Photo credit: Patrick McDermott

The day after Christmas, Nicklas Backstrom was skating in a KHL game for Dynamo Moscow. Midway through the second period of a 1-1 game, Nick took a pass in the far corner. He attempted to spin around and take the puck behind the net. Instead, Backstrom was slammed into the boards by Milan Kytnár; his face hitting the dashers. Backstrom got up, clearly shaken. He left the game after one more shift.

Given Backstrom missed 40 games last year after being concussed by Rene Bourque, this was a scary blow. Dynamo, however, insisted that his brain didn’t take the beating. It was, they said, a bruised neck. Backstrom’s agent reiterated that. But then Alex Ovechkin said something funny when asked about his teammate’s injury: “Sometimes it’s not hard hit, you just feel a little dizzy.” Dizziness, of course, does not usually go along with bruises.

Backstrom ended up seeing a neurologist, Jeffrey Kutcher, who cleared him to play. Despite the early injury fears, Backstrom had a nice season, putting up eight goals and 40 assists in 48 games. He made his teammates better too — Ovechkin only became a Hart Trophy finalist once he was reunited with Backstrom. He also did some Geico commercials. All in all, it was another solid season for Nicky.

Backstrom did, however, get off to a slow start. I asked him if his injury in Russia had anything to do with that. He seemed to be taken somewhat off guard by the question, but then insisted that it didn’t harm his play.

“Yeah, I had that injury but it didn’t affect me anything to be honest with you,” he told me.

“I felt like I was doing alright over here,” Backstrom added. “I have no excuses — I will never have them.”

Caps General Manager George McPhee was questioned Wednesday about who was playing through injuries this season. He declined to give details.

“You really admire these players because they play through some things — all the players around the league do — and they don’t need a medal to do it,” the GM said. “They play through it and they don’t need any recognition or anything. They just do it.”

The next day, word of Ovechkin’s broken foot was leaked. You know, the thing Ovi called just a bruise.

Ribs salutes the fans after his overtime goal in game five. (Photo credit: Patrick McDermott)

For perhaps the final time in DC, Mike Ribeiro is #swag. (Photo credit: Chris Gordon)

The Washington Capitals have been searching for a second-line center for years. Last summer, they finally got one. In a shortened season with the Caps, Mike Ribeiro was excellent — even when his team wasn’t. He anchored Washington’s power play, turning Alex Ovechkin – a guy the Caps have invested $123 million in — into a lethal threat.  He stabilized the top six. He led the league in points on the man advantage, a huge source of the team’s scoring. He will soon be a free agent. The captain wants him back, though, and so does the coach.

“The most important thing is to re-sign Ribs,” Ovechkin told Slava Malamud. “It will be tough without him.”

“You all saw how valuable he was to our team,” Adam Oates added. “Hopefully the parties will work it out because we love him.”

After Ovi heaped praise on Ribs for his work this season, I asked Ribeiro what he learned by playing with the Russian. Seeing clips of him on NHL Network, of course, is different from sending him a cross-ice pass on the power play. Until this season, Ovechkin never depended on teammates. Instead, he’d take the puck into the offensive zone and try to create the play by himself. As we saw the last two years, that stopped working. Oates got him to change that, but in March Ovechkin demanded Ribeiro give him the puck in the neutral zone. Though Ovechkin is superstar, Ribs said no. By the end of the season, Ovechkin was a Hart Trophy finalist.

“He’s still a young player who has a lot to learn about the game and how to play it,” Ribeiro told me of Ovi. “He’s a powerful player.”

“His English was better than when I saw him on TV,” he continued. “Sometimes I was like ‘What is he saying?’ I used to be like that. Guys used to laugh at me the way I speak.”

Losing Ribs would be a difficult loss for the franchise, but it may be a necessary one. The team only has about $5.6 million in cap room for next season. While they could probably get Ribeiro for that, they’d have to shake up the roster a little or consider not re-signing RFAs Karl Alzner and Marcus Johansson. Considering Ribeiro is 33 and wants a four- or five-year deal, that’s a tough sell. (Ribeiro, for what it’s worth, said he “can only get better.”)

“It’s important to be hard on the merits and soft on the people and do it right,” Caps GM George McPhee said, before adding that he doesn’t talk about specific negotiations.

Still, Ribeiro reiterated that he likes the area and is hesitant to move his family again. He also wants to win. Until two weeks ago, he had missed the postseason in five straight years. That may have been justification to get the heck out of DC in February, but now it’s a reason to stay.

“Once you make the playoffs, you want to go back,” he said. “You see the potential that we have here.”

“I don’t want to be selfish by signing too much and not being able to get other guys here or re-sign guys here,” Ribeiro added. “If I stay here I want to have a chance to win. … You cannot just re-sign me and have the same kind of team. You want to improve your team.”

Soon, the Caps and Ribeiro will have to make their choices. On July 5, the center is no longer the team’s property. From the coaches to the media, everyone at Kettler Capitals Iceplex Wednesday morning knew they may be seeing him for the final time. Then, Ribeiro emerged. He strode to the podium outside the Capitals locker room wearing a fedora, a diamond earning, and a large chain. A reporter asked him about his opulent look.

“I’m allowed to do what I want to do now,” he quipped.

We’ll see if that includes staying in Washington.

Photo credit: Mike Hensen

After a thrilling third period comeback against the London Knights, the Plymouth Whalers wilted in overtime to Dale Hunter’s crew, 5-4. The game five loss in the OHL’s Western Conference Finals ended Plymouth’s season. The good news for Caps fans is that because of the Whalers early exit, 2012 first-round pick Tom Wilson will be able to make his debut in the Capitals organization imminently.

Way back on March 29th when Washington Capitals General Manager George McPhee addressed the media in a 40-minute long fireside chat, he was asked bluntly if he’d like Wilson join the Bears after his season ended in Plymouth. McPhee reponded,”Mm-hmm. Yeah.”

“To bring the kid straight to the NHL — maybe he’s ready for the NHL — but I’d rather him start in Hershey and see how it goes,” McPhee explained. “If he’s good enough to play here, you can make a change. It helps everyone to spend a little time in the minors.”

A few minutes after Plymouth’s loss Friday, the voice of the Bears, Scott Stuccio, confirmed what McPhee said, expecting Wilson to join Hershey in their playoff series against the Providence Bruins.

Would expect Tom Wilson to join @thehersheybears at some point in this series… #noroomonthebusthough

— Scott Stuccio (@ScottStuccio) April 27, 2013

Now that we know where Wilson will play for the rest of this season, the question then becomes, where will Wilson play next year? And that answer is slightly more complicated.

The first thing we know is that Wilson won’t be eligible to start the season in Hershey, even though he will join them in the playoffs this year. It’s because of something called the CHL-AHL agreement. Players under 20-years-old are only eligible to play in the AHL after their season in the CHL is over each year.

Per Prospect Annex:

Specifically, the rule says that if a player played in junior before they were drafted by the NHL, then they have to either be 20 years old by Dec. 31 OR have played four years of junior in order to play in the minors. That second condition rarely comes into effect. It would only apply to players who began in the CHL at age 15.

Since Wilson will turn 20 in March of 2014, he only has two options next season: he can make the Washington Capitals out of training camp, or he will be returned back for one final season in the OHL.

When McPhee was asked in March if he thought Wilson could impress him enough in camp to play in the NHL next year, he stated that it was a possibility. After pointing out several Capitals players who made the jump to the NHL only a year after they got drafted like Nicklas Backstrom, Marcus Johansson, Alex Ovechkin, and John Carlson, McPhee said that for him, the player’s ability –not his age — is what forces his hand.

“As I’ve often said, they make the decision for us,” McPhee said. “If somebody’s ready, we’ll play them. It never hurts them to play a little bit longer at the amateur level. It can hurt them if you play them too early at [the NHL] level.”

If Wilson does begin the season in Washington, he’s allowed to play nine games with the team that year (including the playoffs) before a year of his entry-level contract is burned off.

Regardless of where Wilson ends up, McPhee is excited about him, especially after Wilson score nine goals and 17 points in 12 playoff games.

“He’s going to be a fun player to watch,” the excitable GM in his own right said. “He’s a real competitive kid. Real physical. He’s really improved. He’s done a lot of penalty killing this year. He’s on the power play. And what’s going to make him a real good player is the way he works. He really works hard all night long.”

What another amazing season in the books with such a great group of guys. The past 3 years with @pwhalers family has just flown by!

— Tom Wilson (@tom_wilso) April 27, 2013

Additional reporting by Fedor Fedin.

Photo credit: Patrick McDermott

Sooooooooo… I was wrong about the Capitals. And I’m sorry.

Early in the season, I waved away the Caps’ struggles, citing some strong puck possession numbers. But as those numbers eroded and the Caps kept losing, I hedged my bets. The Capitals were giving up too many penalties, performing poorly on the kill, and were not really tilting the ice. By the middle of February, I became wary. Cut to early March, when my last ounce of pollyannaish pluck was depleted. I said the Capitals weren’t headed for the playoffs, that their possession was debilitating, and that a turn of good luck wouldn’t be enough to turn their fortunes around.

I was wrong all over. My bad.

Photo credit: Patrick McDermott

So how did I get it wrong? How did the Capitals make the playoffs?

I’ll tell you right now that it’s not possession. The Capitals are still in the bottom third at even-strength shot attempts when the score is close, but then again Toronto made the playoffs too– and they’re the second worst team in the league at that same statistic. So maybe puck possession is a scam and geeks should turn their gaze elsewhere.

No, that’s not it. Puck possession is still the best predictor of future success we’ve got, but a shortened season has given those deterministic factors less time to take effect. Instead, we’re seeing a lot more statistical noise than we might’ve thought.

If you add up a team’s shooting percentage and save percentage, you can get a decent idea how statistical variance has lifted or sunk that team. We call it PDO, a meaningless acronym that is sort of a proxy for dumb luck. Halfway into the season, the Capitals were the ninth most unlucky team in league. Now they’re the ninth most lucky. I think that a good chunk of that improvement isn’t due solely to regression, but rather to an improved team defense that helped Braden Holtby play like a stud  again. Holtby, who has taken the lion’s share of starts this season, deserves oodles of credit for pulling his team out of a deep hole.

And then there’s Ovi.

The best statistical projections estimated that Alex Ovechkin would score 31 goals and 68 points this season. But that was for a full 82-game season. We’re not even done 48 games yet and Ovi has already tied that goal total. He’s done that by way of a few factors, but the fastest way to explain it is this: Adam Oates.

Oates rescued Ovi from the possession charybdis that is Mike Ribeiro and reunited him with setup man Nick Backstrom. Oates moved Ovi to the right wing, where he was forced to modify his stale tactics. Oates reformulated the power play, positioning Ovechkin as a one-touch goal machine. And, perhaps most importantly, Oates convinced Ovechkin to trust his linemates to carry the puck more, freeing him to focus on finishing rather than playmaking. As I said the other day, the Caps’ fortunes improved exactly when Ovechkin’s performance did. And while I repeatedly spoke aspirationally about this exact thing happening, I never relied on it to make predictions. For a player that so many people said had been “solved” and had grown predictable, Ovechkin’s greatest trick was becoming unpredictable again. Heh.

There’s a lot of other factors that I underestimated, but none more than Marcus Johansson. On February 4th, I wrote a lengthy item detailing Johansson’s wretched season, blithely unaware that he was suffering from a concussion. Soon after, Johansson was benched, and when he returned, he was changed. Sure, he had better linemates, but Mojo should be applauded for transforming from a lowly 38% possession player into one that is decisively driving play.

But that’s kind of true for everyone. Robert Vollman’s indispensible player usage charts help us visualize how the Caps went from meh to whoa. The bottom-right quadrant means sheltered deployments and top-left means tough, two-way play. Red bubbles means negative possession, and blue means driving play. The bigger the circle the more positive or negative those possession stats are.

Capitals Usage, March 9th

Capitals Usage, April 19th

It’s pretty much global improvement. Again, Johansson is transformed from a liability to an asset. Alex Ovechkin is both more optimized and more productive. Joey Crabb is gone. And the team’s reliable role players– Fehr, Perreault, Backstrom, Carlson, and Alzner– continue to hold the team together. (Ribeiro is still a problem at even strength, but you probably already knew that.)

This isn’t the story of the team’s captain singlehandedly hoisting his team on his back and carrying them into the postseason. Ovechkin absolutely led the effort, but Adam Oates tended to the whole garden.

But there’s one more factor– one more thing I was wrong about, and it’s the big one. Exactly one month ago, I looked at the Capital’s chances of making the post season and I was not enthused. I predicted they’d lose a big chunk of these final games, and I was super duper wrong.

That was certainly a surprise– but even that is not why the Capitals made the playoffs.

Here is why the Capitals made the playoffs:

I wrote that playoff story around game 32. The Carolina Hurricanes were already 7 games into a pronounced losing streak at that time, but Winnipeg was still a few days out from their own implosion. The Jets then lost five games in a row– opening a window for the Capitals to take the division title.

The Capitals turned their season around by themselves, but that herculean effort would have been meaningless without the unimaginable incompetence of the Southeast Division.

While I wasn’t the rainiest of rainclouds this season, I wasn’t a ray of sunshine. And I was wrong. Errr… kind of. Each time I filed one of these miserable and under-read stories about the Caps’ woes, I mentioned how they might turn it around– how they might pull out of the tailspin and soar again.

And soar is exactly what the Capitals did. I’m filled with gratitude that I was around to watch it. Bravo to Alex Ovechkin, who reclaimed his title as the world’s best hockey player. Bravo to Adam Oates, who enlightened his team with a professorial eye for detail. And bravo to George McPhee, who built the playoff team he said he would.

Now onto the playoffs.

GIF by welshhockeyfan

George McPhee has had a tough year. Two months ago, his Washington Capitals were just about dead last in the league and looking hopeless. Fast-forward to April 23rd: The Capitals are going to the playoffs. The Capitals have won their division. The Capitals’ captain is the league’s best scorer.

Damn right, he’s gonna celebrate. Imagine that relief, that vindication. He’s been under fire for months now, and he’s unscathed. If that doesn’t merit a Bender-from-Breakfast-Club fist pump, nothing does. File this far away from GMGM’s 3OT freakout and the raaaaaaage.

Photo credit: Tom Wilson’s Instagram

There comes a time in a teenager’s life where the dream of becoming a star athlete dims and must be replaced. At the age of sixteen, that’s what happened to Toronto native Peter Wilson.

“I really fell in love with writing when I was in grade 11,” Wilson, who played hockey competitively as a kid, explained. “I had a really great literature teacher who took me under her wing and showed me some really cool books. I found writing to be really fun and therapeutic.”

In college, Wilson continued to explore literature and challenge himself, just like he did on the ice with hockey. When his passion shifted away from the ice, Wilson dropped gloves with a new opponent: the competitive field of writing.

Defenseless

I guess it’s a good read at the beach? (Photo credit: Peter Wilson)

“During my fourth year at Queen’s University, I set out to write a short novel that was forty- to fifty-thousand words long,” Wilson told me in an interview in early March. “And I did. Then, I went through the whole process of shopping it around and trying to get it published.”

That novel, entitled Defenseless (buy it here), was published by BPS Books in May 2012. A first-person narrative, the protagonist finds himself in a fight which escalates into a vicious beating by six men. With the character’s life changed forever, he tries to figure out what happened. As the pieces come together, his desire for justice becomes a thirst for vengeance. Victim becomes perpetrator.

For Wilson, the book, which sold a couple hundred copies, was a huge success simply because it was a dream realized. The feedback was even more rewarding. A few months after publishing, he received a special note from someone who had gone through a similar experience to that of the narrator. He said Peter’s story helped him through a tough recovery.

“I remember it sinking in at that moment that I had achieved what I wanted,” Wilson said. “I remember thinking in that instant that the work was worth it. That was success, connection.”

Three Hockey-Playing Brothers

Peter, Tom, and James. (Photo credit: Peter Wilson)

On June 22nd, Peter’s middle brother — referred to lovingly as Tommy, heard the sentence that most Canadian boys dream about.

“The Washington Capitals are pleased to select from the OHL’s Plymouth Whalers, Tom Wilson,” announced General Manager George McPhee.

Peter, Tom, and James play hockey with their dad on their backyard rink.

The entire Wilson family had traveled to Pittsburgh that day, hoping their talented 18-year-old would be drafted in the first round. The likelihood of being drafted so high was slight, but with this fanatical hockey family, it was no surprise.

Growing up in a suburb of Toronto, the family had a backyard hockey rink and played together constantly. Peter, the oldest of three Wilson brothers, loved the sport, getting as high the ‘AA’ North Toronto team.

“Tommy was always playing with with me and my friends in our backyard rink,” Peter explained. “That’s how he got exposure to guys five years older than him. He was really competitive out there.” Playing against more talented players as well as being blessed with his own unique physical gifts led Tom to star for Plymouth, a junior hockey team located several hours away from Toronto.

A few years later, James, the youngest of the three Wilson brothers, was drafted by the same junior team Tom was, Plymouth, in the 10th round of the 2012 OHL Draft. He currently plays in AAA.

As these events unfolded, Peter set out to write his second book.

“It’s Kinda My Love Letter to Hockey”

Photo credit: Peter Wilson

Wilson’s second book, entitled They Play Hockey In Heaven (buy a personalized copy here for $12), is a gripping, 126-page read about how one of the hockey-playing Austin brothers deals with the death of his father and the closing of the old rink where his family’s bond was strongest. Making it his mission to re-open the rink no matter what, the brother works through  a series of challenges to accomplish what his dad failed to before his death. The journey repairs a community and allows his family to find peace.

While They Play Hockey In Heaven is fiction, many of the details are drawn from Peter’s vast background in the sport that he and his brothers so deeply love. It even includes a fight between both Austin brothers, which you have to assume is something Peter did with Tom as kids.

“You could compare the book to the Field of Dreams, but for hockey,” Peter explained during our call. “It’s kinda my love letter to hockey. If you like the sport I think you’ll like and identify with this book.”

Peter has already gotten a bunch of support from his little brother on Twitter. Tom has instagrammed a photo of the book and he’s also tweeted out links to buy it. And then there’s the support he got from frigging rock legend Tom Cochrane, the man best known for singing “Life is a Highway.”

Before each chapter begins, lyrics from Cochrane’s Big League appear.

“I actually had the opportunity to send it to him and have him read it,” Wilson said. “I didn’t really think anything of it initially, but then a few weeks later, I had an email from Tommy Cochrane. That was probably my wow moment of this book.”

In fact, Cochrane loved the story so much, he wrote a glowing recommendation for it, which was both a surreal and exciting moment for Wilson. Part of it read, “[This book] is a must read for any Canadian who is truly connected to their cultural roots in our country.” Capitals fans will love it too.

They Play Hockey In Heaven is just another notch in the belt for an uber-talented Canadian family that will see Tom Wilson make his NHL debut in the not-so-distant future. Peter’s book honors the game and connects it with real-world problems.

On page 124 he writes, “There are thousands of distractions and obstacles when you are trying to score. Trying to achieve a goal and score a goal. You have to be focused. You can’t let anything get in your way. You can’t give up. That’s why hockey is the best place to learn about life.”

That’s the stuff. Buy it here.

Book trailer.

Photo Credit: Nick Wass

The Washington Capitals think they have a shot at the Stanley Cup. This season began with a pitiful start under new head coach Adam Oates, but the team is better now. They’re used to his system, they’re healthier, and they’re picking up pieces to help them in the short-term.

“We weren’t going to be sellers,” said George McPhee yesterday. “You never know once you get in. Let’s see what happens.”

“We have a good thing going here,” said Mike Ribeiro. “We know how good we can be.”

“I have complete confidence in the guys in this room,” said Troy Brouwer. “We have the ability in here to make a splash in the playoffs.”

“I want to play for the Stanley Cup,” said Martin Erat. “Washington is one of the places where you have a chance.”

On Thursday, the Caps moved into playoff spot for the first time this season.

The Capitals want to win now. They don’t want to endure another rebuild, albeit a smaller one, that might help win them a Cup in five years — that’s why they traded an elite prospect to fill a hole in today’s lineup. Washington may have been in 10th place in the Eastern Conference when they made the trade for Erat, but they are going for it. That plan, though, requires one thing: that the Capitals are the team they think they are, not the team we’ve seen so far this season. Thursday, they were a little bit of both — not without fault, but good enough for now. With a loss by the Winnipeg Jets (3-7 in their last 10), the Capitals moved in first place in the Southeast Division and third in the Eastern Conference.

The Erat Era — okay, that’s a bit of hyperbole — has just begun in Washington. His debut was solid, if uneventful. He skated on the third line with Mathieu Perreault and former Nashville teammate Joel Ward. Erat didn’t register on the scoreboard, but made a couple nice plays. The Caps beat the Islanders 2-1 in a shootout. Soon he will get a bigger role, perhaps as the first line left wing.

“It’s kind of hard for me you know with all the crazy stuff that comes with the trade,” Erat, who woke up at 4:30 am today, said after the game. “My plane was leaving at six o’clock in the morning which means I didn’t get enough sleep. I was so excited to be here, and excited to be in this city.”

After watching him for a little under 15 minutes on the ice, Erat’s new coach had glowing things to say about his game.

“I thought he did a great job, I really did,” Adam Oates said. “Getting traded is not always easy. He played with that franchise a long time, he had to go out the door and say goodbye, meet new guys, step into a lineup; it’s nerve-wracking, it’s stressful.”

One thing stood out the the first year coach the most: “his IQ.”

“He knows how to play his position, he knows how to play in the game,” Oates added of Erat. “He didn’t put himself in bad positions.”

Erat’s play, though, will not be the judge of this deal. Instead, the move will hinge on what the Capitals do this season and the two after that, the years left on Erat’s $4.5 million yearly contract. If Washington makes a deep playoff run, the deal will seem smart. If they don’t, George McPhee will look short-sighted. For Erat’s perspective, it’s the same. He didn’t request a trade to play in a bigger market or get more ice time, he came here because he thought the Caps were an elite team.

“That’s why I came here, that was my goal, to come here and play for the Stanley Cup,” Erat said.

Photo credit: Hannah Foslien

A little before 5pm, the Washington Capitals traded their future in the hopes of winning a Stanley Cup now: Filip Forsberg for Martin Erat and Michael Latta.

Many people, including us, think that is a bad idea. Erat, while a top-six forward, is aging and well compensated. The Caps are now on the hook for his $4.5 million yearly salary for the next two seasons, with a salary cap that is going down by six million next year. He’s scored just four goals this year.

Washington, it seems, wants to win now. If they don’t — and remember it’s a toss-up and whether they’ll even make the playoffs — this trade will have been a bad idea. George McPhee, therefore, has some explaining to do. He did that Wednesday evening.

“I wasn’t going to sell,” McPhee told Monumental Network. “I wasn’t going to attempt to sell anything. We would add if we could and I think we added a real good piece.”

“With the way our club’s been playing I thought I owed it to our players to help them out,” he added. “I heard the players loud and clear the other day when they didn’t want us to be a seller. We think we have a real good hockey club and we’re going to keep pushing for the playoffs here.”

McPhee insisted, though, that while the Capitals were giving up a highly regarded young prospect, they didn’t think of it as a short-term deal. Instead, it was filling a hole the Caps have: a lack of talented wingers.

“We wanted a top-six forward,” McPhee said of Erat. “We just thought it was a real good fit for our club; it’s hard to get top-six forwards, he’s an established player, he’s got a lot of miles in him.”

“It’s not a rental,” he added. “He’s going to be with us for a while.”

This move, however, is a gamble. McPhee, while confident, acknowledged that to an extent.

“To get a player like Erat, and Latta, you have to give up a good player, and we gave up a good player in Forsberg,” the GM said. “We’re able to do it because I think we’re drafting well. As long as you draft well you can make these moves.”

Latta, meanwhile, is a young, quality minor-leaguer who has registered 34 points in the AHL this season. The deal obviously isn’t centered around him, but McPhee likes what he’s getting.

“He’s a gritty kid who plays the game hard,” said McPhee. “I think he’ll be a good fit for us in the near future.”

Time will tell whether this trade filled a hole that was preventing the team from ultimate success or was a short-sighted move that mortgaged their future.

Photo credit: Bridget Samuels

In speaking to the press last Friday, George McPhee talked about about pretty much everything there is to talk about: his plans for the trade deadline, the Capitals’ outlook for future success, and what in particular has been the team’s problem this year.

And he was wrong about pretty much everything. McPhee either doesn’t recognize how bad his team is or he refuses to acknowledge it publicly.

But first, this mandatory and not-at-all untrue GIF:

So I’ve collected quotes from McPhee’s Q&A with Mike Vogel and his press conference with the whole press corps. I implore you to watch and read the entirety of both, as I’m about to cherry-pick the hell out of them. Below each quote is my opinion/evidence-based analysis/bloviation.

“Those [formerly injured] players have made a real impact since they’ve returned and our team starts to line up the way that we thought it would and we’ve become a good team.”

Certainly Brooks Laich has made an impact since he returned (1 goal, 3 assists, positive possession despite starting in the D zone a lot). Mike Green‘s comeback has been marked by anecdotes both good and bad, but he too has been solid considering his overwhelmingly defensive assignments so far. I’m not sure we can say the same for Dmitry Orlov, who has just one shot on goal in over 75 minutes of ice time and has no detectable influence on ice tilt thus far (one caveat being his team-lowest 38.7% starts in the offensive zone).

But McPhee’s argument is that the team has become good by virtue of these players’ returns, and I don’t think the data back him up.

At the end of February, the Capitals had very low possession — 47.24% of unblocked even-strength shots went the right way– and below average PDO (a combination of shooting % and goalie save percentage, 97.9%). A little over a month later, PDO has jumped up to 100.5% thanks in part to some great goaltending, but possession has dropped to 46.87%. The statistical noise that is PDO is just making it seem like the Caps have improved, but they have not.

The Washington Capitals may actually be worse now than they were earlier in the season. Yes, they have more wins, but they’re still plagued by defensive breakdowns, and the pattern of their play bodes really poorly for their future. I worry that injuries are just an escape goat, a convenient excuse for a team that is either missing crucial components or effective coordination (or both).

“We like this team going forward. We like the players we have in our system; they’ll be real good fits for this team the way things are lined up now. The organization is in really good shape and it’s a real solid team. We’ve just got our fingers crossed that we can get a little bit healthier here and have a real nice run.”

Again, the Capitals are currently ranked in the bottom five at puck possession, the single best predictor of future success, and they are trending in the wrong direction since that ugly start to the season. That is neither good shape nor real solid.

It’s tempting but unwise to expect a “real nice run” in the playoffs. The players this team has seen return in the last month have not made them appreciably better by any metric that predicts success, and even if they get into the playoffs, they probably wouldn’t last long. Recent Stanley Cup-winning teams are the ones that have obliterated their opponents when it comes to possession. The Caps were that team back in 08-09, but they’re not today. The question shouldn’t be how to keep their fingers crossed to buck a convincingly determinative system; it should be how to return to that level of performance.

Blaming injury often a scoundrel’s refuge. McPhee did the same thing last year, and back then I agreed to some extent, as a healthy Nicky Backstrom tends to make the players around him better. But that’s not a well we should drink from often. One player– even one as good as Backstrom or Laich– isn’t the difference between a 47% possession lottery pick team and a 59% possession Cup contender. The Caps’ problems are way bigger than one or two injured players.

“We’ve got a chance to be a real good team and have a good run.”

He is absolutely correct. They have a chance. The Capitals have something like a 1 in 4 chance of making the playoffs. That’s not a good chance, but it is by definition a chance. Now, the team’s chances of actually going deep in the playoffs are worse. Both the team’s record and its possession data predict that they’ll likely lose a 7-game series against their probable playoff opponents (though I think they’d have a chance against Toronto!). If Braden Holtby gets hot or Alex Ovechkin scores on every other shot–  great! But one shouldn’t build a team based off a hope of exceptional and temporary brilliance, and that article of faith is no reason to wave away a real opportunity to improve a team for next season.

“There are nights when we are playing the way we can play, there are glimpses of how good we can be.”

That’s the thing about glimpses: they’re ephemeral. The problem with a player who has one good night for every five bad ones is not inconsistency, it’s just that he’s not very good. Even Mr. T can score a goal from center ice on a single attempt. How many times can he do it in 528 attempts? A glimpse doesn’t inform. It doesn’t illuminate. It distracts, and it seduces.

The Washington Capitals need a roster upgrade to become truly good. Until then, fans will take solace in glimpses of greatness, but they won’t last. Management has to take the long view. Subsisting on the illusion of sustainable success for too long will eventually make even the most die-hard Caps fans into jaded cynics. Like Cubs fans or Leafs fans or people who watch the McLaughlin Group.

“Our penalty kill– since that 2-8-1 start- we’re probably top 10 in the league or better.”

I think this is provably false. The next chart shows how the Capitals penalty kill has performed (in ten-game moving averages) since the beginning of the season. The league-average PK as of Monday morning is in red, and the threshold for the top 10 is in orange.

The Capitals are not in the top 10 on the penalty kill. They were for a moment. Now they are average, maybe a little worse. If you go by McPhee’s methodology and cut out the first 11 games of the season, the Caps PK is 81.3%– almost exactly the league average.

“I’m not going to do anything at the deadline that in my mind would set us back.”

This is a topic I touched on during while on CapsCast on Easter Sunday. I’m choosing to interpret McPhee’s “set us back” as meaning in the short term since in the long term making a run for the playoffs seems likely to hurt the team’s chances at building a good team for 2014 and 2015.

There’s a lot of talent coming down the pipeline, and by not dealing away temporary players like Mike Ribeiro while his value is at an absurd peak, he’s lessening the punch that guys like Filip Forsberg and Evgeny Kuznetsov will have once they don a Caps uniform. While I’d love watching the Caps in the playoffs, I still think McPhee is mortgaging the team’s future for a way too slim chance at postseason success.

Okay, enough of the grumpy pants stuff.

“We’ve sort of changed our blueline on the fly here the last few years and have created this mobile blueline that can generate some offense.”

I can’t think of any good way to measure a blueline’s mobility, although I’m a bit suspicious that John Erskine and Jeff Schultz have the mobility of which McPhee speaks. Instead of quibbling over that, let’s see if Washington’s defenders are actually generating a larger share of offense compared to years past. I’ll measure that contribution using the percentage of shots on goal that came from defenders in each of the last 4 seasons.

McPhee is right. The Caps certainly have got a larger share of offensive contribution in recent years. Last season may have been an anomaly considering how little offense the Caps offered and how much Dennis Wideman was shooting early that year.

I should acknowledge that while the defense is proportionately generating more this year, the team overall is shooting less. Shots per game has trended down over the last four seasons.

“We really like the way Marcus Johansson is playing now.”

Me too! I wrote an inflammatory hitpiece about Johansson back in February that I’m frankly embarrassed about now. We’ve since learned that Johansson was playing through a concussion during those first nine games. He shouldn’t have been playing at all.

Since he’s returned, Johansson has been much better. He’s actually improving the play of some of his linemates now, he’s a relatively stronger player on the puck. He’s contributing to the offense for the first time in nearly a year. While he’s not all the way there yet, I’m really encouraged by his progress and embarrassed by my attack on a player who needed help, not criticism.

(Tangent: Hey, wouldn’t it be nice to have fully disclosed injuries for all players? Wouldn’t it be cool if there were transparency to a system so clearly broken that some players try to “tough out” their concussions and others medicate themselves to death? It would also enable fans and scouts to evaluate players in context, but that’s small potatoes considering the health of the players themselves. I know this has nothing to do with George McPhee’s statement, but the NHL– like most pro sports — still seems helplessly broken in this respect.)

I am not saying McPhee is a liar or an idiot. Far from it. He built my favorite hockey team (yours too, I suspect), and his job is phenomenally hard. He’s been deviously clever in the draft and has masterfully managed his goaltending talent. The facts certainly agree with some things he said on Friday, and some of my points above are purely subjective.

But the Capitals team I’ve been following so closely doesn’t resemble the one McPhee described. Maybe the Caps have internal metrics that would dispute what I’ve got– (I’d really welcome more data). Maybe McPhee was speaking strategically to position himself for some big moves on the trade deadline. Maybe he was speaking aspirationally, as if the mere saying of these things might help make them true. Maybe he just wants the players to know that they have his confidence at a crucial part of the season.

Still doesn’t make it true. Here’s one last McPhee quote:

“No one likes criticism.”

Well, yeah. I don’t think I’ll be getting a Christmas card from the McPhee McPhamily this year, but I’m still a fan. I still think this organization and this team can do great things. I just think a shared understanding of a problem is essential to its solving. So this is that.

Crash the net.

Photo credit: Getty

Washington Capitals General Manager George McPhee spoke twice today– first to Mike Vogel and later to the general press corps. He covered pretty much everything in those chats: injuries, the trade deadline, incoming prospects (including his desire for Forsberg to come over). While he was non-committal about his plans for the deadline (“There may be a lot happening. There may be nothing happening. I don’t know.”), McPhee did chalk up his team’s difficulties this season to injuries. Just like he did last year.

McPhee spoke for nearly 40 minutes. There’s a lot to discuss here. Stay tuned for that. For now, here’s the full video.