Capitals Regular Season Best (and Worst) of Sevens

Wow, amazing number crunching here.

Outside of the PK numbers which I think we all expected would be less than great, this is generally very positive. Looks like the only thing that could sink the Caps are the PK and goaltending.

An interesting way to look at the regular season. Ovechkin’s worst seven-game stretch is five points? Man, he can’t even slump properly.

The caveat is, of course, that no seven game stretch came all against the Devils or all against the Sharks.

Also, these numbers don’t strike me as readily available, so a hearty rec for some amazing legwork.

Sacks, cats, kits and wives – how many were going to St. Ives?

I’ll pile on the compliments for the unreal number crunching work as well.

We’re reminded of it every day but it’s truly unreal how good Backstrom and Ovechkin are. The team goal scoring stat and individual scoring stats were the most “WOW” for me.

I really think the team is in good shape to get their playoff faces on the next few games and steam roll the first round. I’d like BB preaching for them to sweep the first round. Just step on some necks and don’t let up.

Of course, he’s been bailed out a few times along the way, as he has posted a goals against average above 2.75 seventeen times in his 38 seven-appearance stretches

In the high risk/high reward system the Caps play, Theo and Varly are routinely hung out to dry by pinching D and offense-minded/defensively-challenged forwards. I feel like their GAA is always going to be higher than most. To state the obvious, our wins come from outscoring the opponents, not by shutting them down.

So, is there a stat we can cook up that shows how often an offense-first team leaves their goalie on the hook.? Compares a goalie’s GAA against a team’s GpG? Would such a stat be meaningful? Or would something using goal differential be more accurate?

~ p.s. Of course, love for the Rink: awesome article. First stop for anything worth reading about hockey.

The one question I have is:
Is this team drawing more penalties than taking?
Also want to know the comparison from last years penalties drawn to taken ratios just to see comparison purposes.

(Sorry, I can’t check the penalty tracker b/c it’s blocked at work)

Should we use a Fanshot or FanPost to talk about magic numbers, playoff matchups, and so forth? it’s a recurring topic that we’re commenting on on a daily basis, and it’d be fun to keep track of the daily changes without cluttering up the Clips thread.

Of course, maybe that’s segmenting things too much. What do you guys think?

Not to be nit-picky but Varly did lose 4 of 7 against the Pens in the playoffs last year.

I shudder just thinking about how much effort went into this. Bravissimo.

This is a great post with some really cool perspective and analysis – thanks so much!

Dohboy’s total freak out meltdown rational analysis of the PK in the roundtable is worth re-reading. I will further his assessment by saying this: In the last decade, only one NHL team has captured Lord Stanley’s mug without a penalty-killing unit ranked among the league’s top 10. Gah.

That said, we have this to fall back on: Washington is going to be the top seed overall with home ice advantage in every series, very tough to beat, with only 8 losses at home on the year and only 4 of those losses have come in regulation. And our PK is much better on home ice.

When the caps first clinched I spent about 10 minutes trying to see how many times the caps had lost 4 out of 7 games during the season. This incredible level of detail is a friday afternoon gold mine for those of us fascinated by the numbers. Thank you for the effort.

Reading the stats on the penalty kill I can’t help thinking about the third factor going into these playoffs. Teams built differently then the caps, and with different strengths, might have an easier time overcoming uneven refereeing then this team will. Because the Caps are so weak on the PK, the random variable that is playoff reffing may have more impact on the Caps then on any other serious contender. A couple of bad calls have the potential to be disastrous for this team, especially against a closely matched opponent.

This is my biggest fear going into the playoffs. No tin foil hat here, just the reality that human error committed by a third party could derail this amazing year.

Me likey. Obviously facing the same team over seven games is a different animal, but I applaud the innovative angle taken here. The info on the droughts and gluts the high end guys have gone through was particularly enlightening.

Rec’d for innovation and hard work.

Work has gone crazy over here, so I haven’t had the chance to reprise this fanpost. I guess I don’t need to now. Wow, JP, you sure took that style of analysis to an entirely different plane.

It’s fun to look again at those numbers from last year, when the Caps had lost 4 of 7 nineteen times. The most consistent regular season team last year — the Wings — had lost 4 of 7 six times by March 31. This year, the Caps have done it only four times.

Mind-blowingly awesome number crunching. It makes me feel a lot better about the Caps’ playoff chances, I must say. I can’t rec this hard enough!

Um, wow is all I can say.