When Jakob Chychrun was on the trade block in Arizona back in 2022-23, there were whispers that the Capitals were deep in talks to acquire him before the Ottawa Senators stepped up and paid big for him. Now, not even two years later, the Caps were able to attain Chychrun during the offseason for a much lower price (relatively speaking) due to an unimpressive run during his time in Ottawa.
But that bad run shouldn’t scare the Caps or their fans – let’s take a look as to why that is and where Chychrun could fit to get the most out of him next season.
When the Capitals signed Matt Roy, it was easy to predict where he would be playing: right below John Carlson on the second pair to eat up more defensive minutes. But when the Caps acquired Chychrun, as exciting as it was, it made you ask exactly where he would play. The Caps already have two other top four left-handed defensemen in the lineup with Martin Fehervary and Rasmus Sandin. So who could Jakob play with?
Looking at his tumultuous time with the Senators will give us an idea where Chychrun could fit on the Caps blueline. Below are all the defensive partners Chychrun played with (min. 100 minutes):
| PARTNER | TOI W/ PARTNER | % OF TIME W/ PARTNER | xGF%Relative W/ PARTNER |
| Jacob Bernard-Docker (RHD) | 432:30 | 27.0% | -8.36xGF% |
| Thomas Chabot (LHD) | 361:27 | 22.6% | +4.34xGF% |
| Travis Hamonic (RHD) | 265:30 | 16.6% | -4.40xGF% |
| Erik Brannstrom (LHD) | 152:48 | 9.6% | +2.43xGF% |
| Jake Sanderson (LHD) | 152:19 | 9.5% | +11.64xGF% |
| Artem Zub (RHD) | 113:20 | 7.1% | -2.72xGF% |
There are a handful of points to take away from that information. First, Chychrun’s numbers overall last season were not good. His -2.66xGF%Rel was third-worst among Ottawa’s defensemen that played at least eight games, but the only two players worse than him were Bernard-Docker (-4.75xGF%Rel) and Hamonic (-10.11xGF%Rel)…and those were two of the three of Chychrun’s most frequent partners. Combined they take up nearly 44% of total ice Chychrun had at even strength; that’s a lot.
This is not to hate on Bernard-Docker or Hamonic, but neither of them are top-four defensemen, and Hamonic was especially bad this past season, ranked one of the worst in the NHL. He hasn’t made a top four impact since the 2018-19 season. Bernard-Docker is young, but hasn’t shown anything so far in the NHL to be considered top four, although he’s also has played very sporadically since he entered the league in 2020. The point being, it would be hard for anyone to really make a positive impact with either of them as their partner.
It should be noted that Zub is in xGF%Rel negative with Chychrun, but Zub is a purely defensive defensemen, and a very good one at that. Chychrun’s defensive numbers with Zub were very strong, but the offensive impact was so bad that they put up overall poor xGF% numbers. With Bernard and Hamonic, the offensive and defensive impacts were both very bad.
If you take all three of these players and combine their percentage of time with Chychrun, it’s 50.7% – so for half of his even strength time, Chychrun was on the ice with some not-so-great players (again, Zub is good but Chychrun may not exactly vibe with that type of player…more on that in a sec). But what did Chychrun’s underlying numbers look like when he wasn’t playing with any of those three? Let’s take a look:
| PLAYER | TOI | CF%REL | xGF%REL | SCF%REL | HDCF%REL |
| CHYCHRUN | 696 | 4.02 | 4.03 | 7.74 | 2.02 |
| SANDERSON | 236 | 7.62 | 7.57 | 7.23 | 0.82 |
| CHABOT | 626 | 3.94 | 6.84 | 8.03 | 4.95 |
| BRANNSTROM | 465 | 0.95 | 3.68 | 4.32 | 6.09 |
Without those three, in nearly 700 minutes, Chrychrun did very well compared to the rest of his team. The team’s three top defensemen and how they did away from Docker, Hamonic and Zub are also listed here to show that they all had varying degrees of success with each other, it’s not as if Chychrun barely scraped by while everyone else flourished.
If you look at Chabot, Sanderson and Brannstrom, players Chychrun put up strong relative numbers with, they all have two things in common. The most important one is that they are puck-movers, the exact opposite of the first three players mentioned. The other thing those three have in common that Chychrun did well with is that they are left-handed. This is an interesting wrinkle, because Chychrun is also left-handed. The report is he was acquired by Ottawa because he was a lefty that could play on the right side so neither Chabot, Sanderson, or Chychrun would have to play on the bottom pairing. It’s hard to tell exactly how well that experiment worked but the general consensus was it did not work out well.
Finding numbers where he played on the right side is basically impossible, but a manual look at each of the Senator’s lineup cards on their Twitter gives us a rough number of times Chychrun played on the right side when playing with one of the three lefties listed above. Again…this may not mean much, as things could have changed mid-game, but this is what we have to go on.
With Brannstrom, Chychrun was not once listed on the right side in the nine lineup cards. With Sanderson, Chychrun was listed once on the right side and three times on the left side. Lastly, with Chabot, Chychrun was listed on the right side nine times and three times on the left. So the total was 15 times on the left side and 10 times on the right when playing with those three left-handed players.
Basically Chychrun did very well with puck movers in Ottawa, even when he played on his off-side 40% of the time. So that leaves the question of who he could possibly play with when he’s wearing a Caps sweater.
The obvious answer is John Carlson. There aren’t too many puck-moving defenseman as good as Carlson, and a player who looks an awful lot like Carlson is Chabot, who Chychrun played with a lot last season and had fantastic offensive impacts. You can see from the Evolving Wild RAMP chart below that both Carlson and Chabot have very strong offensive impacts:
The chart below shows the offensive impact that Chychrun and Chabot had together:
Their defensive impact was also slightly better than league average as well, which is a bonus. Granted, those two were fed offensive zone starts, a 67.81% OZ start rate. Maybe the plan for the Caps could be to give Chychrun and Carlson as much offensive starts as possible, and leave the tougher defensive matchups to the other four.
It’s also important to note that nine of the 12 times that Chabot and Chychrun were listed together, Chychrun played on his off-side. With Carlson, Chychrun can stay on his strong side, which should have better results. It’s also important to remember, the Caps should be a better team than Ottawa (and are likely better coached as well), so a Chychrun-Carlson pairing could be very strong offensively and still above-average defensively.
Another option for Chychrun when playing on the Caps is putting him with new signee Matt Roy. Roy is not an elite puck-mover like Carlson, Chabot or Sanderson, but he still does very well. We did talk about how Chychrun might not jive with defensemen more known for their defensive side of the game like Zub, and Roy is technically more defense-oriented than Carlson, but he still has some strong offensive abilities that helps get the puck out of the defensive zone and keeps it in the offensive zone. Zub does not have that ability.
It’s also worth noting that Chychrun didn’t really get consistent time with any one partner and that can lead to inconsistent results. We saw the same with Pierre-Luc Dubois in Los Angeles. As you can see from the first chart, the most time played with one player (Jacob Bernard-Docker) was 27%. For reference, see below the Caps main six defensemen playing with their most used partner.
| PLAYER | % OF TIME W/ PARTNER |
| Martin Fehervary | 63% |
| John Carlson | 45.7% |
| Joel Edmundson | 42.6% |
| Rasmus Sandin | 31.1% |
| Trevor Van Riemsdyk | 30.8% |
| Jensen | 29.9% |
If you average them all up it’s nearly 41% – and that’s with the Caps having been quite chaotic at times last season, trying to find the best fits, especially when Ethan Bear arrived halfway through the season. Even with all of that, every single Caps defensemen received more consistency than Chychrun. Now that the Caps have Roy (who played 71.2% with his most used partner in LA last season) and that Chychrun can play on his strong (left) side, expect way more stability for Chychrun, which could do wonders.
Additionally, Chychrun has always been on a bad team between the Arizona Coyotes (now the Utah Hockey Club) and the Ottawa Senators. Yet, in his last three seasons with the Coyotes (including the half 2021-22 season where he was traded to the Senators), Chychrun was +4.35xGF%Rel, which was fourth on the team in that span, first among defensemen among those that played at least 1200 minutes. He was not a positive xGF%Rel last season with the Senators but we’ve already gone into why that might have been.
So if you add up everything – the fact that Chychrun has always been on a bad team, that he was given inconsistent time, even playing off his strong side, playing with mediocre to bad partners, etc. – you can see why he might flourish in Washington (and a similar argument can be made for Dubois). With consistency, an improved roster, and an exciting coach, Chychrun has a real chance to bounce back from his poor play in Ottawa and find a home with Carlson or Roy.