The Washington Capitals Thread

[80sballboy]

Awesome win for the Caps and D.C. sports. Did it without Wilson, Backstrom and Burakovsky to make it even sweeter.

[Ruzious]

Awesome win for the Caps and D.C. sports. Did it without Wilson, Backstrom and Burakovsky to make it even sweeter.

Congrats Caps! Great to see Ovechkin win a series against Pittsburg and advance to the conference finals - and to see Kuz get the game-winner after he missed on several great opportunities. I'm no hawkey expert, but Kuz' puck skills amaze me.

[Zonkerbl]

Yay Caps!!!

[Sluggerface]

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(not sure why we put all the spotlight and pressure on him, he’s probably the 4th or 5th best player on the caps)

NatP, king of questionable opinions and dumbass hot takes at it again.

Shot metrics are widely agreed upon in the hockey analytics community to be the best indicators we have of player skill. Just to humor you, I won't even get into Ovechkin's career metrics (that wouldn't even be remotely fair to you), I'll just focus on this season alone.

In terms of shot pressure generated, Ovechkin is the best on the team. It's not even close. It's not even remotely debatable. Nobody else on the team comes close in their ability to totally dominate puck possession and get quality shots on net for large amounts of time like Ovechkin does.

https://hockeyviz.com/team/WSH/1718
https://hockeyviz.com/player/ovechal85/WSH/1718

The Caps will probably still lose to Tampa Bay, but Ovechkin is still the best player on the caps, one of the best players in the world, and the best goal scorer of his generation (if not all time).

https://www.sportsnet.ca/hockey/nhl/era-adjusted-greatest-nhl-goal-scoring-seasons-time22/

Take the stick out of your ass. Stop reading into narrative, and deal with it.

[80sballboy]

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(not sure why we put all the spotlight and pressure on him, he’s probably the 4th or 5th best player on the caps)

NatP, king of questionable opinions and dumbass hot takes at it again.

Shot metrics are widely agreed upon in the hockey analytics community to be the best indicators we have of player skill. Just to humor you, I won't even get into Ovechkin's career metrics (that wouldn't even be remotely fair to you), I'll just focus on this season alone.

In terms of shot pressure generated, Ovechkin is the best on the team. It's not even close. It's not even remotely debatable. Nobody else on the team comes close in their ability to totally dominate puck possession and get quality shots on net for large amounts of time like Ovechkin does.

https://hockeyviz.com/team/WSH/1718
https://hockeyviz.com/player/ovechal85/WSH/1718

The Caps will probably still lose to Tampa Bay, but Ovechkin is still the best player on the caps, one of the best players in the world, and the best goal scorer of his generation (if not all time).

https://www.sportsnet.ca/hockey/nhl/era-adjusted-greatest-nhl-goal-scoring-seasons-time22/

Take the stick out of your ass. Stop reading into narrative, and deal with it.

But is he efficient? I mean, come on, shot selection?

Ovie is not a great two-way player and never will be and he doesn't get in front of the net to get the greasy goals. But other than that, he's a 40-50 goal scorer every year. He made two incredible passes to Kuzy in Game 6, one in which 92 f-cked around with the puck and the other led to a breakaway game-winner. Goals are important in hockey, aren't they?

[NatP4]

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(not sure why we put all the spotlight and pressure on him, he’s probably the 4th or 5th best player on the caps)

NatP, king of questionable opinions and dumbass hot takes at it again.

Shot metrics are widely agreed upon in the hockey analytics community to be the best indicators we have of player skill. Just to humor you, I won't even get into Ovechkin's career metrics (that wouldn't even be remotely fair to you), I'll just focus on this season alone.

In terms of shot pressure generated, Ovechkin is the best on the team. It's not even close. It's not even remotely debatable. Nobody else on the team comes close in their ability to totally dominate puck possession and get quality shots on net for large amounts of time like Ovechkin does.

https://hockeyviz.com/team/WSH/1718
https://hockeyviz.com/player/ovechal85/WSH/1718

The Caps will probably still lose to Tampa Bay, but Ovechkin is still the best player on the caps, one of the best players in the world, and the best goal scorer of his generation (if not all time).

https://www.sportsnet.ca/hockey/nhl/era-adjusted-greatest-nhl-goal-scoring-seasons-time22/

Take the stick out of your ass. Stop reading into narrative, and deal with it.

The actual narrative is that Ovechkin is the driving force behind the capitals, when in reality, the defense core of Niskanen, Orlov, and Carlson (who put up 70 points with only 36 coming at even strength) plus the play up the middle from Kuznetsov (who is referred to as #92 by ballboy, the hockey expert) , and Backstrom, who put up 71 points, only 26 on the powerplay, which is fantastic, and drove play at a 51% clip, have all been the bigger factors.

If you wanna use your Corsi, crutch, Burakovsky was the best player on the team by far. Drove play at an elite level all season, scored all of his points at even strength, doesn’t get nearly enough credit.

Ovechkin had a great bounce back season, even if he did score 20 of his goals on the powerplay, he’s been a great player his entire career, but he is NOT the best player on the capitals. A goal scoring winger is NOT better than two elite play driving even strength scoring 70 and 80 point top line centers, forget having a Norris caliber defenseman that produced 40 even strength points and drove play at a solid clip. Or Niskanen, even though plus minus is completely overrated, was still a ridiculous +24 and produced ALL of his 30 points at even strength, which is elite territory.


Carlson and Niskanen were both top 25 in even strength points and ESP/60 among defenseman.

And when you say Ovechkin is the best goal scorer in hockey, it’s simply not true, Connor Mcdavid, Nikita Kucherov, Patrik Laine, all these guys equaled or out produced Ovechkin’s even strength goal production this season.

So chill out. Ovechkin is the cover boy, the goal scoring winger that shoots one timers on the powerplay, Niskanen, Carlson, Kuznetsov, Backstrom, Orlov play a big part

If you wanna talk about some questionable takes we can revisit your probabilities argument from last year or talk about Ovechkin’s 2016-2017 season.

[Sluggerface]

If you wanna use your Corsi, crutch,

Burakovsky was the best player on the team by far. Drove play at an elite level all season, scored all of his points at even strength, doesn’t get nearly enough credit.

"crutch". lmao. I didn't even bring up Corsi. Corsi is entry level hockey analysis buddy.

Ovechkin had a great bounce back season, even if he did score 20 of his goals on the powerplay, he’s been a great player his entire career, but he is NOT the best player on the capitals. A goal scoring winger is NOT better than two elite play driving even strength scoring 70 and 80 point top line centers, forget having a Norris caliber defenseman that produced 40 even strength points and drove play at a solid clip. Or Niskanen, even though plus minus is completely overrated, was still a ridiculous +24 and produced ALL of his 30 points at even strength, which is elite territory.

Narrative, narrative, narrative. Pull your head out of your ass and get on my level. What part of when I said "Shot metrics are widely agreed upon to be the best indicator of player skill by the hockey analytics community" is not going through your thick skull. You're talking about basic **** like points instead of looking deeper. But coming from you, it's not surprising that you're incapable of any analysis that doesn't come at face value.

And when you say Ovechkin is the best goal scorer in hockey, it’s simply not true, Connor Mcdavid, Nikita Kucherov, Patrik Laine, all these guys equaled or out produced Ovechkin’s even strength goal production this season.

I didn't say goals scored this season and I was comparing Ovechkin's shot generation to his teammates, not the entire league. You're strawmanning again. One of your favorite things to do.

If you wanna talk about some questionable takes we can revisit your probabilities argument from last year or talk about Ovechkin’s 2016-2017 season.

I didn't say anything about Ovechkin's last season. I mentioned his cumultive career statistics. Not a specific season. And lmfao that you think talking about "probabilities" is some kind of argument to be had, and not a basic fact of **** physical reality. You seriously need to go back to high school dude.

[NatP4]

You just can’t be serious with this argument man, look at your (completely irrelevant) heat maps, one of them is literally Ovechkin’s shot suppression on the PK in which the sample size for the 2017-2018 season is literally 1 minute. The other charts are powerplay shot quality generation which is totally irrelevant, completely useless analysis.

As you can hopefully see, the 5on5 shots against chart is literally THE EXACT same without him on the ice as it is with him. Not much argument here and then you call Corsi (which IS also a shot metric, the most commonly used one to evaluate players) “an entry level analysis”

Ontop of all that, hockey advanced stats in reality are widely agreed to be horrible, players are very vocal about this. Hockey stat nerds understand that it’s only one small factor. I mean a heat map of shot suppression for a 1 minute sample size is pretty convincing though.

Obviously the team generates less quality scoring chances without Ovechkin on the ice, he’s a good player. This is common sense. Image thinking that because a right handed shot goal scoring winger generates scoring chances on the left side of the ice on the powerplay, he’s a better player than two top pairing defenseman Matt Niskanen and John Carlson and two elite play driving even strength producing top line centers, Evgeny Kuznetsov, and Nicklas Backstrom.

Probabilities is an argument when one doesn’t understand correlation is not causation. You gave me every puck possession metric on planet earth, what happened?

[Sluggerface]

You just can’t be serious with this argument man, look at your (completely irrelevant) heat maps, one of them is literally Ovechkin’s shot suppression on the PK in which the sample size for the 2017-2018 season is literally 1 minute.

Yes, because PK is what I've totally been focusing on this entire time.

As you can hopefully see, the 5on5 shots against chart is literally THE EXACT same without him on the ice as it is with him.

They're actually not, but grats for trying. There's also another entire side of the ice buddy.

Not much argument here and then you call Corsi (which IS also a shot metric, the most commonly used one to evaluate players) “an entry level analysis”

Because it is? You do know how corsi was conceived right? And how it's calculated? Its the true shooting percentage of hockey. Regardless why are you giving it some semblance of respect now after calling it a crutch?

Ontop of all that, hockey advanced stats in reality are widely agreed to be horrible, players are very vocal about this.

Because the majority of players have doctorates in statistics and are credible authorities on whether or not a stat is bogus or not

Hockey stat nerds understand that it’s only one small factor.

because "MUH NARRATIVE" Adequately fills in the gaps.

I mean a heat map of shot suppression for a 1 minute sample size is pretty convincing though.

I'm glad you just found out that Ovechkin doesn't PK in the year of two thousand and eighteen. I also love how you say this after talking about how there exist gaps in analysis literally the sentence before.

Probabilities is an argument when one doesn’t understand correlation is not causation. You gave me every puck possession metric on planet earth, what happened?

I'm literally dying right now. This is seriously facepalm worthy material.

[Kanyewest]

Ovi has been huge. Two game winning assists in back to back games without Burkowski in the series and Backstrom and Wilson in the last couple of games.

[80sballboy]

Burakovsky could play tonight but doesn't look like Backstrom will. Wilson back of course.

[Kanyewest]

Good win for the Caps. Even when they are up 4-0, they manage to keep you nervous but a win is a win.

[long suffrin' boulez fan]

Are the Caps better without Backstrom?

[Wizardspride]

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[bondom34]

Pulling for you guys or Vegas.

[Ruzious]

Good win for the Caps. Even when they are up 4-0, they manage to keep you nervous but a win is a win.

I never felt like they weren't in control - even when TB scored their second goal. They dominated that game - probably moreso than they dominated last night's game. This series is definitely not over, but the Caps have been terrific - I've never watched so many hockey games from start to finish. You can almost feel the positive energy they're playing with.

[80sballboy]

Doesn't even seem to be real right now, up 2-0 on the road without Backstrom.

[NatP4]

Wildly entertaining game, caps in trouble now.

[gravytrain24]

0-2 record at home, 0-7 on the power play in those games. Dominated in the 5 on 5 in game 4 but 88 in white made all the key stops

[NatP4]

Ovechkin played an absurd 24 minutes. Not good. 3 straight powerplays, no goal.

Definition of stealing a game by Tampa.