Speculation: Caps General Discussion (Coaching/FAs/Cap/Lines etc) - 2021 Off-Season Pt. 1

[Calicaps]

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[txpd]

We are saying that players that are top 20 in scoring in the league, top 15 in goals scored and 8th in goals per game, and 5th in the league in scoring on defense and 3rd in points per game on defense cant be counted on to be core performers on a cup level team? The 4th player was 2nd on the team in goals, 1st ppgs and 3rd in even strenth points. ok.

 

[Calicaps]

We are saying that players that are top 20 in scoring in the league, top 15 in goals scored and 8th in goals per game, and 5th in the league in scoring on defense and 3rd in points per game on defense cant be counted on to be core performers on a cup level team? The 4th player was 2nd on the team in goals, 1st ppgs and 3rd in even strenth points. ok.

Our best players were our best and among the league's best all year until they all got badly hurt at the same time. Therefore they are too old.

 

[twabby]

We are saying that players that are top 20 in scoring in the league, top 15 in goals scored and 8th in goals per game, and 5th in the league in scoring on defense and 3rd in points per game on defense cant be counted on to be core performers on a cup level team? The 4th player was 2nd on the team in goals, 1st ppgs and 3rd in even strenth points. ok.

Yes to all of this.

 

[txpd]

Our best players were our best and among the league's best all year until they all got badly hurt at the same time. Therefore they are too old.

I am convinced now that I dont know anything about hockey and neither do Laviolette or MacLellan

 

[Empty Goal Net]

IF much of the core was injured/playing hurt - and I will concede that's likely - AND next season a) they will all be a year older and b) they will be expected to play nearly 50% more games - then where does mgmt land in deciding reasonable expectations for these guys? If much of the team was skating wounded after a 56-game RS, what will they look like after 82 games?

It's likely that their career years are all in the rearview - not only for the 34+ guys but also for someone like Carlson, unless there are factors in his case that we know nothing about. And how much value does a DOPS-neutered Wilson have to the team? Consider what Eric Staal and Corey Perry are doing on the Habs' 4th line. Although neither ever achieved Ovie's stat line, both were very good players whose best days are behind them. But they are making major contributions to a team that looks about to move to what would be the conference finals. Are the Caps willing to use Oshie, Nicky or even Ovie in similar roles, not next season but in the not-too-distant future?

 

[g00n]

@twabby from the prev thread:

No one's blaming anyone. Just trying to understand where the team is deficient and how to improve it.

In my opinion their superstars (Ovechkin, Backstrom, Oshie) are just too old to be expected to carry the team to a championship any more, and their secondary core players (Wilson, Kuznetsov, Carlson) aren't good enough to carry the team. That's not blaming them, that's understanding their limitations.

If you could somehow swap Kuznetsov+ for say, Jack Eichel, I'm all for it. I don't think such a trade is likely. I don't even know if Kuznetsov+ gets you a decent 2C, let alone a 1C that this team desperately needs.

Ok so you don't want to call it "blame" and this is all about thought experiments that just happen to involve performance analysis, and we're just moving things forward. Fine.

It makes no difference how you reframe it. The net effect is the same. There's no real reason to believe the superstars are suddenly over the hill and that's the reason we lost the series, especially when the bullshit from Kuz and Sammy (along with injuries to top stars) are all front and center. While most of us were focusing on those obvious issues you got this "trade Wilson while his value is high" narrative and now he's thrown into the "old and slow" complaint despite being young and fast.

Let's just cut to the chase. There are people on this site who want a purely finesse team that's young, fast, and soft because of what they believe is quantifiable data showing the team is falling behind other squads. But I still haven't gotten an answer regarding how you quantify team speed, or individual speed during game situations...especially when you spend all season playing the same handful of teams.

 

[Melkor]

Nobody cares what somebody thinks about the other's hockey knowledge. The only thing that matters is a first round exit 3 years in row. Everything else is really just people competing in unlimitedness of their vocabulary on here.

They consistently stink it up when it matters. Whether you're okay with this or not is another story.

 

[Langway]

We are saying that players that are top 20 in scoring in the league, top 15 in goals scored and 8th in goals per game, and 5th in the league in scoring on defense and 3rd in points per game on defense cant be counted on to be core performers on a cup level team? The 4th player was 2nd on the team in goals, 1st ppgs and 3rd in even strenth points. ok.

Ok, now do Toronto and Edmonton. Hell, do Colorado...who are suddenly not looking so hot against Vegas even with MacKinnon/Rantanen. There's a lot more to being a tough out than top-end individual regular season production. Caps fans out of anyone should get that.

It's predominantly about two-way play, pace and defense. It's about fundamentally strong checking hockey. They've got some depth and experience but the top six forwards are too slow to truly check the best of the best and Carlson hasn't shown much ability to stay health or even be a strong shutdown defender when healthy in the regular season. The essential hallmarks of a balanced top team, the backbone, isn't really there. They've never replaced Niskanen and until they do I don't think they're likely to put up enough of a fight when it matters.

As-is they're likely to be in a fight to simply make the playoffs given that Carolina will remain strong (albeit perhaps still weak in goal), the Rangers are gaining valuable experience and PIT/NYI should remain highly competitive. The Caps will remain a good skilled team but the problem is the league is always evolving and they're on the wrong side of the age curve. It may not take much for them to revert to more of an old, plodding perimeter team.

 

[Melkor]

@twabby from the prev thread:



Ok so you don't want to call it "blame" and this is all about thought experiments that just happen to involve performance analysis, and we're just moving things forward. Fine.

It makes no difference how you reframe it. The net effect is the same. There's no real reason to believe the superstars are suddenly over the hill and that's the reason we lost the series, especially when the bullshit from Kuz and Sammy (along with injuries to top stars) are all front and center. While most of us were focusing on those obvious issues you got this "trade Wilson while his value is high" narrative and now he's thrown into the "old and slow" complaint despite being young and fast.

Let's just cut to the chase. There are people on this site who want a purely finesse team that's young, fast, and soft because of what they believe is quantifiable data showing the team is falling behind other squads. But I still haven't gotten an answer regarding how you quantify team speed, or individual speed during game situations...especially when you spend all season playing the same handful of teams.

Is it really that hard for you to separate speedy players from slow ones when you watch? If somebody watches hockey for more than a year and is not able to decide whether a skater is quick enough in his on ice actions to be effective...ummm well, does he really watch it closely?

 

[g00n]

Is it really that hard for you to separate speedy players from slow ones when you watch? If somebody watches hockey for more than a year and is not able to decide whether a skater is quick enough in his on ice actions to be effective...ummm well, does he really watch it closely?

So you're saying the "eye test", right?

 

[AlexBrovechkin8]

Nobody cares what somebody thinks about the other's hockey knowledge. The only thing that matters is a first round exit 3 years in row. Everything else is really just people competing in unlimitedness of their vocabulary on here.

They consistently stink it up when it matters. Whether you're okay with this or not is another story.

I think this is mostly garbage and that they have been more unlucky than bad. In 2018-19 they lost their top pairing defenseman in Kempny right before the playoffs started and lost Osh in the Hurricanes series which was a series changer (and Holtby playing like total ass in games 6 and 7 didn't help). I think they go to the ECF, at least, if they have their full squad.

They did stink it up in the bubble last year but they also lost Backstrom to a cheap shot in the first game and Lars missed a few games because he had a kid and winning a series without two of your top centers is pretty tough. This year they were a wagon but caught the injury bug at the worst possible time and missed almost their entire top six plus their 1D the last few weeks of the season whereas Boston got healthy at just the right time. You could pretty easily tell a lot of the Caps' top guys were playing at 60-70%, at best.

If you want to call that stinking it up when it matters that's your prerogative but it's not an accurate representation of what happened.

 

[Melkor]

So you're saying the "eye test", right?

Of course. If you want to pinpoint someone's efficiency then there's a lot of potential for advanced metrics to dive into it deeper. Average speed of a specific player with/without the puck, average time a player wastes for making a decision with the puck on his stick, how often does his decisions directly contribute to high danger chances for, average time a specific line wastes before gaining the offensive zone, the percentage of shifts where they were able to do that.

I mean there are people who're getting paid a solid amount of money to track all this stuff. They should actually do their jobs, not me. I can just rely on, you know it, eye test.

 

[txpd]

IF much of the core was injured/playing hurt - and I will concede that's likely - AND next season a) they will all be a year older and b) they will be expected to play nearly 50% more games - then where does mgmt land in deciding reasonable expectations for these guys? If much of the team was skating wounded after a 56-game RS, what will they look like after 82 games?

The issue was not the number of games. It was the number of games in a compressed number of days. This season there was almost no recovery time built into the schedule and no practice time. They were averaging more then 5 games every 10 days in those 56 games. In a normal 82 game schedule they player fewer than 1 games every other day. You can make a good case that this past 56 games schedule was far harder on players than the 82 games schedules of years past.

 

[Melkor]

I think this is mostly garbage and that they have been more unlucky than bad. In 2018-19 they lost their top pairing defenseman in Kempny right before the playoffs started and lost Osh in the Hurricanes series which was a series changer (and Holtby playing like total ass in games 6 and 7 didn't help). I think they go to the ECF, at least, if they have their full squad.

They did stink it up in the bubble last year but they also lost Backstrom to a cheap shot in the first game and Lars missed a few games because he had a kid and winning a series without two of your top centers is pretty tough. This year they were a wagon but caught the injury bug at the worst possible time and missed almost their entire top six plus their 1D the last few weeks of the season whereas Boston got healthy at just the right time. You could pretty easily tell a lot of the Caps' top guys were playing at 60-70%, at best.

If you want to call that stinking it up when it matters that's your prerogative but it's not an accurate representation of what happened.

Umm...how does all that change the fact that they'd exited the playoffs for 3 straight years? They looked bad all 3 series aside from a couple of games against Carolina. Their goaltending, centermen and #1D had all been deplorable. It's like when people talking about Letang they're always having this injury excuse for his poor showings in the playoffs. I'm sorry, not a single opponent cares if he's injured. He looks bad when he's injured and lost some games for his team. Same with Carlson. Same with Oshie. Same with Backstrom. Your tendency to get injured or get destroyed by a hit is only yours and your team's problem. It means you're unreliable in that regard and easy to be taken out of the equation.

 

[Calicaps]

Putting this discussion in context: first-round exits are unbearable. Trotz's multiple second-round exits were pure heaven.

 

[Hivemind]

Quip post before I make a longer one about coaching - I think it's fairly obvious who only watches games that involve the Capitals and who watches other teams play as well. And there's a reasonably large overlap between those who watch other teams and those who think the Capitals need a more significant rework to remain competitive.

 

[Melkor]

Hot take: Trotz's second round exits with a Cup on top of them were much more bearable than first round exits.

 

[tenken00]

It's true that we can blame injuries, coaching, the pandemic, Kuzy and Sammy, whatever.. as the reasons why we haven't won a single playoff series in 3 years. And all of them could be right.

But it doesn't get any easier each and every year into the future. It only gets harder - exponentially harder even - with the core that we currently have.

 

[Melkor]

It's true that we can blame injuries, coaching, the pandemic, Kuzy and Sammy, whatever.. as the reasons why we haven't won a single playoff series in 3 years. And all of them could be right.

But it doesn't get any easier each and every year into the future. It only gets harder, exponentially harder even, with the core that we currently have.

No, they're all gonna be healthier and younger next year. 4th time is the charm lol.

 

[twabby]

Next season isn't going to be a cakewalk in terms of the schedule. It will likely be another compressed schedule due to the Olympic break and maybe because of the lingering effects of COVID pushing the season back a few weeks. But this time with more travelling and the 82 full games. Not only that, but it's reasonable to expect the following players to play in the Olympics:

Ovechkin
Backstrom
Oshie
Carlson
Orlov

That's a lot of older players potentially playing 90+ competitive games next year in another compressed schedule before the Stanley Cup Playoffs even come around. Whatever excuses given for the schedule this year are going to apply again next year, and perhaps be even worse.

 

[Corby78]

IF much of the core was injured/playing hurt - and I will concede that's likely - AND next season a) they will all be a year older and b) they will be expected to play nearly 50% more games - then where does mgmt land in deciding reasonable expectations for these guys? If much of the team was skating wounded after a 56-game RS, what will they look like after 82 games?

It's likely that their career years are all in the rearview - not only for the 34+ guys but also for someone like Carlson, unless there are factors in his case that we know nothing about. And how much value does a DOPS-neutered Wilson have to the team? Consider what Eric Staal and Corey Perry are doing on the Habs' 4th line. Although neither ever achieved Ovie's stat line, both were very good players whose best days are behind them. But they are making major contributions to a team that looks about to move to what would be the conference finals. Are the Caps willing to use Oshie, Nicky or even Ovie in similar roles, not next season but in the not-too-distant future?

I don’t think the role will be that difficult, I think now those are 3/2 line guys, it will be the cap hit that prohibits actually building that top line. GMBM has his work cut out for him

 

[Corby78]

Hot take: Trotz's second round exits with a Cup on top of them were much more bearable than first round exits.

How is that a hot take?

 

[Melkor]

How is that a hot take?

That was sarcasm. Some people over here like first round exits with constant injuries, no goaltending or potent offense/defense way more than Trotz.

 

[tenken00]

No, they're all gonna be healthier and younger next year. 4th time is the charm lol.

Well it all depends on what expectations are, or what expectations should be. And honestly, Ovechkin's next contract is what will decide expectations for better or for worse. And I'm ok with that. Just will hold off on what my own expectations will be until after that.

If he asks for more money, and I think he has every right to do so and will be fine if we give it to him, I am ok with transitioning some youth into the lineup and with lowered expectations.