When Brian MacLellan completed his business at the trade deadline, he’d moved a few players but kept enough for a more-or-less realistic playoff push, a situation in which his Caps still find themselves (albeit somewhat tenuously). Having traded away Evgeny Kuznetsov and Anthony Mantha, he probably envisioned a top-six along the lines of Alex Ovechkin-Dylan Strome-Tom Wilson and Max Pacioretty-Connor McMichael-T.J. Oshie for the stretch run. The orientation of those pieces is less important than the names, and, to be sure, youngsters like Hendrix Lapierre and Ivan Miroschnichenko would move in and out of some of those roles as needed.
What’s particularly noteworthy about that group, both in the present day and going forward, is that it’s a solid encapsulation of something the Caps have struggled with all year, namely a lack of playmaking creativity – these are finishers, not table-setters. To wit, this visualization from HockeyViz:
That’s not exactly the balance the Caps were hoping for when they started the season with these two assist wizards in the lineup:
Father Time’s impact on one of them and, well, other factors’ impact on the other notwithstanding, the absence of these two pass-first pivots from the lineup has been noticeable.
Corey Sznajder tracks games manually and his data reveals similar trends – a lack of shot creation via primary assists (i.e. passes that lead to shots) in the Caps’ top-six:
The Caps forwards who have created teammate shots at the highest rate are Aliaksei Protas and Nic Dowd; Strome and McMichael (unlabeled by Mantha) are around League-average, the wings are further to the left (i.e. lower rate of primary shot assists, which is probably to be expected). As a point of reference, here’s what the Caps looked like two seasons ago:
That’s a lot more dudes creating a lot more shots for teammates. As another point of reference, this year’s Carolina Hurricanes:
A closer look at Strome and McMichael via Sznajder’s microstat player cards (small sample sizes) shows Strome a bit more favorably as a playmaker, but is even harsher on McMichael:
And while it’s of course unfair to compare those two to their predecessors in the top-six…
You get the point – this year’s Caps aren’t creating much offense via passing plays. There are any number of reasons this might be the case, including Spencer Carbery’s systems, etc., but it’s impossible to ignore the fact that they simply do not have players in their top six for whom playmaking is really a primary, high-level skill.
The good news (to the extent that there is any here) is that the problem seems to be very much on the team’s radar, especially with the extra incentive they have to find a playmaker:
But for now, it is what it is – the Caps will continue to rely on their power play and brute force to score goals and hope for the best. We’ll see if it’s enough.