Return of the top-heavy Caps: Snapshot 3

The Washington Capitals are doing much better lately, and that’s a big relief. It surely makes life easier for Barry Trotz and Brian MacLellan. It’s less easy, however, to figure out why the Caps have improved. Matt Niskanen’s return to health is surely a driver, and the Ovechkin/Backstrom reunion before Thanksgiving seems to be one as well. But when we look at the team’s overall shot-attempt numbers, it’s not apparent that the Caps are doing much better than they were a month ago. And yet, the Caps are winning.

It seems to me like Niskanen’s return and the Ovi/Backstrom reunion have made the Caps far more fearsome – but also far more top-heavy – than they were before. In this week’s snapshot, we look at all the important progress made so far – and what’s left to be fixed. I’m not sure that line tinkering will be enough.

Forwards

Defense

Notes

• Quick high-level review: the Caps have the 16th best standings-point percentage (57.4), the 25th best shot-attempt percentage (48.1), the 26th best expected goals percentage (48.1), the 12th best goals percentage (51.2), and the 12th best power play and the 24th best penalty kill. Those numbers describe a team that is mediocre and over-performing, but we’ll learn a lot more by going deeper. So here’s a timeline of the team’s shot attempts, scoring chances, and goals during 5-on-5 this season, plus my annotations for those events I mentioned in the introduction.

• We want the team above 50 percent in everything, and while we expect goals to fluctuate more than shot attempts (due to volatile short-term shooting/saving percentages), we should be suspicious if goals outperform shot attempts too much for too long. That would suggest a weak team winning through over-reliance on a great goalie or getting unsustainable shooting luck (or both). Washington’s recent spike in goals is great, but they’re still not getting the majority of other events. Why? Let’s look at the gap between the top and bottom sixes.
• Five games ago, Barry Trotz reunited Nick Backstrom and Alex Ovechkin. He put Tom Wilson of the top-line wing, and by implication put Jakub Vrana, Evgeny Kuznetsov, and TJ Oshie together on the second line. This has been, without equivocation, a huge success. The top six has outscored opponents 8 to 1 during 5-on-5 and controlled 58.8 percent of the shot attempts (141 for the Caps, 99 for opponents). Bravo. But…
• …the bottom six has been a disaster during that same stretch – getting outscored 6 to 2 and out-attempted 126 to 80, i.e. 38.8 percent of the shot attempts, markedly south of the 40 percent cutoff where it’s hard to consider it NHL-caliber play anymore. The dreary bottom six almost erases the gains made in the top six.
• What’s broken at the bottom? Jay Beagle‘s numbers jump out, but let’s keep going. While Beagle’s 38.5 percent of on-ice shot attempts is lowest on the team and second lowest among all NHL forwards with more than 200 minutes played (thanks, 41-year-old Matt Cullen!), Beagle’s got some exculpatory evidence. Instead of playing with Dan Winnik and Tom Wilson like last year, Beagle has instead had a rotating cast of marginal NHLers like Devante Smith-Pelly and Alex Chiasson at his flanks.
• Also a mitigating factor for Beagle: his defensive-zone start percentage has gone up 10 points this season (53.1 percent, up front 43.5). He’s being asked to do too much heavy lifting without the support needed to make that lifting work.
• Beagle’s best on-ice numbers this season came with now-Oiler Nathan Walker, with whom he saw 46.7 percent of attempts in 48 minutes, rather than 32.1 percent without. Still, a trio of Beagle, DSP, and Chiasson has had decent returns (about even possession in about 25 minutes of play). That’s worth a shot for now.
• Nathan Walker’s exit is a disappointment. If the first few bullets of this snapshot suggest anything, it’s that depth is the team’s biggest remaining problem. Everything we had seen from Walker suggested he could have helped precisely there. The total impact of any fourth line forward is limited, but this was a squandered opportunity by coaching and management.
• For the first time since late 2015,  Tom Wilson is making an extended appearance on the top line with Backstrom and Ovechkin. It’s been great for his on-ice statistics, but it has effectively halved his individual contributions to offense. Since he’s joined the top line five games ago, Wilson’s individual shot-attempt rate has dropped from 12.4 per hour minutes to 7.5, and his scoring-chance rate has dropped from 7.2 per hour to 3.8. I suppose none of that matters if your line is scoring and (hopefully) you’re contributing to it. But I’m not convinced that Wilson is doing that, and I’d prefer to see Andre Burakovsky in that spot once he’s healthy. Burakovsky’s individual shot rate is excellent, and Wilson might be more useful in the struggling bottom six.
• Brett Connolly (42.4 percent of shot attempts) has taken a giant step back from last year. His concussion at the end of October probably has contributed to his decay, but I’m not sure what can be done with that information. I’m often critical of punitive healthy scratches, but I’m not sure Trotz removing Connolly from play this week was a bad move. That’s sad.
• My hypothesis is that Brooks Orpik remains a playable NHL defenseman in limited minutes and sheltered usage, both of which he has been denied due to offseason  blunders and the Niskanen injury. Things are trending in the right direction, but Orpik is still massively overused because Trotz does not seem to trust Madison Bowey and Christian Djoos together.

• Madison Bowey is a curious case. His numbers are about as bad as Orpik’s, and they mask even more troubling shot quality concerns. Bowey allows the most high-danger chances among all Caps defenseman, and he does it against far easier opponents than Dmitry Orlov and Matt Niskanen see.

• Something I really did not expect: Bowey-Chorney see better results in shot volume and quality (43.0 percent of attempts, 15.3 opponent high-danger attempts per 60) than Bowey-Orpik (37.9 percent of attempts, 17.6 opponent high-danger attempts per 60). Hmm.
• By the way, Taylor Chorney‘s on-ice save percentage is 95.0, a team high and the 9th highest among all defensemen with at least 200 minutes played. His continued NHL paycheck is patronage from St. Braden Holtby.
• The relative shot-attempt column tells us how the Caps do when a certain player is on the ice or on the bench. A positive relative shot-attempt percentage, like Christian Djoos‘ plus-6.4, means that the Caps’ 52.9 percent of shot attempts while he’s playing is 6.4 more than the 46.5 percent they see when he’s on the bench. It’s not usually this tidy because of matchups, but the Caps’ top-four defensemen by shot attempts and relative shot attempts really oughta be their top-four defensemen by ice time too.
• Nicklas Backstrom has not scored a goal since October 14 and I could not care less. Backstrom has been consistently solid during 5-on-5, even before the reunion with Alex Ovechkin in game 23. Backstrom’s line has outscored opponents 14 to 7 despite facing the toughest competition on the team. As Chris said last night, Backstrom is due.
• Lars Eller has lost some of his studliness from last season. His possession stats are in the team’s middle, perhaps due to unfortunate chemistry with Devante Smith-Pelly (43.4 percent of shot attempts when together, down from 51.6 percent apart), whose benignity apart from the top line is suspect.

Glossary

• GP. Games played.
• TOI. Time on ice. The amount of time that player played during 5v5.
• 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.
• Rel SA%. The percentage difference of shot attempts the Caps had when the player on the ice as opposed to when the player is on the bench.
• GF%. Goals-for percentage. The share of goals that the player’s team got while he was on the ice.
• PDO. (A meaningless acronym.) The sum of the player’s on-ice shooting percentage and his goalies’ on-ice save percentage. Above 100 means the player is getting fortunate results that may be reflected in goal%.

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Headline photo: Rob Carr