Week 12 Snapshot: The Schmidtuation

Photo: Amanda Bowen (See more!)

The Washington Capitals are looking pretty darn good overall. A whole lot of people saw them play a thrilling game against the Stanley Cup favorites on Thursday, and they just wrapped up a month that saw them become the hottest team in the league.

That’s the past. Looking at the schedule ahead, the Capitals face a murderer’s row of — well, just check this out:

• Panthers
• Leafs
• Flyers
• Red Wings
• Avalanche
• Flyers
• Predators
• Stars
• Oilers
• Blue Jackets
• Penguins
• Canadiens

Okay, actually, the Capitals could win a heluva lot of those games in January. Still, they should never stop trying to improve. There’s the usual stuff about optimizing forward lines and evening out defensive deployments, but one player in particular has caught my attention in the last week for his conspicuous absence from play. In today’s snapshot we ask, “What’s the deal with Nate Schmidt?”

Previous snapshots: week 1, week 2, week 3, week 4, week 5, week 6, week 7, week 8, week 9, week 10, week 11

Let’s do the numbers. These are current as 9 PM on Saturday, January 3rd. 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

Defense

Observations

• If you adjust for score, the Capitals have 52.2 percent possession this season. That’s good for 11th in the league. I’ll still look back fondly at the halcyon days of October when they were a 55-percent team, but this ain’t bad either.
• And it’s time we stop using bad luck as an excuse. The Capitals go into Sunday with a 100.3 PDO (whereas 100 is neutral). They’ve been shooting 8.2 percent and saving 92.1 percent during 5v5. That’s pretty solid. It’s time for puck possession and special teams to rule the day– unless they start streaking or slumping again.
• As the team goes, so too goes Alex Ovechkin. This time last month he had a PDO of 96.3 in our sample, mostly due to some miserable goaltending (89.3 percent). In December Ovi got excellent goaltending (93.7) for an overall PDO of 105.4. I’m sure there’s lots of fun narrative to be written around that, but it’s mostly just noise. Ovi’s underlying play is still solid.
• Trotz joked that everyone but Holtby and Peters has played on Alex Ovechkin‘s opposite wing this season. Today it looks like we’ll see Andre Burakovsky there. I’m a big believer in Burakovsky’s skill set, though the numbers (paltry sample size) don’t yet agree with me. We shall see.

• The one thing we don’t to see again is Jay Beagle on the wing. The team’s possession improves 3.3 percent when he’s on the bench, so we want him on the bench when the world’s best shooter, Alex Ovechkin is playing. Beagle’s relative possession puts him in about the 15th percentile out of NHL forwards (minimum 300 minutes of 5v5), so if he were to walk down the street, and that street happened to have 100 NHL forwards on it, 85 of them would be better at driving play than Beagle. But, for the last two weeks, Beagle’s ice time per game has been in the 33rd percentile. I might not ever understand why Barry Trotz wants Jay Beagle on the top line so much, but it’s painfully clear it’s not a good idea.
• That last bullet isn’t to trash Jay Beagle, who I think is a totally serviceable depth forward. This criticism is just about his recent usage. I wanna make sure that part is clear to everybody.
• Okay, so what’s the deal with Nate Schmidt? This Schmidtuation, is as follows, to the best of my knowledge. A skater on an entry-level contract at Nate’s age (22) is exempt from waivers until he plays in 70 NHL games. Until game 70, Nate could be sent up and down from Hershey to DC as much as the team wishes without any problem. Nate is currently at 61 games, so he’s got nine more before his coach becomes a pumpkin and that pumpkin can be poached by another team. With Dmitry Orlov waiting in the wings and Jack Hillen a decent fill-in, the Capitals seem to be prioritizing flexibility right now– not wanting to “pop the Cane” (in Magic: The Gathering parlance). This is understandable, but Schmidt has proven himself an NHL-quality player. Even without Mike Green, Schmidt manages to see 52.9 percent of shot attempts during 5v5 go in the right direction. He should be playing– consequences be damned. I think this Schmidtuation is untenable. We’ll see how long it lasts.
• I’m not in love with Eric Fehr‘s numbers, though– using his WOWY (with you/without you) stats, it seems to me this is a circumstance of usage rather than individual play. I could be wrong though, but my inkling is still that the Capitals’ lines (and roster) could be stronger, particularly in the middle six. Though that doesn’t excuse…
• Jason Chimera, who looks like he’s playing on a different team right now. I’m sorta running out of nice ways to say it. The good news is that he hasn’t been outscored by much inside our sample (11 to 10), but the bad news is that more goals against are coming. Here’s a Vollman usage chart, using relative score-adjusted shot differential for the color-coding, via War on Ice. Chimera sees a 5.5 percent swing of shot attempts go against the Caps when he’s playing. It’s not good.

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.