It is often said that plus/minus is not the most useful statistic for evaluating a player's defensive performance. This statement makes more sense in the last couple of years, now that the NHL keeps track of other defensive statistics, such as hits, shots blocked, time on ice, time in the defensive zone and other little indicators of how a player affected the progress of the puck away from his own net and into his opponent's.
Still, for a number of years plus/minus was hockey's only defensive statistic and it remains a decent judgement of a player's effectiveness. The stat is simple. Every time you are on the ice when your team scores a goal, you add one. Every time you are on the ice when your time gives up a goal, you take away one. Power play goals don't count, because they're measured by other statistics (although these are mostly team statistics, and some more individual statistics on special teams effectiveness could be very helpful in evaluating hockey players' performance).
Since plus minus measures both offense and defense in relation to each other, it isn't just a gauge of whether a player is playing effective defense. It is a gauge of whether the energy that player spends on defense is worth it. Coaches will often preach that if players work harder in their own end, they will spend more time with the puck and score more goals. This makes logical sense, so it is rarely questioned.
Under most of their seasons with Bruce Boudreau as coach, the Capitals were given some guidelines on defense, but few hard and fast rules. Mostly, they just had to go score goals. After a few years of that plan, the Capitals posted the four best plus/minus marks in the league in 2010. Alex Ovechkin, Jeff Schultz, Mike Green and Nicklas Backstrom topped the charts at +50, +45, +39 and +37. You have to look back to 2008 for anyone else to break forty, and '03 for someone to break fifty.
Last year the Capitals all focused on defense. They worked really hard at keeping opponents out of their own zone. They played in conservative positions, staying back behind opponents instead of rushing up the ice in front of them. What did it get them?
Well, they let in fewer goals, but they also scored a lot fewer. Ovechkin and Backstrom tied for the team lead in plus/minus, but this time their top mark was +24. The Caps fell from 1st in 2010 to 19th in 2011 in goals scored. At the same time they improved from 16th to 4th in goals against. So their offense went from the best to being worse than a few non-playoff teams, while their defense went from being worse than a few non-playoff teams to being just worse than Nashville's.
It is often said that defense wins championships, but it sure doesn't win regular season games. Nashville played better defense than the Caps and wound up eighth in the West. But from preseason to postseason each hockey game is won by the team that scores more goals than its opponent. That means that no matter how good you are at preventing your opponent form scoring goals, you also have to score a couple of your own.
That said, I would predict a resurgence in the Capitals' offensive and defensive fortunes this year, simply from the acquisition of Tomas Vokoun. Vokoun is the type of goalie who gives his team confidence. Who needs to play defense when the other team can's score on your goalie anyway?
With Vokoun in net and so much talent still up front, the Caps are bound to maintain close to their current defensive numbers and get back among the league leaders in goals scored. Whether they attribute their improvement to an offensive or defensive system, the difference is simply that they have better personel.
Last year, by putting an incredibly talented roster into a constant defensive formation, Boudreau managed to land novice goalie Semyon Varlamov among the league's top five in goals against average and save percentage. This led to a trade of Varlamov for next year's top pick from Colorado, who chose second overall this year. While a bird in hand is worth two in the bush, the Caps could be looking at a Chris Pronger or an Evgenei Malkin in the bush next year, and the trade also serendipitously led to Vokoun's arrival.
So their defensive play has earned them a high future draft pick and a better goalie for right now, which is good because it didn't get them much else. The whole point of switching to a defensive strategy was officially to perform better in the playoffs. Only six active NHL players have posted a season of +5 or better in the playoffs. None did it last year.
Of those six, Ovechkin and Tom Poti have each broken that incredibly modest barrier twice, but didn't make it under 2011's defensive system. Backstrom and Carlson each played big roles in the 2011 playoffs, but didn't put up big numbers defensively. The other two, Sergei Gonchar and Milan Jurcina, missed this year's playoffs with Ottawa and the New York Islanders, respectively.
The Caps 2011 leader in plus/minus, with a lame +4 was Jason Arnott. Arnott earned four million dollars last year in what was supposed to be a victory lap with the Devils, but performed well enough down the stretch with the Capitals to get a chance with the developing St. Louis Blues next year. Because he was only with the Caps for a few weeks before the playoffs, his performance is easier to credit to the defensive strategies he practiced in New Jersey than here.
In the playoffs, the Caps gave up the seventh-fewest goals per game at 2.67, but scored only the eleventh-most of the sixteen playoff teams at 2.56. The previous year they gave up a frustrating 2.86 goals per game, but scored an impressive 3.14. Rather than blaming the Caps system, the team's ownership and management logically looked at their club's overall inexperience and a run of injuries to defensemen.
Next year everybody they kept will be one year farther along their learning curves, but the addition of Roman Hamrlik on the blueline and Vokoun in net means that in the 2012 playoffs, the Capitals can count on veteran leadership to take care of defense, and their forwards can go back to focusing on scoring goals.
No comments:
Post a Comment