Photo: Lance Thomson
For me, the snapshot has been about opening up the analytic process on a micro level– adding transparency and immediacy to my journey to understanding of how the Caps play every week. In the interest of furthering that transparency and because I can’t stand being insincere here, lemme say this: my enthusiasm is waning.
Part of that is me not having enough time to do the in-depth research and number-crunching, and part of it is acknowledging that the Capitals merely are what they are: A marginal playoff team with good special teams and one very special player.
However they looked in October and whatever hot streaks we’ve seen this season, the Capitals are not a championship team. (Or, if they are, we haven’t seen evidence of it lately.) They’re not bad like under Adam Oates (and for that I am grateful) but they’re not great. They’re just good. They’re a good team with a good coach.
Unless the bounces go bad or they draw a tough team, these Capitals should make it into the second round of the playoffs. No further.
In this week’s snapshot, which isn’t 36 hours late you’re just imagining it, it is what it is, but at least we’ve got Ovi.
But first, Kacey:
Previous snapshots: week 1, week 2, week 3, week 4, week 5, week 6, week 7, week 8, week 9, week 10, week 11, week 12, week 13, week 14, week 15, week 16, week 17, week 18, week 19, week 20, week 21
These are current as noon on Sunday, March 22. The sample is restricted to 5v5 hockey when the score is within one goal. There’s a glossary at bottom with an explanatory video.
Forwards
| Player | GP | TOI | SA% | Goal% | PDO | ZS% |
| Glencross | 9 | 73.3 | 57.6 | 75.0 | 103.9 | 52.2 |
| Burakovsky | 50 | 446.6 | 54.3 | 61.9 | 103.0 | 63.7 |
| Ovechkin | 72 | 883.3 | 53.8 | 50.0 | 98.8 | 57.6 |
| Backstrom | 73 | 890.3 | 53.4 | 48.6 | 98.7 | 55.9 |
| Wilson | 60 | 550.2 | 53.1 | 50.0 | 99.4 | 56.3 |
| Laich | 57 | 519.9 | 52.9 | 44.1 | 97.8 | 47.7 |
| Latta | 44 | 290.4 | 52.6 | 61.5 | 102.0 | 44.9 |
| Ward | 73 | 738.9 | 51.9 | 37.5 | 96.5 | 46.3 |
| Beagle | 62 | 538.4 | 51.8 | 57.5 | 102.1 | 48.5 |
| Fehr | 69 | 696.2 | 51.1 | 46.2 | 98.8 | 45.2 |
| Johansson | 73 | 656.7 | 50.6 | 52.1 | 99.1 | 57.2 |
| Brouwer | 73 | 646.0 | 49.1 | 52.1 | 101.1 | 56.5 |
| Kuznetsov | 71 | 584.0 | 48.3 | 51.5 | 100.9 | 54.3 |
| Chimera | 68 | 587.7 | 46.7 | 43.6 | 99.2 | 46.1 |
Defense
| Player | GP | TOI | SA% | Goal% | PDO | ZS% |
| Schmidt | 39 | 406.4 | 53.9 | 45.5 | 97.9 | 60.8 |
| Gleason | 8 | 78.8 | 53.2 | 66.7 | 104.7 | 58.5 |
| Green | 63 | 702.3 | 52.7 | 54.3 | 100.9 | 59.4 |
| Niskanen | 73 | 1009.9 | 52.6 | 56.1 | 101.2 | 51.4 |
| Alzner | 73 | 940.3 | 51.3 | 52.9 | 100.7 | 49.0 |
| Carlson | 73 | 1004.2 | 50.8 | 45.9 | 98.5 | 50.7 |
| Orpik | 69 | 997.1 | 50.1 | 47.1 | 98.9 | 50.4 |
Observations
- The Capitals’ cumulative score-adjusted possession is 52.1 percent according to Puckon.net. That’s not bad at all! Heck, we’ve seen 52-percent teams make it to the Stanley Cup Finals before (Flyers, Devils– hell, Boston won the Cup without amazing possession). But in the last twenty games, which have included two against Buffalo and one against Toronto and one against Columbus, the Caps are just 50.9 percent– in the bottom half of the league.
- Stop right there. Whatever pessimism I have, it does not extend to Alex Ovechkin, who had a cold-streak week but still scored two goals (one was a game-winner), and attempted 47 shots in 67 minutes. He was above 60 percent in score-adjusted possession this week and now sits three goals south of 50 on the season. Ovi is the most valuable player in the league; his fundamentals are stronger than they’ve been since 2009; his ambulance-chasing antics with refs from a few years back seem banished entirely, and he’s a delight to watch every single night. Adjusting for era, Ovi is one of the greatest scorers of all time. We owe it to ourselves to remind ourselves of that fact. Go Ovi Go.
- But once you get below Ovi, stuff gets dire fast. The Capitals are somehow even more top-heavy than they were last year. Setting the stage for the next few bullets, here’s a chart by War on Ice (offense on x-axis; defense on y-axis).
- While Curtis Glencross (not pictured above due to sample size) has been a breath of fresh air on the second line (red-hot 25 percent individual shooting and 57.6 percent possession, though those Buffalo games loom large), Evgeny Kuznetsov struggles in the defensive zone and Troy Brouwer struggles in neutral. The third line doesn’t generate enough offense, and the skill sets of its mainstays (Jason Chimera and Joel Ward) have disintegrated. Barry Trotz hasn’t indicated that any experimentation with the lines will be coming before April, and that will cost him wins.
- But what if my pessimism is tied up in the cold streaks that most of the Capitals are experiencing right now? The team is shooting 5.4 percent during 5v5 this month– 8th worst in the league. Of the 13 goals the Caps scored during 5v5 in March, Alex Ovechkin was involved in five of them– scoring four himself. Meanwhile, the teams with some of the hottest shooting (Minnesota, Ottawa) also happen to be the ones getting all the good buzz right now. So maybe my bad attitude is just a side effect of the random variance inherent to shooting. Or maybe it’s the cold I caught from #RMNBPartyGr8.
- And whatever negativity I might have for the middle six, take a look at that bottom line. They are playing– by farrrrr— the weakest competition the other team has to offer, but they’re killing it. I think Michael Latta is genuine gamer, and I’d love to see him challenged higher up in the lineup, perhaps thereby allowing one of those suffering veterans to get some easier shifts.
- Nate Schmidt missed a huge chunk of the season with a scapula injury, which sounds painful. Before that, Schmidt was fantastic. Since he came back, well, you decide: he’s improved his team’s share of the shot attempts by 2 percent and saw 56.3 percent of the score-adjusted shot attempts belong to the good guys. My take: That’s not an AHL player’s stat line, but nonetheless to Hershey Nate goes. The reasons why are two-fold. Fold number one is Tim Gleason, whom we’ll discuss below. Folder number two (and the word fold is kind of gross, no?) is goal differential. During 5v5 Nate was on the ice for one Caps goal (his own, attaboy) and five for the opponents. That’s a 2.3 on-ice shooting percentage and an 86.5 saving percentage. So Nate played great and looked awful through no fault of his own.
- And if you think save percentage is a good way to measure defensemen, let us discuss the Norris Trophy John Erskine should of won in 2013.
- So back comes Tim Gleason, who is a sturdy guy, but not a puck-moving dynamo like Schmidt. That said, either is a huge improvement on Jack Hillen. Poor, poor Jack Hillen. Gleason’s numbers look great right now, but half of the teams he’s faced while in a Caps uniform go like this: Toronto, Columbus, Buffalo, Buffalo again. I mean, while Gleason’s not as bad as I feared, but I could get 55 percent of the shot attempts against Buffalo, and I’m sick right now.
- Dmitry Orlov is reportedly about to come back with a conditioning stint in Hershey this weekend. This is very good news for a guy who missed the entire season because he was nice enough to play ostensibly free hockey for the motherland over the summer. Last season, Orlov drove 55.9 possession next to Green for a very, very, very bad Caps team. That was amazing, but apart from Green: 45.1 percent. So. Yeah. I dunno either. I suspect that Orlov is a NHL-quality, puck-moving, but non-shooting defenseman. Yes, he needs to shoot more, although I can say that about literally every player in the league except for Ovi. (My maxim: Everybody always needs to shoot more.)
- Finally, since I didn’t get to do this last season, let’s look at some potential playoff matchups!
- As of publishing time, the Capitals are currently matched up with the Montreal Canadiens. This is good. Montreal is a bottom-10 possession team with the second-best PDO in the league (thanks to future Vezina winner Carey Price). And although they’ve got good special teams, I really think the Caps could best the Habs in a seven-game series. After what happened in 2010, I need this for my soul to be whole again.
- Washington’s other most likely match-up is the New York Rangers, who might win the Presidents’ Trophy, but I don’t think are better than the Caps. The Ragsare benefitting from god-like defense from Cam Talbot lately (97 percent 5v5 saving this month whaaaaaaa), which could reverse like any second now. Any… second… now.
- And then there’s the Islanders and the Penguins. Both of those teams had Championship buzz at the beginning of the season but have had swoons of late. Now neither seems quite so daunting. Seems is a portentous word. So have you read all the national press tearing their hair out over Sidney Crosby’s so-called down season? After what we saw with Ovi last year, we all know better, right? Because I think the Penguins will win the Stanley Cup. Perhaps it’s best if the Caps stay out of their way in the first round.
Glossary
- 5v5 Within 1. Our sample. The portions of games when each team has five skaters and the score is within one goal.
- GP. Games played.
- TOI. Time on ice. The amount of time that player played during 5v5 close.
- SA%. Shot-attempt percentage, a measurement for puck possession. The share of shot attempts that the player’s team got while he was on the ice. Also known as Fenwick. Above 50 percent is good.
- Goal%. Goal percentage. The share of goals that the player’s team got while he was on the ice. Above 50 percent is good.
- PDO. A meaningless acronym. The sum of a player’s on-ice shooting percentage and his goalies’ on-ice save percentage. Above 100 means the player is getting fortunate results that may reflected in goal%.
- ZS%. Offensive zone start percentage. Excluding neutral-zone starts, the share of shifts that the player starts in the offensive zone, nearer to the opponent’s net.
Thanks to War On Ice for the stats and being generally awesome.
