Rasmus Sandin was Washington’s big deadline pickup, but it didn’t mean much in a cursed season.

By the Numbers

For on-ice percentages, 50 percent means even: both teams possess the puck evenly. Higher is better, lower is worse.

Isolated Impact by HockeyViz

About this visualization: This series of charts made by Micah Blake McCurdy of hockeyviz.com shows how the player has impacted play when on the ice. At the top of the image is the team’s offense (even strength at left, power play at right) and at bottom is the team’s defense (with penalty kill at bottom right). In each case, red/orange blobs mean teams shoot for more from that location on the ice, and blue/purple means less. In general, a good player should have red/orange blobs near the opponent’s net at top, and blue/purple bobs near their own team’s net at bottom. The distributions in middle show how the player compares to league average at individual finishing, setting up teammates to score, and taking and drawing penalties.

Player Card by Evolving Hockey

About this player card: This image from Evolving Hockey shows an overview of the player across different parts of their game. At top right are the players percentile rank (1 is worst; 100 best), overall and on offense and defense separately. Higher numbers are in blue. Below are the player’s contributions in different compartments of the game using the goals-above-replacement or GAR metric. Higher numbers (again in blue) mean the player adds value compared to an average AHL call-up player.

Exit Interview

Peter’s Take

I’m still kind of stunned Washington traded for Rasmus Sandin at the trade deadline. I didn’t understand the player well at the time, but I’ve come to recognize him as a familiar archetype: the offensive defender whose defensive weakness will eventually drive fans bananas. He’s a Green type, a Carlson type. Eventually, many of you goblins will turn against him.

Sandin could be a role-player in Alex Ovechkin’s goal chase, but check out their returns this past season: 90 minutes together in 15 games, with the Caps outscored 9 to 6 and them controlling just under 40 percent of shot attempts – below the “oh no, this is a blowout” line. That’s the precise opposite of what we’d hope to see from a Sandin-Ovechkin combo. I had hoped – and naively expected – that the O-y D would give Ovechkin more zone time, but we certainly did not get that.

I still hold out hope. That Sandin-Ovechkin time came almost in March and April, as Washington spiraled. There was one week when Sandin himself recorded a minus-11 goal differential. That was the team at its worst, the nauseating heights of the Bad Year Tax, and perhaps not a good sample to use in making evaluations.

Let’s see what Carbery makes of him.

Sandin on RMNB

• Sandin was acquired in exchange for Erik Gustafsson and a first-round pick.
• Why that trade made sense.
• Getting to know Rasmus.
• On how he already knew some Caps players: “All Swedes know each other.”
• Sandin initially slotted on the top pairing, but that was what we called the pairing with Trevor van Riemsdyk for a while.
• He scored three points in his Caps debut.
• Sandin’s first goal as a Cap was ugly.
• He had eight points in his first four games.
• But Chris picked up early on that Sandin’s defense was not without flaws.
• On Backstrom: “Everyone knows what kind of hockey player he is, but as a person he is even greater.”
• At Worlds, Sandin put David Reinbacher in the hospital with a hip check.
• Then he took a knee-on-knee hit and was done in the tournament.

Your Turn

How contaminated was Sandin’s play by the Caps late-season swirl around the toilet bowl?

This article would not be possible without HockeyViz, Evolving Hockey, Natural Stat Trick, and All Three Zones. Please consider joining us in supporting them. For people interested in learning more from those resources, we recently published video walkthroughs.