Asset Management

The Washington Post's self described "stats geek," Neil Greenberg, writes that the Caps could get more goals out of their top scorers by putting them on the ice every time there's a faceoff in the offensive zone. With graphs, numbers and a link to Wikipedia, Greenberg builds a strong and convincing statistical case for a basic, accepted, long-standing fact of NHL life.

What he leaves out of the picture is that with Ovechkin, Backstrom, Semin and Green starting plays in all zones of the ice, the Capitals won the 2010 President's Trophy, which is given to the team with the best record throughout the NHL's 82 game regular season and then, with the young guns taking even fewer offensive zone draws, the Caps won a second consecutive Eastern Conference title, guaranteeing them home ice advantage again through the first three rounds of the playoffs.

The Capitals don't really need Greenberg's help to succeed in the regular season. They need help surviving in the playoffs. A more useful study would be about how many regular season minutes a player can play before having a great playoff year. As much as playoff success is about having good players play well, it's also about finding a breakout performance from a role player (cough, Druce, cough), or adding a veteran who has been sleeping on a bad team's third line (cough, Fedorov, cough). Sometimes the guys who are well rested throughout the season can do more in the spring than those who have been working hard all year.

While giving Ovechkin, Semin, Green and Backstrom a lot of offensive zone starts all season might help them get more points, it can't functionally help them get more wins, because the Caps already have the most wins in the East, two years running. They don't need any more regular season wins. They're all stocked up.

Actually, as far as keeping the Caps competitive for several seasons, giving Green and Semin an easy pass to a significant increase in goals and assists would be a terrible catastrophe, as each one is due to negotiate a new contract in the summer of 2012, and the Caps would be hard-pressed to afford both, if each scores as much as they are capable of in a season of all offensive-zone starts.

An interesting statistical analysis of last season's offensive zone starts would be how many Boudreau gave to Dave Steckel and Tomas Fleischmann to build up their statistical reputations before McPhee was able to trade the two journeymen for Jason Arnott and Scott Hannan. I have championed Fleischmann for years, but those were some solid trades from a standpoint of helping the Caps compete in the 2011 playoffs. If Green, Poti and Wideman had been helathy, Hannan could have been stellar in normal minutes. Arnott didn't play like four million dollars, but the St. Louis Blues agree he played like 2.5--certainly more than anyone would offer Steckel.

This year, let's see the Caps give a couple offensive starts to Brooks Laich, Ovechkin and Backstrom as rewards for signing on long-term. Let's see them give lots of offensive starts to Mathieu Perrault, Marcus Johansson and Mattias Sjogren, because they don't have the experience to take defensive starts in the NHL. Let's see them give a boatload to Jeff Halpern to celebrate a great NHL career by one of Washington's own.

The Capitals have already publicly acknowledged that they have achieved all they can in the regular season with their current talent. Why on earth would they start obsessing over how many regular season goals they can score this year. If anything, Semin, Ovechkin, Green and Backstrom need to start more shifts in the defensive zone this season so that in the playoffs, when the game is on the line, with twenty seconds left, down by one, and a draw in front of Vokoun, they know what to do to win.

The cakewalk is over. Ovechkin and Backstrom are already stars. They don't need to parade around, showing off their talent. They need to learn how to convert their talent into a Stanley Cup.

Statistics are a great means of understanding how one action will correlate with another. They cannot help you however, if you do not know what outcome is desirable.

Brouwer Signed--Two years, Some Money

According to CBS and CapGeek, Troy Brouwer signed a two year, 4.7 million dollar contract with the Capitals. According to Fox Sports, he has signed to play the same two years, but earn a total of 5.7 million.

As with politics, so with sports...

The Caps only confirm that the contract is for two years.

Cap Geek writes that it will put the Capitals $1.8 million dollars over the salary cap. Teams are allowed to exceed the cap by up to 10% during the summer, and often do. Then they end up trading away the player of their choice for the best draft pick they can get.

Back when the Caps were not very good, they gave the New Jersey Devils a third round pick for Jeff Friesen, who proceded to play a lot of boring, unimpressive hockey, while wearing Peter Bondra's old number.

Now that the Caps are good, they may have to make such a sacrifice. The trouble is that the Capitals don't have a whole lot of non-essential veterans on expensive contracts. Who would you give up on?

Really? Tom Poti? What, just because he's injured for the foreseeable future, and the Caps did the same when Brian Pothier was injured indefinitely? Huh. No kidding. It certainly sounds like a possibility. But wouldn't they be just as happy to keep Poti on injured reserve so that his contract doesn't count against the cap until the playoffs start, like they did with Mike Green after last year's concussion, and briefly with Pothier as well? Yes, that certainly seems like a possibility, too.

Of course if the Caps count, say, Roman Hamrlik as Tom Poti's injury replacement until April, then Hammer's contract will only hit the cap for the amount that it exceeds Poti's deal. Since each player is inked at $3.5 million per season, the numbers should work out fairly nicely. Chances are that someone else will be injured before Poti gets better, so there might be a way to keep both veteran defensemen in town, but if Poti suddenly undergoes a miraculous recovery and won't sit out until the playoffs, the Caps are sure to find someone to trade for the veteran leader.

So, for now there is no cap crisis in this town. However, Karl Alzner is still a restricted free agent, and the Caps only have about two million dollars to sign the former captain of Canada's junior team. Mike Green may still have lingering concussion issues from the head injuries that kept him out of half of last year's regular season. If Green sits, the Caps are free to call anybody up to Alex Ovechkin his injury replacement, erasing Green's cap hit from the books until he returns. Green is set to earn $5.5 million this year, so in half a season of working out and clearing his head, he could give the Caps $2.75 million in salary cap room.

Alzner is good, but he isn't $4.5 million a year good. $3, maybe, but not close to $4. That means that, if the Caps are prepared to start the season with a defense of Alzner, Carlson, Wideman, Hamrlik, Schultz and Erskine, they may still have one million in cap room to pick up any free agent who expresses a strong enough interest in playing in the nation's capital.

Brendan Morrison and Scott Hannan, I know this doesn't look too appealing, economically, but from a hockey perspective, you have to admit you could do a lot worse. The economics start to work out next summer...