The Washington Capitals completed the 2023-24 NHL season with 91 points, earning them the second wild-card spot for the Stanley Cup Playoffs. Doing so despite a goal differential of minus-37, they become the team with the worst such number to make the playoffs in the salary cap era.
The following teams had a goal differential of minus-36 (Washington’s number when excluding shootout): The 2010-11 New Jersey Devils, the 2012-13 Colorado Avalanche, the 2013-14 Calgary Flames, the 2014-15 Carolina Hurricanes, and the 2015-16 Arizona Coyotes. None made the postseason; several were in the draft lottery.
The disparity between Washington’s performance when measured in goals and when measured in wins requires deeper interrogation. Peter Hassett wrote in a seminal 2024 essay that “the Capitals win small and lose big.” Using a adapted version of baseball’s pythagorean win expectancy, Hassett estimated that the Capitals earned approximately ten more standings points than their goal differential would suggest. This alone could explain how the Capitals made the postseason despite depressed underlying statistics — goals-for percentage being just one of several.
In a seminal 2008 article, JLikens explained, continuing the seminal work of Alan Ryder, how scoring first and scoring second have similar impacts on a team’s likelihood to win a game. When thinking of the impact of the order of goals, we should consider instead of the score situations when the goal is scored rather than merely the priority of the goal.
And generally, timeliness of goals, or goal sequencing as JFresh termed it in a seminal 2024 tweet, does not effect a profound effect on standings, but Washington is an outlier. Among the various score situations (leading, trailing, tied), the Capitals performed best when the game was tied, with a plus-7 goal differential, meaning they took the lead seven more times than they lost it. This ranks them 12th best in the league.
But that figure stands out compared to Washington’s goal differentials when leading or trailing. If the team was leading by one goal or more, they were outscored by seven goals, ranking them 26th in the league. Washington was very poor at protecting leads, but they fared worse when trying to mount a comeback, with a minus-36 goal differential (again: excluding shootout) when behind on the scoreboard, ranked 29th in the league.
| When Leading | When Tied | When Trailing | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Goal Differential | -7 | +7 | -36 |
| Rank | 26th | 12th | 29th |
Stats above are for all situations, excluding the shootout. NB: this is not the same calculation the NHL uses for goal differential.
Ceding big leads and permitting opponents to run away with games made Washington’s goal differential so low, but winning close games kept the Capitals competitive in the playoff race. Unfortunately, winning lots of games closely is not a strong descriptor of a good team in the long run. And Washington’s possession statistics seem to describe a weak team. They ranked 26th in shot-attempt share (i.e. the percentage of shot attempts by either team that were taken by the Capitals), and 25th in expected-goal share, a similar measurement that attempts to weigh different shot attempts differently based on their quality (i.e. how likely each is to become a goal).
The shortfall is primarily on offense. The Capitals actually did a good job limiting opponent chances from below the faceoff circles, but they mostly struggled to generate offense reliably. Micah Blake McCurdy, in a seminal 2024 visualization, estimated that the Capitals’ offense was about six percentage points worse than average.
Thus, one could understand how one might predict that the Washington Capitals would not make the playoffs in 2024, and thusly again one could forgive one for being wrong just this once.
