50.8 – Average length of a shift for Alex Ovechkin so far this season, the 49th-longest in the League… and shortest of his career. Some of that owes to shorter power-play shifts, but not all of it – Ovechkin’s five-on-five shift length is also at a career-low 44 seconds (down from 46 last year, and, going backwards, 49, 50, 50, 55, 53 and 52; thanks, Muneeb).
Now, that doesn’t exactly line up with Nick Kypreos‘s math, cited here by SI.com:
How does a guy who doesn’t play on the penalty kill have average power-play shifts of 1:10 and average regular shifts of “a little over a minute” and yet have an overall average of under 51 seconds per shift? Who knows – it’s certainly possible that Kypreos isn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer.
Anyway, here’s Ovechkin’s average shift length per season, which says absolutely nothing about the player’s “coachability” (via Sporting Charts):