Hathaway have generated 2.6 expected goals without hitting the back of net once. The line as a whole is shooting 2.3 percent. The goals will come. Not from Hagelin; he’ll never score again, but the other guys will definitely score more.
• Also deep in the red in expected vs actual goals is Lars Eller, and I’m a bit more worried about him. He’s goal-less through eleven games, despite generating 1.3 individual expected goals during five-on-five play. But more concerning is his declining individual offense. Below are individual shot-attempt rates for each of the last three seasons.

• Eller’s last season was injury-plagued and generally sort of bad, but his early returns in 2021-22 have been at about that level. If that’s his new normal, that’s a bit discouraging for a player I had hoped could step up with Backstrom sidelined. Consider me not yet apprehensive, but maybe just a bit wary for now.
• Okay, that’s far as I can get without talking about Alex Ovechkin, who is pretty good imho. From the same graph above, we can see his individual shot-attempt rate 16.9. I always prefer him above twenty, but I’m not going to quibble with his results: ten goals and eight assists through eleven games.
• A brief foray into not-five-on-five: Oveckhin has two power-play goals this season, with neither coming from The Ovi Spot™. Here’s my annotation of his offense visualization from hockeyviz.

• The Ovi Shot from the Ovi Spot is getting consistently stopped by goalies, which suggests bad luck, good scouting, and/or poor setups. I think Washington’s power play badly misses Nicklas Backstrom‘s quarterbacking at the right half-wall. The team is currently ranked 22nd in the league by conversion rate, and 18th and 19th when measuring by attempt rate and expected goal rate. That suggests to me a team that is not unlucky so much as just not very good. I’d like to see them make some systemic changes now, especially while the team is still getting a lot of opportunities. Time to pad some Ovi stats.
• Revisiting that shot-attempt rate by season visualization from earlier, here’s the nominal bottom six:

• This is nearly the same scale as the top six. Connor McMichael generates more individual offense than Alex Ovechkin, which is bananas. If that lasts, McMichael will be a special player — I’d guess Vrana-tier. Meanwhile, Daniel Sprong is giving the team viable secondary scoring and Garnet Hathaway is a pistol, and one day I will teach Ian to love him. This is all good news, especially for a team with doubts around its depth.
• Let’s do one more, this time for defenders.

• Nick Jensen is shooting more than most forwards, including Kuznetsov, Eller, and Hagelin. I wish he’d share some attempts with his main partner, Dmitry Orlov, but I get it. For now.
• Speaking of D, it’s so good to see Trevor van Riemsdyk get a proper spot in the lineup again. His pairing with Justin Schultz has been Washington’s best this season. Really, all of Washington’s defensive pairs have been lovely, even if Carlson-Fehervary stumbled in the last few games. Here’s the on-ice ratings for all pairings in the league, with Washington’s groups highlighted. Bottom-right is best.

• I’m going to revisit this vis as the season samples mature. I’m really like Washington’s defensive players right now, especially if they can find a way to tame the occasional downsides of Carlson’s style.
• We’re out of space, which means oh no I can’t get in trouble for having an opinion about Evgeny Kuznetsov, and I don’t have to provoke anyone into anger by being cool about Vanecek and Samsonov.

This story would not be possible without Natural Stat Trick and Hockey Viz. Please consider joining us in supporting them. An early version of this story and its underlying data appeared on RMNB’s own Patreon.

Headline photo: Elizabeth Kong/RMNB