The Caps without Alex Ovechkin: snapshot

Despite losing a legendary player, it was a very good November for the Washington Capitals. They now sit in first place in the Metropolitan Division. Moneypuck says they have a 98 percent chance of making the playoffs. Hockeyviz thinks they’ll get 100 standings points. My text messages say they’re “fun.”

But how Washington won changed in month two of the season: from controlling the flow of the game with finishing their chances to just finishing their chances, without the underlying domination.

The Caps of October controlled 62.2 percent of the expected goals. The Caps of November controlled 48.2 percent. No team dropped more. In raw shot attempts the drop was from 55.7 percent to 49.5 percent. Only three teams saw a bigger drop in shot-attempt percentage (SA%) from October to November: Toronto (good), Islanders (probably bad but I dunno for sure), and Chicago (okay, they’re definitely bad).

But offsetting that possession decline were dizzyingly high shooting percentages – a league-topping 13.6 percent during five-on-five play and a top-three 23.0 percent during the power play (including two-man advantages). That’s made for some very fun game-watching, but it’s the least sustainable way to build a winning season. I’m not worried, and I’ll tell you why.

In this month’s snapshot, let’s figure out who is driving the bus for the Capitals now that Ovechkin is out, and how they can keep that bus on whatever the metaphor is for a road that goes fast or to a good place or something.

The tables below show the team’s statistics while each player is on the ice. Interesting points are highlighted for discussion below. A glossary follows.

Forwards

Defenders

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 weighs 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

• Our stack rankings go by shot-attempt percentage (SA%) – i.e. what share of the overall shots belong to the player’s team when they’re on the ice. Atop that stack ranking is Washington’s newest player, Lars Eller, who played his first game for the Caps halfway into the month. Sometimes in the snapshot what we see for a player is less a signal about the player and more an indication of the context of their small sample. Eller’s is curious – and revealing. The Caps’ opponents in November before he joined had an average standings pace of 87.6 (easy), and after he joined it’s 93.4 (hard). For Eller to have strong relative numbers against tougher opponents suggests that the Caps improved as the month went on. And that is absolutely the case.

• The Capitals controlled 44.2 percent of the shot attempts in November before Eller joined. They controlled 53.4 after he joined. I’m not saying Eller himself drove this improvement; I’m saying I didn’t fully appreciate the improvement until I saw Eller sticking out at the top of the table. That is why I am not fretting too much about the stormclouds I gathered in the introduction of today’s snapshot.
• Also, I’m chuffed about Eller individually. He still looks like a majestic gazelle on the ice. I‘d cite a skating speed stat from NHL Edge to back that up, but that resource still feels dubious.
• The other ex the Caps are giving it another shot with is Jakub Vrana, who played in just over half of the month’s games. Vrana remains at the bottom of the forward rankings, down slightly from last month – expected goals dropping from 44.4 percent to 39.3 percent, below the woof line of 40. The real struggle with Vrana has been when the Caps don’t have the puck, which in addition to being too much is happening deep in the defensive zone. In the chart below, each player is a plotted to indicate offense and defense rates when he is on the ice. Horizontal position means opponents generate more expected goals (xG) and vertical position means the Caps generate more. Vrana is in bottom-right, the bad zone.

• Vrana has skated 84 minutes with Hendrix Lapierre, during which the Caps have been outscored three to one. I kinda think Vrana is the one dragging Lapierre down there. Lapierre still struggles apart from Vrana (46.9 percent in xG), but I think the difference is clear, despite regular caveats for small samples and that Eller-like distortion. Both Vrana and Lapierre would benefit from on-ice partners who are great at defense – your Tom Wilson types.

• Speaking of Tom Wilson (56.9 expected-goals percentage), you already know he’s having his best season since before the ACL injury, but the scale of the improvement is dramatic. In my offseason review, my big concern about the big guy was offense. Wilson obviously read my review closely and tuned his game accordingly. His individual rates have ticked up only slightly, but his lines’ output overall has exploded. The bars below indicate how many expected goals the Caps generate while Wilson is on the ice, with the light blue indicating the offense came off the sticks of Wilson’s on-ice partners.

• Corey Sznajder’s All Three Zones is a manual microstat tracking project that gives deeper insight into what players are doing. A3Z really likes Wilson’s passing this season – both on the rush and while cycling in the offensive zone. Considering Wilson and the other elite player here, Dylan Strome, are often playing on different lines (Wilson with McMichael), the Capitals are oppressively productive when their top six is on the ice.

• The Caps were linked to Nils Hoglander in trade rumors this week. I like that player a lot, but I could only see it making sense if the Caps want to change strategies on Vrana, Lapierre, or both. Hmm.
• At the time Alex Ovechkin left active play, his team was scoring on 21.4 percent of its shots and saving 95.1 percent of opponent shots during five-on-five play. That adds up to a PDO (sorry, bad stat, bad stat name) of 1.16, highest in the league. Not sustainable. That number won’t change until Ovi is back on the ice, which I suspect will happen before the next snapshot goes live.
• Ovechkin’s PDO stat doesn’t even count the power play, and though the PP is outside the snapshot’s usual sample, it’s worth mentioning. The Caps have scored eight power-play goals in the six games they’ve been without Ovechkin, so I understand why people might wonder if they’re better off without him. It’s… complicated. The numbers below are rates: Washington events per hour of five-on-four play.

• Without Ovechkin, they get fewer shot attempts but more high-danger chances. Their overall shot quality (xGoals or Expected Goals) is identical, but the shooting percentage is nearly two times higher without Ovechkin. The Ovechkin power play emphasizes the Ovi Shot from the Ovi Spot, which we all understand as a very dangerous shot, but because of its location statistical models don’t agree – because they don’t know about the cross-ice pass that proceeds it or the specialness of the shooter himself. With Ovi out the team focuses more on getting into the crease, and they’ve been very successful. Would that continue indefinitely? I doubt it. I say let’s not overthink it – let Ovi be Ovi.
• I’ll be excited when Ovechkin’s back and the lines return to normal. McMichael-Dubois-Wilson and Duhaime-Dowd-Raddysh are some of the best trios in the league at controlling play (both around 55 percent in expected goals), and Ovechkin-Strome-Protas has scored 76 percent of their on-ice goals. Get healthy and improve the third line and then we can talk about a whole new potential for this team in the postseason. It rhymes with Schblontender.
• We’ve made it so far into the snapshot, and we haven’t even discussed defense yet. The big story is Jakob Chychrun, who has been fantastic. Credit where it’s due: Chris Cerullo called that years ago. But I think Washington’s best defender has actually been Rasmus Sandin, who was instrumental to the team’s win in New Jersey on Saturday. Sandin sits in the middle of the pack at on-ice shot-attempt percentage, just above even at 51.4 percent. But accounting for quality, Washington’s possession rises to 58.7 percent, one of the highest figures on the team. There is value added on both sides of the puck, but let’s look at his defense. Below is a heatmap from HockeyViz, showing opponent shot locations against the Caps. The big blue blob at bottom left – Sandin’s side of the ice – indicates that opponents are shooting far less often from those spots compared to league average.

• And with Chychrun and Carlson getting the most offensive deployments, Sandin has had a harder workload. He’s been tremendous. Took me a few years to warm up to him, but I’m hot for him now. Nope. That’s not the way to say that.
• I admit I’ve been wishy-washy on Martin Fehervary this season. He’s got okay on-ice process stats (53.2 percent of shot attempts) and has been unlucky to be underwater in actual goals: 15 for the Caps, 20 for opponents. I suspect Marty’s a bit of a passenger – cruising to success with John Carlson (61.0 percent of shot attempts in 153 minutes), but struggling with Trevor van Riemsdyk (44.2 percent in 119 minutes). In smaller minutes he didn’t do great with Roy or McIlrath either, suggesting that his only viable partner is Carlson. I’d be fine with that, especially as Roy and the aforementioned Sandin keep building chemistry on the second pair and Chychrun keeps being an absolute beast.

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