Staggering success: snapshot

Because of the Four Nations break and the tyranny of the Julian calendar, February was a short month. Including Saturday, only nine games have been played since our last snapshot. The Caps went 4-3-2 in them – with all three regulation losses coming last week. The record suggests an inconsistent team, and the record is correct.

Though the Caps are at the top of the conference, how they got and stayed there has shifted – a staggered approach to winning hockey games. Sometimes they dictate the flow of play, sometimes they can’t stop hitting the back of the net, and sometimes the goalies are Jennings-tier.

Over the last nine games, they have mellowed out. The process stats in particular were bad. The Caps controlled slightly under half of the shots in the sample (49.3 percent of attempts, 16th place), but weighted for quality it was worse: 43.7 percent, 30th place. But in a short month and with the Caps running away with a few games, I don’t worry so much. If I were in the team’s front office, however; I’d be going over those games with a magnifying glass.

Washington’s window for a championship remains implausibly open, but their window to make trades closes in five days.

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

• For now, the Caps are still on a 115-point pace. With the second easiest remaining schedule in the league, they’ve got a good chance at winning the President’s Trophy, which would be a good thing, thank you very much. But how they’ve gotten to this point is complicated. There have been times in which Washington’s process has been fantastic and there have been times when they’ve had the league’s best goaltending, and those times have not often overlapped. Below, the blue line indicates how good the Caps have been at controlling the flow of five-on-five play, using expected goals, and compared to league average. The red line does the same but for goaltending.

• It’s a rollercoaster, and that presents both an opportunity and a risk. We’ve seen both falter at times, but if both faltered at once, and if that once is the postseason, then the Caps will be done for the year. If both can align for – let’s say sixteen wins – it’ll be a fun summer.
• Alex Ovechkin is near the bottom among Caps forwards according to shot-attempt percentage (SA%, 48.4 percent), a proxy measurement of possession. And yet he’s still successful – very successful – with the Caps outscoring opponents nearly two-to-one (64.6 percent) during his shifts. That’s the result of a high PDO – the sum of the Caps’ shooting percentage (13.5 percent) and save percentage (93.3) when he’s on the ice. No NHL forward has a higher PDO. That’s a red flag because the stat is notoriously unstable, especially on the offensive side. But if he can keep it up for just a few more weeks, well, you know. History.
• In November, I praised Connor McMichael for having at last his breakout season. He is still on pace for nearly 30 goals, but he has cooled off considerably. For a while he was attempting nearly 20 shots an hour – the Ovechkin threshold – but he settled at half that rate – the Taylor Raddysh threshold. Some of that drop was inevitable – 20 was never sustainable, and opponents would eventually learn to counter Washington’s early-season opportunism – but I think there’s another cause, and it’s from Sainte-Agathe-des-Monts, Quebec.

• Pierre-Luc Dubois has been the secret ingredient all season. Of everyone with whom PLD has shared at least 120 on-ice minutes, here’s a comprehensive list of players who fared better in on-ice shot attempts when away from Dubois:                 . When McMichael was partnered with Dubois, the Caps controlled 54.7 percent of attempts. Without Dubois, McMichael sees the Caps control 46.6 percent of attempts. It’s a massive difference. McMichael barely played with Dubois between December 29 and January 25, during which time McMichael had zero five-on-five goals.
• I’m going to talk about combinations more in just a moment, but first I have to admit I’m anxious about it. There have been a handful of times this season when I was tempted to write, “[Player X] is dragging down [Player Y],” but I resisted. I’m skeptical. Like that blue line above showed, the Caps have been wildly up and down this season (at least when measured by possession; on the scoreboard they had been soaring until just this week). If I were to say, “this line is good; Carbery should play them again,” and “this line stinks; I don’t even want them squadding up in CoD,” I might be inadvertently just highlighting that the Caps were good when the line was together – but not necessarily that the Caps were good because the line was together. Same with defensive pairs. More than in seasons past, I’m wary about how the team’s inconsistency colors my analytical approach.
• So take these next parts with grains of salt: I think Lars Eller is fine. His impact on Mangiapane and Raddysh (two players with ambiguous performances) is apparent and positive. Ethen Frank, who I think is a bona fide NHLer, hasn’t played even an hour away from Eller, but he’s done way better when paired with the Great Dane.

• Nic Dowd, with a 48.9 percent on-ice shot-attempt percentage, may be a disappointment to some. He’s still the most defensively deployed forward in the league, which should always qualify our opinions, but I also wonder if he’s held back some by Brandon Duhaime. Duhaime has played only a little over an hour away from Dowd, but that hour did not go well (43.1 percent of shot attempts). I don’t by any means think Duhaime is bad – just the opposite! – but I sometimes wonder if the workload is a poor fit for him.

• Will we see Jakub Vrana, bottom of the stack ranking with 46.0 percent of on-ice shot attempts and just above the tank line of 40 percent in expected goals, get a sweater again? Barring an injury in the three games before the trade deadline, I doubt it. Following the deadline, I’d be stunned.
• All of this will inform Washington’s strategy at the trade deadline, where everyone expects they’ll be conservative but may shore up their depth. I think that’s the right idea, but I can’t pinpoint a single problem to solve. Their analytics budget is bigger than mine.
• We are 1000 words in, and I haven’t even talked about the defense yet. The variance is even stronger on the blue line, to the point that I look at the pairings and throw up my hands. The numbers, from MoneyPuck, where defenders intersect is the share of expected goals the Caps control when they’re on ice together. Fifty is even and higher is better.

• There’s no one who doesn’t see success in some situations. I’m often pessimistic about Martin Fehervary, but he – like anyone – is dominant when with John Carlson, who you probably still do not properly appreciate.
• Meanwhile, while Jakub Chychrun isn’t a possession dynamo (a defender-low 47.3 percent of expected goals), his value is obvious. His shot from high in the zone is probably the best in the league. The visualization from HockeyViz below shows how effective his shots are from various locations on the ice; red meaning he’s better at scoring from that spot. Chychrun from above the circles – yeesh, he’s unbelievable.

• I wonder if he can keep that up for the life of his next contract, which maybe will be with the Caps. I don’t quite understand why they haven’t done it yet, especially with the rising salary cap – unless they’re cautious about his reliability going forward – or the chances North America can dodge an impending recession. I asked for the Caps to re-sign him at Christmas, but maybe they’re waiting until late in the season. I do love those feel-good, pre-loffs contract extensions.
• Last thing: John Carlson‘s ice time is down more than two minutes per game from last season. He’s still the team’s most-used player and 20th in the league, but the team is depending on him far less than they did last season (ew, last season, let’s not speak of it). I would love to see him play even less in the next month and a half, heading into the playoffs hale and hearty. 🤞

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