Putting the Offense in Defense

(photo: Washington Post)

The Washington Capitals are the top-scoring team in the league heading into tonight’s play, averaging 3.56 goals-per-game, a pace (292 goals) that would put them 30-goals ahead of the second-place San Jose Sharks (262) by season’s end.

But there is a significant (we hesitate to say “important,” give that the Caps have the second highest standings point total in the league) difference between the Caps and the Sharks and, by extension, the Caps and the rest of the league.

The difference is that whereas the Sharks get considerable contributions on offense from their defense, the Caps do not, especially once you get past Mike Green. Here are the NHL clubs’ defense corps (all who have dressed as defensemen) and their total points for the year, ranked by points:

Those Sharks are up there in the points rankings (notably, so are the Penguins and Blackhawks – two other teams the Caps might face down the road), but there the Caps sit in 14th place in scoring by defensemen. It doesn’t really get better looking at goal contributions. The Caps rank in the bottom third in the league in goals scored by defensemen, and considering that Mike Green has half of those, it points to a lack of contribution by the blue line…



It does get better for the Caps in terms of helpers, though. But even here, while the Caps are ranked tied for ninth in assists by defensemen, it seems a low product for the highest overall scoring team in the NHL (and there are those Sharks, Penguins, and Blackhawks near the top of that list again)…



You could reason all this away if you could demonstrate that the Caps’ defensemen get a lot of shots on net that others can pounce on for rebound scores. But here, too, the Caps rank in the middle of the pack. The odd thing, though is that a team like Pittsburgh has a comparable number of shots, but has more points contributions from its defense…



Finally, if you drill into the individual numbers to see how balanced – or imbalanced – defenseman scoring might be, you see an expected result. Mike Green accounts for a larger share of points by defensemen for his team than the high scorer among blueliners for any other club…



Yes, Mike Green is the highest scoring defenseman in the league, but the other side of that coin is that Green is the only Capital defenseman in double digits in points. When the Caps take the ice tonight in Vancouver, the second leading scorer among defensemen will be Jeff Schultz (1-6-7 in 27 games).

Have injuries contributed to that result? Yes; the Caps have dressed ten defensemen this year (not including the odd turn Brooks Laich might have taken on the blue line), and Green is the only Caps defenseman to have played in at least 30 games. On the other hand, Pittsburgh has dressed 12 defensemen this year, and only two of them have played in at least 30 games.

On a team as talented and productive at the offensive end as the Capitals, this could be fairly seen as nit-picking, but the margins between winning and losing in the regular season are much larger than in the playoffs, when the slightest differences can be exploited. On a team where the defense – save for one outsized talent – doesn’t make much of an offensive contribution, and on a team that relies on offense to boot, will the Caps be an easier team to defend for the more talented teams they will face in the playoffs?