With the season winding down despite the Cockroach Caps‘ best (and other) efforts, our attention starts shifting towards the longer-range future. There is, of course, the GOAT, err, elephant in the room, but there are plenty of other questions about this Caps team going forward, so we’re going to address some of them here by taking a handful of statements that we definitely have seen made in real life and didn’t just come up with as strawmen for this exercise, and decide what’s true and what’s false. Let’s go.
1. The Caps’ power play isn’t actually terrible, but was just really unlucky this year.
JP: FALSE… but – and I can’t believe I’m about to defend this unit in any way – it hasn’t been quite as bad as you think. Or, at least, relatively. In fact, it might surprise you to know that this year’s Caps power play at 5v4 has a higher expected goals rate than last year’s club (which finished in the top half of the League), and the second highest rate of the last five seasons (stats via NST and as of Tuesday night):
The difference in results, of course, has been driven by low shooting percentages:
Part of that is luck or regression… perhaps. But the elephant in the room is that the biggest power-play weapon in hockey over the last two decades has lost a few miles off his fastball:
Woof. Alex Ovechkin isn’t getting (or creating) shots like he used to, and he’s not converting on the chances he does get. Father time remains undefeated.
So, yes, the Caps’ power play is horrific and if I’d had my way, the Artemis II astronauts would have left Kirk Muller on the dark side of the moon. But it wasn’t necessarily a whole hell of a lot better last year (except where it matters – a big “except”), and for an aspect of the game that was more or less Spencer Carbery’s calling card when he took this job, it’s now probably his most important and maybe most difficult challenge to fix, and it doesn’t seem like it’s as simple as waiting for puck luck to come back around.
Stringham: False. I’ve never been a huge believer in xG for special teams, but I do think they’re directionally correct. The Caps PP is bad (visual from HockeyViz):
Rob: FALSE. The PP may have been unlucky, but it was clearly also very inept. The zone entries were terrible essentially all year, getting a little better when Hutson joined the team. In zone, they had no adjustments to create high quality looks when Ovi’s chances dried up. Adam Oates rejuvenated the Caps PP and kicked off the current 1-3-1 PP trend… 13 years ago. There’s no mystery to the Caps PP approach and the coaching staff hasn’t made adjustments that align to the personnel changes in that time. Kuzy and Backstrom are gone so you lose the left handed passing options that used to patrol from the goal line up the wall. Chychrun is the best point threat, but he’s a lefty which changes the passing approach for the Ovi one timer; Carlson is now completely gone and Hutson is also a lefty. The pieces that made the original 1-3-1 so dangerous are by and large gone, and now it’s time to find a new setup that takes advantage of the current players on the roster.
2. Connor McMichael as a player is closer to this year’s 12-goal scorer than last year’s 26-goal guy.
JP: Over the two full seasons preceding this one, Connor McMichael had a 14.1 shooting percentage on 313 shots in 162 games. That’s not a tiny sample, and not outrageously high for a former first-round pick’s 23- and 24-year-old seasons (who had shown good goal-scoring acumen at his last two stops before the NHL). Then came this year’s clunker – 8.6%, boosted by goals in two of his last three games to get him up to a dozen on the campaign. His shots per game are down a tick from the past two seasons, but give him a 14% conversion rate this year and he’s got 19 goals.
But here’s the thing about McMike – he looks to be a fine complementary player if he’s the third-best player on a line, but as a trio becomes more reliant on him to generate offense or to be its defensive conscience, he’s going to find less individual (and likely team) success. A year ago he was terrific with just about any combination of Pierre-Luc Dubois, Tom Wilson and Aliaksai Protas. This year? Still solid with Willy and Pro (too small a sample with PLD), but not as much with Ryan Leonard and Justin Sourdif (and never has really worked well with Dylan Strome and Ovechkin):
So the big question on McMike is probably do the Caps see him as a second-line wing (in which case another 20-goal season is very much on the table, if not a reasonable expectation), or a third-line wing or center? I think the Caps would prefer the latter, because it would mean greater depth up front, so I’m going to say he’s closer to a 12- than a 26-goal guy – but just barely – making the lead-in statement TRUE.
Adam: FALSE. His goal totals might not ever get back up to mid-to-high 20s… but I think his value is more in-line with a typical 26 goal per year player than a 12 GPY player.
Rob: FALSE. I think he’s probably a 20-goal guy that can play up and down the lineup and give you responsible defense. Just basic math, he was closer to 20 last year than this year (pending the final games). I think he’s probably established what should be his upper and lower boundaries though, so if he can stick in this range and keep providing the Swiss Army knife qualities he’ll be a solid fit for the team. Glad he didn’t put up 26 in the contract year, that’s for sure.
3. Hendrix Lapierre is a full-time player for a Caps team with playoff aspirations.
JP: Hendrix Lapierre is what the kids call “mid”:
But Hendrix Lapierre is also just 24, hasn’t necessarily gotten a lot of time in favorable offensive situations, and is what the GMs call “cheap.” And you need guys like that to fill out a roster, guys who can play in a number of different roles up and down the lineup. Depending what the Caps do this summer and who from Hershey is ready for an NHL role, I could see Lapierre as being a useful 12th-14th forward here with a roster spot, but not sure I see him as a full-time player, so soft FALSE.
Adam: Depends on how you define “playoff aspirations”… this team has/had aspirations to make the playoffs and Lapierre was a full time starter. On a team with Cup winning aspirations you need your 3rd and 4th liners to be able to kill penalties, Lapierre can’t. He’s a poor man’s Chandler Stephenson. FALSE
Rob: FALSE. He’s finished the season relatively strong but with the young prospects behind him coming up I don’t see how he locks down a regular roster spot. I’m hoping that he’s played well enough to be a valuable asset they can package in a trade to upgrade another piece, but I’m not even confident that he’s done that.
4. Charlie Lindgren is fine as a backup goalie for this team going forward.
JP: There was a time when Logan Thompson and Charlie Lindgren could have fairly been (and were) considered to be in a “1A/1B” situation in the Caps’ goal. That time has long since passed, as Thompson as ascended to be among the game’s elite netminders and Lindgren, well… is also left-handed.
Lindgren is having legitimately one of the worst seasons we’ve seen from a Caps goalie in a while. That .879 is miles worse than any year Samsonov had here, for example. Via Hockey-Reference, Lindgren’s Quality Start % has dropped from 60% in his second season here to just 25% this year; his Really Bad Start % has risen from 13%-15% in Y1-Y3 to 25% this year. So this year he was just as likely to be Really Bad as Quality:
All signs show a downward trajectory… and he’ll be 33 in December (despite what this graphic says) and has two more years on his current contract:
To be sure, Lindgren got stuck with plenty of unfavorable assignments (the second games of back-to-backs, infrequent opportunities, spotty defensive performances in front of him, etc.), but the Caps need to be ready with a Plan B if he remains unplayable because Logan Thompson’s workload needs to be managed and they can’t – as evidenced this year – throw away any points. I’m okay with Lindgren breaking camp with the team next year and seeing if he’s got anything left, but the leash has to be pretty short and I can’t see him playing through the rest of his current deal, so I’ll go FALSE, with those caveats.
Adam: FALSE
Rob: TRUE. But only if they can keep him down to 10-15 games, max. Logan Thompson looks like he’s become a real deal starter and the Caps should play him like one. There are other top starters that play ~70 games a year and if Thompson can do that then Chuckie is “fine” as a backup. The numbers J.P. Post sure are ugly, but (without looking) I don’t think he’s alone in that territory among backups (especially the guys backing up Vezina candidates). He can’t be playing a quarter of the season and if Thompson gets hurt again they are in trouble, but I don’t think 10-12 games of Chuckie is going to break a season for them.
5. The team (on the ice, at least) would be better off without Alex Ovechkin next season.
JP: TRUE… but I wouldn’t be.
Adam: He’s old, he’s slow, he’s probably hurting the power play – but he has also scored 30 goals! His production has outpaced his play, but I’m not confident that the Capitals will be able to replace his output due to the weakness of the 2026 FA class. Despite him not wanting one, Ovechkin deserves a farewell tour – and the fans want a chance to say goodbye to the greatest goal scorer of all time. One more year! FALSE
Rob: TRUE. It’ll definitely bring up some emotions watching the team without him but his limitations are trending from “undeniable” to “insurmountable.” He can’t start in the D zone at all, he’s not contributing to even strength possession, his PP production has dried up (though some of that is surely wrapped up in the overall terrible PP), and it’s hard not to wonder what other ad hoc adjustments Carbery has had to make to accommodate Ovi. Perhaps nobody stands to benefit more than Strome, who has had to carry the load at ES for at least 2 seasons now. They will lose an all time shooting threat but will have an overall more balanced and capable attack when he does hang up the skates.