The Washington Capitals will play their 21st game of the season tonight in Vegas, and that means we’ve crossed the threshold of where I think I can begin to understand how good the team is.
With 26 points in 20 games (12-6-2), the Capitals are the eighth best team in the league by points percentage. They’re in a playoff spot. They’re third in their division, but they have played fewer games than the teams ahead of them, the Rangers and Hurricanes. Things are looking great in the standings.
And that’s all you need to know. No need to read on.
Despite their position on the leaderboard, Moneypuck thinks the Capitals have a 43 percent chance of making the playoffs, and HockeyViz thinks it’s 42 percent. So the models think there’s something about Washington’s play that doesn’t align with their results.
Let’s figure out where that mismatch is. We’ll break down Washington’s play by situation: five-on-five offense, then defense, then power play and penalty kill. We’ll keep the numbers to a minimum – using ranks instead – so maybe figure in your head first where you think the team would land in each of those situations, then we’ll compare.
Offense
Here’s where the Capitals rank at various offensive event rates.
- Attempts: 31st
- Expected goals: 23rd
- Scoring chances: 28th
- High-danger chances: 27th
- Goals: 30th
Succinctly: The Washington Capitals are one of the worst offensive teams in the league. Their 33 goals during five-on-five beats only San Jose, and that lines up with their attempts. If there’s any solace, and please take this modestly, the team’s shot quality is high in proportion (4th best in the league) to their raw shot volume.
HockeyViz has a heatmap of Washington’s shot locations that I think tells the story well. Blue blobs are places where Washington shoots less compared to the rest of the league, red means more.
It’s very poor.
Now, Washington’s 7.9 shooting percentage places them 24th in the league, so maybe you could also argue they’re unlucky. I suspect the difference is marginal there, though it feels like the bad bounces come mostly when the team’s (and planet’s) historic best scorer is on the ice. But that’s a topic for another article.
Defense
Here’s where the Capitals place at various defensive events. In this case, the Caps are ranked by their ability to limit opponents’ rates.
- Attempts: 26th
- Expected goals: 26th
- Scoring chances: 24th
- High-danger chances: 23rd
- Goals: 15th
On the wrong end of the puck, it’s just as dire – except with one happy twist. By any measure, the Capitals play defense way too much, and their tactics to mitigate that fact are not working either. The team keeps many shots to the outside, but they’re extraordinarily weak around the crease, allowing a higher rate of rebounds than 30 teams. And the proportion of opponent offense that comes on the rush is higher than 27 teams.
I tend to think Washington’s defense (not to be conflated with their roster of players in the position of defender) is worse than the process numbers show. Here’s HockeyViz’s heatmap of opponent attempts against them – red still means more shots from that location, but now that’s bad instead of good.
The dark red blob in front of the net jumps out at me, which seems to erase the advantage of minimizing shots from the slot above it, the blue blob between the faceoff dots.
So that’s a disaster, with the Capitals crowded around the bottom of the league in all defensive stats except the one that matters: actual goals, where the Capitals are in the middle. That’s to the great credit of Washington’s goalies, or specifically Charlie Lindgren, who has personally saved 8.5 goals better than expected. (Kuemper is 2.7 goals below expected.) Lindgren has been Washington’s most valuable player this season, and he ranks among the very best in the league so far. Lindgren’s exceptional performance is based in his stability: saving practically every shot you expect/demand a goalie to stop, not allowing the soft ones in.
Special Teams
Beginning with the power play, here’s where Washington ranks:
- Power-play attempts: 13th
- Power-play expected goals: 2nd
- Power-play goal rate: 32nd
- Power-play conversion rate: 32nd
It’s almost the inverse of their defensive play. The team is generating tremendous volume and shot quality compared to the rest of the league, but they’re trash at converting with a 5.3 shooting percentage – one quarter the effectiveness of league-leading Tampa’s. My conclusion after rigorous research: It’s terrible luck, except it’s obviously not, except also it still kind of is.
Because the Capitals power play is built around Alex Ovechkin, and because he’s got just one power-play goal, and because even it came from out of formation, the team’s power play is de facto dysfunctional. The impression I bet we all have is that he’s getting poorer quality passes from his setup men, usually John Carlson, though I am starting to wonder if Ovechkin himself is now overly selective on shooting on the passes he’s given.
In any case, Washington’s power play is a travesty. It’s all at once frustrating and also likely to improve and also ample justification for removing assistant coach Kirk Muller from its responsibility. I acknowledge the contradictions there.
Over on the penalty kill, where incidentally the Capitals have played less than any team except St. Louis and Ottawa, the situation is much brighter. Here is how Washington ranks at limiting opponent events:
- Penalty-kill attempts: 20th
- Penalty-kill expected goals: 10th
- Penalty-kill goal rate: 14th
- Penalty-kill conversion rate: 13th
It’s great, and I don’t want to belabor it. The Capitals are wonderfully disciplined outside of Tom Wilson and Evgeny Kuznetsov, and they handle the penalty kill just fine. The goaltending isn’t even stellar while the Caps are a man down; the skaters are just better at slowing down the opponent offense.
If I were to worry about anything on the PK, it’d be based on HockeyViz’s heatmap, which shows a lot of opponent attempts from up close.
So, contrary to the standings, and to my great personal bummer, the Capitals are not a good team. They control 45 percent of the shot attempts and 46 percent of the expected goals during five-on-five play, far less than their peers in the league’s top-ten by standings point percentage. And the points they have gained have come during the easiest stretch of their season by a mile.
Hockey’s about to get a lot harder for the Washington Capitals. Fundamental improvements to five-on-five possession play, a progression to the mean for Alex Ovechkin, and some kind of magic-beans-type situation for the power play are all needed.
I know this kind of downer analysis coming while the Capitals are on a 7-2-1 run can read a bit edgelordy, but I think it’s useful and critical to identify the gaps between how things have gone so far and how they’re likely to go in the future. Put another way: the wins have been great, and here’s what stands between them and more of them in the future.
Headline photo: Alan Dobbins/RMNB
