Week 11 Snapshot: It’s Been a Weird December

Here’s Jay Beagle and Brooks Orpik celebrating a goal. (Photo: Gregory Shamus)

This is the final snapshot of 2014. What a weird year– capped off by an even weirder month. With one game left to play, the Caps took 18 out of 24 possible standings points in December, and there’s one thing above all others that is responsible for that success.

(If you’re wondering what that thing is, here’s a hint: People on Facebook spent October debating if he’s an average goalie “at best” or if he’s just terrible.)

This week’s snapshot takes a look back at the streak, the Holtbeast who made it happen, and what the Caps should do to extend it.

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

Let’s do the numbers. These are current as of way after noon on Sunday, December 28th, which is Stan Lee’s birthday. 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

• Apologies for missing last week’s snapshot, but a lot of people would’ve been upset if they didn’t get their t-shirts, which– dear god– I hope they washed before they wore them.
• The Capitals’ score-adjusted possession is 52.5 percent, good for 11th in the league. That’s about the upper limit of where I’d expected them to be over the offseason– though way below the possession domination they showed in those first few weeks. Whatever, I’m not greedy. This should be enough to make the playoffs and maybe make some noise there– so long as they can win the big divisional games that we’ll be seeing more and more of in coming weeks.
• The Caps didn’t lose in regulation between December 2nd and the 23rd. During that time period the Caps had a league-best 104.2 PDO (10.1 shooting and 94.2 saving, good for second and fifth best). Their possession was just 48.5 percent during 5v5, which stinks, but if you adjust for score it was 50.8. I think that tells us that the streak was primarily luck– hot shooting– and amazing but unsustainable goaltending from Holtby. All streaks are sorta like that, sorta illusory. Don’t be sad that it’s over; be glad that it happened.
• It should be stated that Braden Holtby has been one of the best goaltenders in the league this month. Top five for sure, maybe top three. 94.27 save percentage during 5v5 and 93.26 overall. Absolutely stellar. He won’t stay that high forever, but it’s crucial that the Caps got the points while he was.
• Pat Holden and Chris Gordon have each written pieces about how Barry Trotz uses ice time as a cudgel, so I won’t belabor the point except to say this: it’s kind of a mixed bag. Nate Schmidt and Andre Burakovsky deserve regular ice, Jason Chimera maybe less so. I’d like to learn more about precisely what Trotz hopes to accomplish by this stuff; it seems I don’t really understand his thinking here. Is it a locker-room accountability thing– akin to his attitude on fighting and being hard to play against? It’s definitely not a put-your-best-skaters-on-the-ice thing, which I’d think is paramount, but what do I know.
• Jack Hillen ain’t exactly killing it. 46.9 percent possession and 42.9 goals inside our sample, though he’s seen only 105.5 minutes in the sample. I think it’s apparent that Schmidt is the better option, big mistakes or no.
• Take a look at the gap between Ovechkin’s shot-attempt percentage (SA%) and (Goal%). Most players with 300-plus minutes in the sample have no larger than a 3 to 5 percent gap between the two, but Alex Ovechkin‘s possession is seven points better than his goals. One good way to think about that is forward-looking versus backwards-looking. Possession hints at what we might expect, goals tell us what has already happened. That’d make us optimistic, but we’ve seen Ovechkin’s shot-attempt differential outpace his on-ice goals in the last few years. If that’s just statistical happenstance, we can shirk it off. If there’s something else going on– something reducing Ovechkin and his teammates’ scoring– that should be problem number one for the Caps to solve. I think about this a lot.
• Eric Fehr has played in the top six (by the popular definition) just once since game nine. His possession stats (SA%) are still underwater, unchanged in the last two weeks. I was hoping his WOWY (with you/without you) numbers would show that he makes players better despite circumstances, but that’s not happening either. Most players do slightly worse when playing with Fehr except for two examples: Alex Ovechkin and Nick Backstrom, whose possession improves 4.2 percent each when skating with Fehr during 5v5. Yeah. You know the deal.
• But in case you don’t, let me make it brutally clear. Jay Beagle and Alex Ovechin get 34.1 percent of the shot attempts when together. That’s terrible. When Ovi gets clear of Beagle, he gets 55.9 percent of the shot attempts. So, again, top-line Beagle is a really bad idea. Like, it’s so obviously bad that you start to wonder if Trotz has a little of that same no-evidence-necessary streak of contrarianism that made Adam Oates a total disaster as a coach. P.S. Have fun, New Jersey!
• Revisiting the whole “third line is the second line” thing, here’s some evidence that controverts my hypothesis: zone starts. If your second line is your second best scoring line, the coach would endeavor to put them nearest to the opponent goal as much as possible. Our second line mainstays all have 60-plus percent zone starts– meaning they start 60 percent of their non-neutral shifts close to the opponent’s net. Our third line regulars are 48 percent and lower. It seems there is some specialization going on, and maybe that should temper our expectations for those players– including Fehr’s WOWY numbers from the two bullets back.
• I’m not sure the numbers for the defense paint the picture accurately. Based on the snapshot alone, I’m tempted to think Karl Alzner and Matt Niskanen are in big trouble. Maybe not. Since Trotz has been very stable in his defensive pairs, it might help to look at them as duos.

• Basically, the Caps have two pairs who are doing okay and one pair that is positively dominant. Green/Schmidt have a reputation for being weak in their own end that is absolutely unfounded based on shot-attempts against (CA20, below), but it is true that they’re seeing weaker competition, based on the percentage of ice time that competition gets.

• So I guess I’m not convinced that Alzner and Niskanen are truly in trouble. And while Carlson and Orpik are getting shelled, the shot-attempts against rate kinda matches up with quality of their competition (at least within this team). I dunno. Defense is hard. Your thoughts?

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.