![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/file-hendrix-lapierre-water-bottle-bench-aland-0372.jpg\")
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\ud83d\udcf8: Alan Dobbins\/RMNB\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\ud83d\udcf8: Alan Dobbins\/RMNB\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
This is what Chris Cerullo of RMNB fame<\/a> said following the Washington Capitals\u2019 loss to the New York Rangers on December 23<\/a>:<\/p>\n The Capitals need a trade. There is no more \u201csurviving\u201d until PLD is back.<\/p>\n They have zero centers producing right now. They have a line they barely use every single night. Their 20-year-old winger is their only difference maker.<\/p>\n A shake-up of some sort is badly needed.<\/p>\n As per usual, Chris is right. After a brief moment atop the conference, the Caps now sit seventh in the east and dropping. A team that has ranked in the league\u2019s top three in five-on-five play has now fallen to 15th in the month of December.<\/p>\n They need a change. They need several changes. Recoveries from injury<\/a>, recoveries from illness, a trade or two<\/a>, power-play personel patch-up<\/a>, no more mock turtlenecks from Joe and Craig<\/a>, etc., etc.<\/p>\n If you are feeling frustration from the community, it\u2019s because we can all see that the Capitals at their core can be a very good hockey team. Had you said that three years ago, you\u2019d be called heretic. But they\u2019ve nearly executed a high-difficulty on-the-fly rebuild, and in the final year of Alex Ovechkin\u2019s contract they may yet still \u2013 and in spite of all expectations \u2013 make a run at the Cup.<\/p>\n Except that\u2019s not the trajectory they\u2019re on right now. Let\u2019s do the snapshot.<\/p>\n Get RMNB ad-free<\/p>\n Support us on Patreon for $5 to hide all ads and get other perks<\/p>\n More Info<\/a><\/p>\n The snapshot is an increasingly irregular column where we look at the Caps skater\u2019s stats during five-on-five play, and use it as a jumping-off point for more discussion.<\/p>\n Forwards<\/p>\n Player Lapierre Wilson Milano Frank Protas Strome Sourdif Beauvillier Ovechkin McMichael Duhaime Leonard Dowd Defenders<\/p>\n Player Chychrun Roy Feh\u00e9rv\u00e1ry Carlson van Riemsdyk Sandin Chisholm Glossary<\/p>\n TOI Notes<\/p>\n Reminder that the snapshot does not cover special teams. Washington\u2019s special teams are still ghastly<\/a>, and if anything costs Ovechkin a playoff appearance in his final* season, it\u2019ll be them. That\u2019s a line graph of how the Capitals\u2019 share of offense has diminished over the season. For context, 50 is even, 40 is worst-in-the-league bad, and 60 is nutso good (if you can sustain it). The Caps cannot sustain it \u2013 since the beginning of the month they\u2019ve been controlling less and less of games. Over the past ten games, they\u2019ve been right at fifty percent. That\u2019d be a playoff bubble team \u2013 presuming that team had competent special teams, which this team doesn\u2019t. Player Ovechkin Strome Beauvillier Protas Wilson McMichael Frank Leonard Lapierre Sourdif Dowd Duhaime As I\u2019ve always said, possession is all that matters. Nothing else matters, and you\u2019re wrong if you think anything else matters. Hendrix Lapierre has been put on earth and on the Capitals \u2013 by God himself \u2013 as a personal challenge to me. Lapierre, 23, sits atop the stack ranking if we sort by expected goals percentage, so obviously he\u2019s the best dude on the team, you say. But wait, my friend! What if I were to tell you that out of 367 forwards who have played at least 240 minutes this season, Lapierre ranks 361st in ice time per game. When a player is on the extremes like that, the rules of standard physics break down and you have think relativistically. Except I don\u2019t understand relativity and also I don\u2019t understand what\u2019s going on with Lapierre. He\u2019s on the right side of the ice in his shifts, the game pace is unremarkable, and he\u2019s even got solid shot quality, but that\u2019s the on-ice part. Lapierre is individually contributing about 15 percent of offensive events \u2013 average among forwards is just below 30 percent. And, most conspicuously, guy\u2019s got zero goals. Among forwards with zero actual goals, only one guy has more individual expected goals: Buffalo\u2019s Peyton Krebs. Trevor van Riemsdyk is having his worst season as a Cap, getting outscored 14 to 11. I don\u2019t think it would look quite as bad if the Caps were shooting better than 7.8 percent while he\u2019s on the ice \u2013 that\u2019s the worst among defenders and barely better than Dowd-Duhaime numbers. Yeah, he\u2019s still got it. \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\ud83d\udcca<\/p>\n This story would not be possible without<\/p>\n Please consider joining us in supporting them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\ud83d\udcf8: Alan Dobbins\/RMNB This is what Chris Cerullo of RMNB fame said following the Washington Capitals\u2019 loss to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":368917,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-368916","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-nhl","9":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=368916"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368916\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/368917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=368916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=368916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=368916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nTOI
\nSA%
\nxGF%
\nGF%
\nPDO<\/p>\n
\n307
\n58.9
\n59.1
\n54.3
\n0.99<\/p>\n
\n485
\n57.1
\n57.9
\n66.9
\n1.03<\/p>\n
\n191
\n56.1
\n55.0
\n57.7
\n1.01<\/p>\n
\n271
\n50.5
\n54.8
\n58.9
\n1.04<\/p>\n
\n545
\n56.2
\n54.2
\n64.8
\n1.03<\/p>\n
\n482
\n51.6
\n54.1
\n66.6
\n1.07<\/p>\n
\n465
\n55.1
\n53.9
\n59.8
\n1.01<\/p>\n
\n501
\n52.5
\n53.2
\n51.8
\n1.00<\/p>\n
\n469
\n52.0
\n52.0
\n61.0
\n1.06<\/p>\n
\n455
\n50.9
\n50.2
\n53.0
\n1.02<\/p>\n
\n373
\n47.5
\n49.9
\n42.6
\n0.99<\/p>\n
\n344
\n49.3
\n49.4
\n68.7
\n1.05<\/p>\n
\n347
\n50.4
\n48.8
\n45.2
\n0.98<\/p>\n
\nTOI
\nSA%
\nxGF%
\nGF%
\nPDO<\/p>\n
\n682
\n55.6
\n55.4
\n70.0
\n1.06<\/p>\n
\n650
\n53.1
\n54.9
\n62.7
\n1.02<\/p>\n
\n583
\n53.1
\n54.6
\n56.9
\n1.00<\/p>\n
\n534
\n57.3
\n54.0
\n57.5
\n1.00<\/p>\n
\n389
\n47.3
\n50.9
\n44.7
\n1.00<\/p>\n
\n489
\n49.8
\n49.9
\n55.6
\n1.03<\/p>\n
\n205
\n48.8
\n44.1
\n51.1
\n1.01<\/p>\n
\nTime on ice in minutes. Only five-on-five play is included here.
\nSA%
\nShot-attempt percentage. The share of total shots attempted by Washington while the skater is on the ice during five-on-five play. 50 percent means even; higher is better.
\nxGF%
\nExpected-goals percentage. The share of expected goals generated by Washington while the skateris on the ice during five-on-five play. Expected goals weighs how likely to become a goal each attempted shot is. 50 percent means even; higher is better.
\nGF%
\nGoals-for percentage. The share of total goals scored by Washington when the skater is on the ice during five-on-five play. 50 percent means even; higher is better.
\nPDO
\nThe sum of Washington\u2019s shooting percentage and saving percentage when the skater is on the ice during five-on-five play. One means league average. The acronym doesn\u2019t stand for anything, and yes, I hate it.<\/p>\n
\nI thought the team was cooked when Pierre-Luc Dubois suffered a lower-body injury on Halloween<\/a>. PLD was a major driver of the team\u2019s success last season; I worried without him the Caps would stumble. Wilson and Protas in particular I suspected were dependent on Dubois for offense. For the first time ever, I was wrong. The team ranks sixth in five-on-five shot attempts (SA%) with 53.0 and the same in expected goals (xGF%) with 53.2. Like the 1994 action-thriller Speed, there are multiple drivers on this bus, but it\u2019s starting to veer.<\/p>\n![\"WSH](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/caps-5v5-possession.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\nMid-snapshot editorializing: a Caps team with a just-okay power play and the five-on-five profile they had during October and November would be just outside what we\u2019d call a cup contender.
\nI\u2019m not convinced whether it\u2019s because of a general decline in possession play or just a fun complement to it, but goal-scoring has dropped as well. Ovechkin, Strome, and Wilson have cooled this month. Connor McMichael too, but I\u2019m not sure I\u2019d ever considered him warm. Hendrix Lapierre should be used as a refrigerant in the twenty data centers they\u2019re gonna build in my town next year.<\/p>\n
\nOct
\nNov
\nDec<\/p>\n
\n0.91
\n1.83
\n0.43<\/p>\n
\n1.12
\n0.83
\n0.38<\/p>\n
\n0.42
\n1.13
\n0.41<\/p>\n
\n1.60
\n0.53
\n1.43<\/p>\n
\n0.82
\n1.18
\n0.44<\/p>\n
\n\u2013
\n0.95
\n0.44<\/p>\n
\n\u2013
\n1.09
\n1.40<\/p>\n
\n0.96
\n0.68
\n2.72<\/p>\n
\n\u2013
\n0.00
\n\u2013<\/p>\n
\n0.47
\n0.63
\n\u2013<\/p>\n
\n0.45
\n\u2013
\n0.51<\/p>\n
\n\u2013
\n1.18
\n\u2013<\/p>\n
\n(Now imagine me saying all the same stuff about Sonny Milano too, except I\u2019m also praising his puck skills and there\u2019s probably a hair joke in there too.)
\nThe MVP of the Caps is a no-brainer: Jakob Chychrun. He delivers play to the attacking zone, he delivers goals, he delivers pageviews<\/a>. He\u2019s tops of the defender stack ranking in goals both actual and expected. The Caps have outscored opponents 41 to 17 during his five-on-five shifts. Only four skaters have a better on-ice goal differential, and they all play for Colorado.
\nNic Dowd\u2018s play is changing. He is pulling up last among forwards in shot share (50.4 percent of attempts, 48.8 percent of expected goals), and according to Evolving Hockey\u2019s WAR stat<\/a> he\u2019s trending to be a negative-impact player for the first time in his time in DC. He\u2019s still dramatically defensively deployed, but no longer the league\u2019s most extreme \u2013 that honor belongs to Pittsburgh\u2019s fourth line. It must suck to be them right now.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/nic-dowd-zone-starts.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\nThere\u2019s a thing called a warrant canary<\/a> that libraries can do, hypothetically. Because they\u2019d be legally prohibited from announcing, \u201chey, we\u2019ve been raided by the government and they\u2019ve gone through our records, so watch yourself,\u201d instead they would post a message before anything went down, saying something like, \u201cThe FBI has not been here.\u201d And you just have to watch out for when the sign goes away. Meanwhile: \u201cAlex Ovechkin has not started a shift in the defensive zone.\u201d
\nTime for the irregularly scheduled ritual where I see if Ovechkin is attempting twenty shots per hour.<\/p>\n
\nMerry Christmas! I will honor it in my heart and try to keep it all the year.<\/p>\n