twenty games in

Twenty games in: The big picture

With their overtime win over the Montreal Canadiens, the Washington Capitals have completed their 20th game of the season. Twenty isn’t a magic number after which all the sample sizes are suddenly big enough and all statistics are suddenly meaningful, but I like to use this moment to take stock and start to make conclusions about how they look, which, for the record, is eerily familiar.

This is the first entry in a series of analysis stories. We’ll start with the big picture and even-strength play.

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Twenty games in: obvious problem is obvious

My first twenty-games-in article was kind of a bummer. Objectively, the Caps aren’t playing great hockey right now. There’s really no way to get around that fact, but there’s also no reason to get hung up on it either.

I have a suspicion that fans and analysts tend to overestimate how far a bad team is from becoming a good team. My pet theory is that any bad team isn’t more than three years from contending for a championship – if they make smart decisions. Making smart decisions starts with identifying problems, and today’s exercise is good at identifying problems.

Let’s look at how each forward plays with each defenseman, and maybe we can figure it out.

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Twenty games in: the big picture

The Washington Capitals lost their 20th game of the season, a 6-2 defeat at the hands of the Colorado Avalanche. That game brings the team’s record to 10-9-1, and it brings us to an important sign post for the season. With twenty games in the books, we now know enough about the team to start drawing some conclusions.

This is the first in a series on RMNB in which we’ll take stock of the Caps after roughly a quarter of the season done. We’ll talk about a lot over the next few days, but I want to start with the big picture – how the Caps as a team are performing during 5-on-5 play.

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Twenty Games In: These Capitals are The Team

Photo: Patrick McDermott

With roughly a quarter of the season gone and lots of great hockey already in the books, it’s time to take stock in the Washington Capitals. It’s a yearly tradition we call Twenty Games In because we’re not very creative.

There’s a lot of information in this article, so I’ll put the conclusion up top:

This is The Team.

Let me be precise. I don’t mean that in an obvious The name of the band is the Washington Capitals way; I mean it like this could be the team that does what no other Caps team ever could. We’re just twenty and change games into the season, but I think this is the best team this franchise has ever assembled.

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Twenty Games In: The Best and Worst of Barry’s Lines

Lines aren’t everything. The players a team chooses to ice are more important than the manner in which they get iced. Still, when the beat writers tweet the morning lines, it’s fresh grist for the anguish mill. It’s an infinite stream of content to react to– our of excitement or despair. I’m as guilty of it as anyone else.

Though it’s not as if Barry Trotz has been particularly good at assembling his lines effectively, at least according to the evidence. After twenty games, the Capitals’ best lines have been used irregularly at best. Their most effective trio of forwards hasn’t even skated together since game eight, though Trotz has also found some surprising strength in the team’s depth.

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Twenty Games In: Seeing Caps Forwards in Pretty, Color-Coded Context

Photo: Christian Petersen

There are lots of different ways to look at hockey information. The Sunday snapshot is just one of those ways, and it’s far from being comprehensive or fully circumspect. Sometimes the numbers sort of lose their meaning– as if in a vacuum.

Is a 2.14 CorsiRel good or bad? How good or how bad? Is it a percentage or a rate? How does it compare to the rest of the league? What is a CorsiRel anyway?

As a community, we need more and different ways of presenting and intuiting data that can sometimes be untidy and inscrutable.

Here’s one idea. Now that the Capitals have twenty games under their belt, let’s look at Cap forwards in the context of the whole league. No hard numbers here, just big-picture, stack-ranking stuff– a new way of looking at familiar stuff, but with pretty colors this time.

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Twenty Games In: What is the Barry Trotz Breakout?

Photo: Amanda Bowen, RRBG Photography

We are a quarter of the way through the first season of the Barry Trotz era. The process has been solid, the results have been decent, and the lineup decisions have, at times, been confusing.

Trotz is the Caps’ fourth coach since 2011, so fans are well aware that a change in coach means a change in tactics. With that in mind, I’m going to take a look at the Caps’ breakout under Trotz.

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