Every silver lining has a raincloud: Snapshot

When we last met for the snapshot, the Washington Capitals’ chances of making the playoffs were more than 60 percentage points lower than it is now. At that time, I recommended the Caps trade every player not nailed down to put their inevitable rebuild into turbo mode.

They went in a different direction. It worked! The Caps went 9-5-1 in March, the tenth best record in the NHL, and they clawed their way to third place in the Metropolitan Division. In every aspect but the macro one, this is a tremendous success. They’re playing meaningful games and winning them, many of them against daunting opponents. It’s been a ton of fun. They’re probably going to make the playoffs, which will be exciting and a fundamental marker of success for any team.

But making it deep in those playoffs seems unlikely. Looking below the win-loss record, the Caps are still weak. We’ll have fun in the meantime, but a rebuild is still inevitable, and it’ll take a bit longer now.

The Caps ranked 10th in standings-points percentage in March, but they ranked 30th in controlling shot attempts. They got outscored 32 to 29 during five-on-five. They had slightly better than average goaltending, by about four goals and almost all of them on the penalty kill. They won based on special teams, especially a power play that converted 30 percent of its opportunities, and timeliness of goals, which is not historically a repeatable skill.

I am trying to be polite here, and I’m failing. Everything except the standings is screaming that the Caps are a bad team. That of course invites skepticism of the “everything,” plus rationalizations for Washington’s unlikely success. Gamers would call that copium.

I’m not rooting against the Caps, even if I have one personal reason to do so. I’m having fun with these wins, as I document in every recap. But in this column I put on my Serious Hat and say the Caps are delaying lasting improvements so they can squeak into the playoffs only to get run over in the first round.

I promise that’s the most negative I’ll be for the rest of of this story and the rest the season. Let’s do the snapshot. The tables below show the team’s performance when each player is on the ice during five-on-five play. I’ve highlighted stats of note, and we’ll discuss those below.

Forwards

Defenders