snapshot

At last, the Kuznetsov solution: March snapshot

Hello. I’m Peter. This is the snapshot column. Since 2013, this is the place where we check in on how Washington Capitals skaters are playing by using numbers, except we try very hard not to be boring in the process. The numbers are just the starting point, and from them we find interesting stuff and then maybe go a level or two deeper by asking why or how the numbers came about. Sometimes that gives us suggestions on how the Caps could play better, or maybe explanations for why they’re doing poorly, or just highlight some stuff for us to watch for in future games. In any result, it’s an exercise for exploring what we know and what we don’t about hockey.

The Capitals are 27 games into the season, and I’ve deliberately waited until now to begin this column. For a bunch of reasons, I had not put much faith into the data until now. In addition to the usual small-sample-size skittishness, I was irked by the absence of the Washington core due to COVID protocol, and a little concerned about how trustworthy early returns could be when the Caps were facing the same three teams every other night for three weeks. To me, January and a bit of February were just exhibition hockey, but now that the team is mostly healthy and they’ve got a lot of games under their belt, I’m finally ready to talk about it.

In this week’s snapshot, I’m finally ready to talk about how Peter Laviolette has fixed* Evgeny Kuznetsov.

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Black swan and beyond: Snapshot 5

The Washington Capitals’ season has ended — at least for now —  in a way none of us could have predicted. The coronavirus has “paused” the NHL season, leaving the Caps alone to consider their fortunes. They’ve been a mediocre .500 team since around Christmas, but they still own first place in the division. They’ve got star talent and a deep roster, but they have played some devastatingly bad games recently.

In this week’s snapshot, I want us to carve out a tiny corner of our minds where we can talk about and think about hockey nerdery, free of blackpilled geohell worry. In this space, we’ll wonder what it might look like when the world and the sport and the Caps finally emerge from the pandemic. In this space, we will keep calm and carry on without putting anyone at risk. And we will do what Chuck Noland in Cast Away says about living in troubled times: “Keep breathing, because tomorrow the sun will rise. Who knows what the tide could bring?”

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Weird time to start sucking, but okay: Snapshot 4

We’re about to do the snapshot, but we’re gonna have to go a bit deeper than usual.

The typical data in this column includes the whole season to date. In that sample the Caps look great: top ten in controlling shot attempts, top-half in expected goals, a mortal lock for the playoffs. But since the all-star break, the picture is not so rosy: just 15th in controlling shot attempts, 23rd in expected goals, and the 25th best record in the league.

In today’s snapshot, we look around the room, make panicked eye contact with each other, and mouth the word yikes. This is not where the Caps want to be right now.

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Maybe we’re all just spoiled: Snapshot 3

Chris, Ian, and I had a spirited conversation about the Washington Capitals during their 5-1 loss to the Devils on Saturday night. The three of us spent a lot of time bemoaning how bad the Caps were playing before we all realized that they were still the best team in the NHL. We had cycled through our worries — Braden Holtby’s apparent downturn and Nick Jensen’s disastrous results in particular — and then we collectively noticed that the Washington Capitals of January 2020 are way better than the Capitals of January 2019 — and even better still than the eventual-champion Capitals of January 2018.

If you were handed a report card for the Capitals right now, there would be A‘s and smiley faces everywhere. Whatever anguish we’re feeling is because of the sharp contrast between the team’s bright, long-term success and some far more fleeting dark spots.

In this snapshot, we look at the shade while enjoying the sunshine.

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Backstrom’s back, alright: Snapshot 2

Despite missing their top-line center for eight games, the Washington Capitals currently lead the division, conference and league. They’ve taken nearly 80 percent of available standings points so far, putting them on an absurd 128-point pace. They’re getting a Norris-caliber season from John Carlson, a breakout season from Jakub Vrana, and they might have the best fourth line in the league.

There is certainly adversity coming. The schedule gets no kinder at the end of the calendar year, and there are some worrying gaps in the lineup, but the looming return of Nicklas Backstrom might be a miracle cure.

Let’s do the snapshot.

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Meet the new Caps, same as the old Caps: Snapshot 1

With 23 points in 15 games, the Capitals are technically the best team in the league, but the Boston Bruins have played two fewer games and sit just one point behind the Caps. After one month of hockey, that Bruins team seems almost flawless, and they should be the measuring stick for every other team in the NHL.

Washington’s not quite up to that level just yet, but they could get there. Let’s do the snapshot.

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It’s too early to worry, but…

I was slightly disappointed by the Capitals’ loss to the Leafs on Saturday night. I hoped for a bounce-back performance after that humiliation at the hands of the Devils, but instead the Caps got mildly outplayed and earned themselves a 2-2-1 record after two weeks.

After the game, superfan Will asked me:

We worried yet?

— Regal Beagle (@will_po) October 14, 2018

The short answer is no. The longer answer is, wellllllllll…… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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Surprise, the Caps are excellent now: Snapshot 10

Did anyone see this coming? Did anyone watch the Caps around mid-February, when they were allowing their opponents more high-danger chances than any team in the last decade aside from the freaking Coyotes, and say, “welp, there’s a Stanley Cup contender right there. And not only that, but they’re going to make the Final based not on unreliable puck luck but rather a genuine turnaround in all fundamental statistics”?

No one did, and no one should have. To believe the Caps would improve would have been a shameless guess or an act of faith. But with a couple simple substitutions (Kempny for Bowey especially) without any detectable change in strategy besides hit everything that moves, the Caps are about to compete for the Cup, and they freaking deserve it. They outplayed and defeated Columbus, Pittsburgh, and Tampa – three excellent teams with multi-layered threats – to get here, and now all that stands between Alex Ovechkin and the Stanley Cup is George McPhee, Nate Schmidt, and Marc-Andre Fleury.

This is a surprise, maybe the single most enjoyable surprise of my life as a fan of this team. So here now is a surprise playoff snapshot, wherein we see what’s transformed the Washington Capitals into a finalist and what might yet go wrong against the Vegas Golden Knights.

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Being there: Snapshot 9

In 2013, Chris Boyle, then of Habs Eyes On the Prize created a landmark data visualization for hockey. Boyle graphed how a team’s shot share (i.e. what percent of attempts belonged to that team instead of their opponents) over the regular season compared to how that team did in the postseason. It was eye-opening. I consider it a foundational text for understanding how and intuiting why “possession” matters.

The vis is like a dartboard, with the bullseye at center being the championship. Around it are four quadrants representing regular-season shot-attempt percentages, which I’ll describe with the overlay below.

Teams that “control play” (i.e. have a high shot-attempt percentage) during the regular season tended to have better outcomes in the postseason. Teams that play “on their heels” (i.e. have a low shot-attempt percentage) tend to miss the playoffs and rarely go far if they make it at all.

The exceptions are fascinating. In 2010, the Washington Capitals were a powerhouse, but they were eliminated in the first round by the Montreal Canadiens. In 2009, the Pittsburgh Penguins won the Cup despite mediocre shot-attempt numbers – though they fired their coach 55 games into the season and dominated thereafter. I like those two examples because they teach us that 5-on-5 shot attempts are not the only thing that “matters” and that there is always more detail to explore.

Nonetheless, precedent says that the 2017-18 Washington Capitals are in deep trouble this postseason. This is the topic of the final snapshot.

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Unless: Snapshot 8

The Washington Capitals have 14 games remaining, but there aren’t many surprises waiting within them. By now we know who this team is. We know who will play and who will sit, who will be used where, who will drive play and who will be on his heels, who will celebrate and who will be blamed.

The Caps are a bottom-ten team in shot attempts and a bottom-five team in expected goals. They are top-ten on the power play and middle-of-the-pack on penalty kill. A goalie switch and some depth defensive improvements move the margins a bit, but it seems viciously obvious where this team’s ceiling is: the second round of the playoffs.

Unless. This week’s snapshot is about unless. (more…)