Yost: Changing times for Capitals, Red Wings

At the dawn of the emergence of analytics in the National Hockey League, two franchises – the Detroit Red Wings and Washington Capitals – had cornered the market of puck possession dominance. While the success of those Capitals teams were something of a mixed bag come playoff time, the Red Wings were able to parlay their five-on-five dominance into two Stanley Cup appearances, and one victory in 2007-2008.

Both, of course, were machines during the regular season during their peak years. And they shared one commonality: an ability to push tempo with Blitzkrieg-like efficiency, sending shot-attempt after shot-attempt in the direction of opposition goaltenders. Detroit did it with a never-ending supply of top-six forwards and the indomitable Nicklas Lidstrom on the back-end; Washington leaned on an in-his-prime Alex Ovechkin and Mike Green, though Nicklas Backstrom, Viktor Kozlov, and Alex Semin were no slouches in their own right.

The thing about both of these organizations, though, is that time hasn’t been kind. Teams around them have improved. Their core group has aged out of the league, or aged out of their prime, or have been shuffled to other teams in an assortment of deals. And, it’s had a demonstrable effect on their offensive output.

Take, for one example, the below table. It shows the successes of each team and their ability to generate five-on-five shot-attempts, per sixty minutes.

That is a significant loss of goal-scoring opportunities for both teams. Of course, we can replicate this table to illustrate just that – the drop-off in goal-scoring the teams have experienced over the years, almost certainly the result of fewer chances attacking the net. 

Goal scoring is a bit of a noisy event, but I think the trend for both teams is as clear as it is in the original table. There’s less to go around these days, and it’s largely because both teams are spending less time in the attacking third. In the last two years, we have seen both Detroit (2012-2013) and Washington (2013-2014) finish near the bottom of the entire league. This, of course, felt unfathomable a few years ago.

With Detroit, the problems seem to be tied up moreso in the aging process of the core group. Of the regular skaters from Detroit’s 2007-2008 Stanley Cup winning team, only five players exist on the current roster: 36-year-old Pavel Datsyuk, 33-year-old Henrik Zetterberg, 34-year-old Johan Franzen, 35-year-old Dan Cleary, and 33-year-old Niklas Kronwall are active. Detroit’s done a considerably impressive job getting some of their younger talent competing at the NHL level.

Ultimately, it’s been impressive that Mike Babcock’s been able to get the right side of the shot-share with older rosters over the past few years despite the slowing attack. It’s one of the biggest reasons why he’s going to be perhaps the most desirable asset on the free market come next summer, his contract set to expire at the end of this season. 

On the Washington side, the argument has been routinely made that the organization was too quick to pull the trigger on Bruce Boudreau’s release. Boudreau’s now flourishing with his up-tempo, heavy-forecheck style in Anaheim; Washington’s juggled through an assortment of coaches since his exodus, none of whom have been able to capture his magic with the current roster.

Can Mike Babcock and the newly-appointed Barry Trotz recapture the magic of yesteryear? It seems implausible considering the team’s current trends, but to each organization’s credit, they have been aggressive at restocking the cupboards.

Detroit’s made a concerted effort to get young players like Gustav Nyquist and Tomas Tatar into bigger roles. Washington’s expecting big seasons from their youngsters, too – Andre Burakovsky and Evgeni Kuznetsov both made the team out of camp, and could help turn things around on the offensive end of the rink.