Winners of three straight, the Washington Capitals are gradually looking more comfortable on the ice. A bunch of the early-season woes have improved, but certainly not all of them. For example: TJ Oshie, 36 and one year removed from an injury-cursed season. He is goalless through eight games.
But I’m not worried. He’s probably the most due player in the NHL.
Below are the NHL forwards who have created the most individual expected goals (all situations) this season. The idea behind expected goals is to figure out how likely each shot attempt is to become a goal. So, for example, if a player took two slapshots from far away, each might be worth .04 xG – i.e. having a 4 percent chance of becoming a goal. If they also made one wristshot rebound from the paint, that might be worth .18. So altogether that player would have created .26 expected goals.
| Player | Expected Goals | Goals |
|---|---|---|
| Tyler Toffoli | 6.1 | 7 |
| Auston Matthews | 5.5 | 7 |
| David Pastrnak | 5.1 | 8 |
| Matthew Tkachuk | 4.7 | 1 |
| Zach Hyman | 4.5 | 3 |
| Pierre-Luc Dubois | 4.5 | 3 |
| Adrian Kempe | 4.3 | 2 |
| Jack Eichel | 4.2 | 3 |
| Alex Ovechkin | 4.2 | 2 |
| Nathan MacKinnon | 4.2 | 4 |
| Jake Guentzel | 4.2 | 2 |
| Brady Tkachuk | 4.2 | 6 |
| TJ Oshie | 4.1 | 0 |
| John Tavares | 4.0 | 4 |
| Jeff Skinner | 4.0 | 5 |
| Ryan Johansen | 4.0 | 4 |
| Sam Reinhart | 4.0 | 7 |
| Bryan Rust | 3.9 | 5 |
| Seth Jarvis | 3.9 | 4 |
| Michael Bunting | 3.8 | 2 |
Oshie ranks in the top 20 among the 400 forwards who’ve played at least 30 minutes, and he’s the only member of the top 20 without an actual goal. The next player in the list without a goal is 25 spots down, a fellow named Barrett Hayton from Arizona, who it says here has played in the league for five years but I know not a single thing about him except that he’s Barrett Hayton from Arizona and he can’t score.
The only goal-less players who have taken more shots than Oshie (23) are Johnny Gaudreau (27), Mikael Backlund (25), and Scott Laughton (25).
The minus-4.1 gap between Oshie’s xG and actual goals is the biggest in the league, ahead of even poor Matthew Tkachuk, who has one goal on 32 shots to start the season. For contrast, at the other end of the spectrum is NHL-leading scorer Alex DeBrincat of Detroit, who has scored 9 goals on 2.9 expected.
Oshie racked up a lot of his xG total in one monster (and monstrously unlucky) game against Ottawa, but he’s been shooting all along, averaging 2.8 shots per game.
Oshie has attempted 12.4 shots per hour of five-on-five play, near his career high, but he’s been even more dangerous on the power play, which accounts for 40 percent of his total expected goals, based on 9 shots – and 6 high-danger chances. Though the 2023-24 Caps power play is more mobile than previous models, Oshie still has a tendency to get into the slot for quick-release shots. His best chance on Sunday was just that – a snapshot up the middle stopped by Mackenzie Blackwood.
I’m confident we’re going to see a breakthrough. Oshie’s been a part of some of Washington’s strongest lines – various combinations of him with Kuznetsov at center and either McMichael or Milano on the opposite wing. As inconsistent as Kuznetsov has been (he’s frankly been unplayable without Oshie), together they’ve been generating a lot of chances, especially up close. Below is a heatmap from HockeyViz. A red blob means the Capitals shoot more from that location compared to league average; blue means less.
Those big red blobs right in front of the opponent’s net are encouraging, and so far (with our early-season sample-size red flags waving), the pair is generating expected goals at a rate 13 percentage points above league average. I’m stunned they’ve only had one goal in those 76 minutes – a series of stretch passes to Milano in the New Jersey game.
In a lot of ways, TJ Oshie is the heart of the Washington Capitals. His style of play is exciting, but it put a heavy toll on his body. I could understand looking at his season so far and despairing – I’ve been a doubter at times too – but I’m confident. Oshie is doing the right things, helping his teammates, and getting his chances. The scoreboard will catch up.
Headline photo: Alan Dobbins/RMNB
