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The Noon Number: Long Shifts Sink Ships?

9 – Number of Capitals (minimum nine games played) who are averaging more than 50 seconds per shift – including both the defenseman (Mike Green; 59 seconds) and forward (Alex Ovechkin; 58 seconds) with the longest average shift length in the League – most of any team in the NHL.

Here’s how the Caps stack up against the rest of the League, sorted by standings position:

Shift_length_medium

Of course it should be noted that these numbers include spikes for players who skate long power-play shifts (imagine what Ovechkin’s average shift length would look like if the Caps used the full two minutes on more of their power plays, like back in 2009-10, for example). But here’s the list of Caps skaters who are averaging more than 50 seconds per shift – four of them are averaging less than 15 seconds per game on the extra-man unit:

Player Average Shift Length
Mike Green 59
Alex Ovechkin 58
Dmitry Orlov 56
John Carlson 56
Nate Schmidt 54
Nicklas Backstrom 53
Karl Alzner 52
Tyson Strachan 51
Marcus Johansson 50

We’ve written about shift length in the past (this post and this one are well worth revisiting), and whenever the issue comes up, a few quotes leap to mind. First, from a coach’s perspective:

Then one from the analytics community:

Finally, Tyler Dellow sums it up perfectly:

It’s easy to cherry-pick examples of long-shifts-gone-bad, and obviously not all do. But it’s worth keeping a close eye on shift length, generally – presumably the Caps coaching staff does. At least, they should…

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