The Washington Capitals will be without Nicklas Backstrom for the foreseeable future. A veteran of 1105 Caps games, Backstrom has been — or maybe was — at the core of the team for more than 15 years. His exit, temporary or not, marks the end of an era. Another young gun gone, and the Capitals will have to replace him with some creative thinking. That and a lot more… in the snapshot.
Oh, by the way: after a one-year hiatus, I am resurrecting the Snapshot. The snapshot is a regular column where we start from some common on-ice player statistics and then we explore from there. The snapshot is more like talking around the information than it is talking about the information itself. We will have one snapshot every month until April.
Forwards
| Player | TOI | SA% | xGF% | GF% | PDO |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Strome | 112 | 55.9 | 63.1 | 60.1 | 1.01 |
| Ovechkin | 114 | 55.5 | 49.4 | 54.8 | 0.99 |
| Wilson | 109 | 53.3 | 45.3 | 40.0 | 0.95 |
| McMichael | 102 | 48.8 | 50.0 | 28.1 | 0.94 |
| Oshie | 111 | 46.0 | 45.9 | 15.0 | 0.93 |
| Kuznetsov | 119 | 45.8 | 44.1 | 22.1 | 0.93 |
| Backstrom | 97 | 44.1 | 38.8 | 20.4 | 0.94 |
| Mantha | 83 | 41.3 | 36.4 | 50.7 | 1.02 |
| Phillips | 78 | 40.7 | 57.2 | 48.2 | 1.00 |
| Milano | 89 | 39.2 | 41.6 | 22.4 | 0.92 |
| Protas | 49 | 36.5 | 40.0 | 25.7 | 0.98 |
| Malenstyn | 57 | 31.5 | 30.3 | 34.8 | 1.02 |
Defenders
| Player | TOI | SA% | xGF% | GF% | PDO |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Carlson | 137 | 50.3 | 49.0 | 35.6 | 0.94 |
| Fehervary | 132 | 46.0 | 48.5 | 33.6 | 0.96 |
| Sandin | 157 | 45.9 | 48.2 | 29.8 | 0.95 |
| van Riemsdyk | 134 | 44.9 | 46.1 | 34.3 | 0.98 |
| Jensen | 116 | 41.4 | 39.2 | 39.8 | 0.99 |
| Alexeyev | 42 | 39.3 | 35.2 | 59.3 | 1.18 |
Glossary
- TOI – Time on ice in minutes. Only five-on-five play is included here.
- SA% – Shot-attempt percentage. The share of total shots attempted by Washington while the skater is on the ice during five-on-five play. 50 percent means even.
- xGF% – Expected goals percentage. The share of expected goals generated by Washington while the skate is on the ice during five-on-five play. Expected goals weights how likely to become a goal each attempted shot is. 50 percent means even.
- GF% – Goals-for percentage. The share of total goals scored by Washington when the skater is on the ice during five-on-five play. 50 percent means even.
- PDO – The sum of Washington’s shooting percentage and saving percentage when the skater is on the ice during five-on-five play. One means league average. The acronym doesn’t stand for anything, and yes, I hate it.
Notes
- Overall, the Capitals rank 29th in puck possession if you measure by the share of shot attempts they take: 45.8 percent. That puts them just above the Hawks and Sharks, two teams widely expected to stink this season. But how Washington landed at that number is critical. The team was a mess through the first four games, all played against playoff bubble or worse teams. Then competition got harder and the Caps played better — including drawing even in attempts with New Jersey. None of this means Washington is secretly good or actually bad, but instead that they’re unfixed, which is maybe what we should expect with a new coach and so many players at career crossroads.
| Date | Opp | Opp Prediction | WSH SA% | Cume SA% |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oct 13 | Pittsburgh | 93 | 36.5 | 36.5 |
| Oct 16 | Calgary | 94 | 38.3 | 37.4 |
| Oct 18 | Ottawa | 92 | 42.2 | 38.9 |
| Oct 21 | Montreal | 80 | 45.7 | 40.5 |
| Oct 24 | Toronto | 96 | 51.3 | 42.3 |
| Oct 25 | New Jersey | 98 | 50.0 | 43.6 |
| Oct 27 | Minnesota | 95 | 55.6 | 45.1 |
| Oct 29 | San Jose | 76 | 49.4 | 45.8 |
In the table above, the “Opp Prediction” is the standings points prediction made by HockeyViz prior to the season’s start.
- Without a doubt, Washington strongest player by every measure has been Dylan Strome. When he’s on the ice, the Capitals control 55.9 percent of the shot attempts and 63.1 percent of the expected goals. Right now, he is the ideal center for Alex Ovechkin and it’s not even close.
- Aliaksei Protas has not started a shift in the offensive zone yet. I had high (probably too high) hopes for this player and I’m not ready to give up on them yet. In my view, if your team controls under 40 percent of the shot attempts over a big enough sample, you’re not really playing competitive NHL hockey. Protas is at 36.5 percent after 49 minutes, a paltry sample but still concerning. Compound that with his deployments — toughest in the league — and his linemates (mostly Beck Malenstyn), I’m inclined to wait before I make any conclusions or scale back my high hopes.
- Beck Malenstyn seems to be the player struggling most with his NHL duties. In addition to his team-worst on-ice shot-attempt percentage (31.5 percent in 57 minutes), he’s also seen opponents generate 16 high-danger chances per hour, ranking him 377th out of 397 forwards.
- The last two bullets are like a relief painting of Nic Dowd, who is badly missed – as long as he’s able to play at the level he was at last season. Washington used to have the best fourth line in hockey. Their various combinations so far in 2023-24 should place them among the worst.
- Evgeny Kuznetsov is the player I’ve been most worried about going into this season. He’s the one whose range of possible trajectories is widest. I haven’t seen that range narrow down yet; he’s been inconsistent. When paired with TJ Oshie, he’s been great but unlucky. Otherwise, it’s been dire. These numbers could be the product of particular opponents or easing into the season or simple variance in small samples, but it’s something we should keep an eye on.
| Kuznetsov line with | TOI | SA% |
|---|---|---|
| McMichael, Oshie | 36 | 59.8 |
| Milano, Oshie | 23 | 51.8 |
| McMichael, Wilson | 23 | 39.9 |
- In the meantime, Kuznetsov should cool it with the stick penalties. He’s had six, one behind Tom Wilson, and two of those penalties have come while he was already killing a penalty. Washington has a bottom-ten penalty kill right now; they could really use a break.
- I think the snapshot is maybe not a good tool for illustrating how weak Washington’s defense is. If Nick Jensen and Trevor van Riemsdyk can’t play as well as they did last season, it’ll be dire, but I don’t think I’ve got useful information to show that here. It’s just an aura, man. I think Martin Fehervary could be good in combination with John Carlson (56.1 percent of shot attempts in 53 minutes), but I haven’t liked him in any other context. Actually, let’s use this as an opportunity to appreciate a player who is way too underappreciated by our community: John Carlson. He’s been a positive force for almost every forward he spends a lot of time with, and an extremely positive force for the core.
| Player | TOI with Carlson | SA% with Carlson | SA% without Carlson | Diff |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oshie | 55 | 48.2 | 48.7 | -0.5 |
| Ovechkin | 52 | 64.0 | 52.9 | +11.1 |
| Kuznetsov | 47 | 53.2 | 45.2 | +8.0 |
| Strome | 40 | 68.5 | 51.8 | +16.8 |
| McMichael | 35 | 48.3 | 52.9 | -4.6 |
| Backstrom | 33 | 46.2 | 48.0 | -1.9 |
| Wilson | 33 | 72.1 | 47.4 | +24.8 |
| Milano | 26 | 45.3 | 39.0 | +6.3 |
| Mantha | 23 | 64.3 | 35.2 | +29.1 |
| Phillips | 21 | 42.2 | 45.5 | -3.2 |
| Malenstyn | 20 | 34.1 | 33.3 | +0.8 |
| Protas | 18 | 36.8 | 40.3 | -3.5 |
- Nicklas Backstrom: I’m still not emotionally ready to say it, so I’ll say a bunch of things around it. Washington managed to drastically lower the pace of play while Backstrom was on the ice. As Pat Holden noted on Pokechecked by Murphy, Backstrom’s ice time was at a career low. The team’s 2.7 shooting percentage during his shifts suggest that more goals would have come, even if the his lines’ offensive volume was not very high. Our hopes were that, as the sample grew, Backstrom’s possession factoring in shot quality (38.8 percent of expected goals) would have caught up to raw volume (44.1 percent by shot attempts), and that perhaps both would improve as he got more comfortable. That’s not going to happen now. I keep thinking about how Brian MacLellan framed the situation over the summer. He knew where we were going all along.
Headline photo: Alan Dobbins/RMNB
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