Edmonton at Washington: The Ovechkin Minutes

For most of last night’s game, Capitals coach Bruce Boudreau ran out the following forward combinations:

Ovechkin – Backstrom – Semin

Fleischmann – Nylander – Bradley

Laich – Fedorov – Kozlov

Brashear – Steckel – Clark

Now, those aren’t bad second, third or fourth lines, but clearly the most dangerous weapon on this team is Alexander Ovechkin, while Nicklas Backstrom (45 points in 44 games) and Alexander Semin (37 points in 26 games) are also incredibly gifted offensive players. While this is small-sample stuff, I thought it might be interesting to review Ovechkin’s ice-time and show who he played against the most:

Sam Gagner – 7.2 minutes

Shawn Horcoff – 6.6 minutes

Erik Cole – 6.4 minutes

Ryan Potulny – 4.6 minutes

Liam Reddox – 3.9 minutes

Ethan Moreau – 3.5 minutes

Gilbert Brule – 2.8 minutes

Dustin Penner – 2.5 minutes

Kyle Brodziak – 2.2 minutes

Marc Pouliot – 2.0 minutes

Andrew Cogliano – 1.8 minutes

Steve MacIntyre – 0.4 minutes

Sheldon Souray – 6.8 minutes

Tom Gilbert – 6.5 minutes

Denis Grebeshkov – 4.4 minutes

Steve Staios – 4.3 minutes

Lubomir Visnovsky – 3.8 minutes

Ladislav Smid – 3.4 minutes

The ice-times above are automatically recorded by the Head to Head Ice Time function from timeonice.com, which takes them from the official NHL play-by-play charts. The other very cool feature of this website is the Shift Chart feature. To look at last night’s game, just enter the official NHL game number (20634) and every player’s shifts will come up, allowing an incredibly accurate game summary and the best possible look we have at what exactly the coaches were doing. It gives us context.

For example, we know that Shawn Horcoff’s line was the preferred match for MacTavish at even-strength; the vast majority of the time the Oilers made a shift change as Ovechkin came on to the ice, Horcoff came on for the Oilers. It would also appear that Boudreau didn’t mind this match-up; every so often Ovechkin came on to the ice after Horcoff was already on.

Still, Boudreau’s preferred match-up was Ovechkin against Sam Gagner’s line; and given that this was a road game, Boudreau got his way more often than not. Cole and Potulny were Gagner’s regular linemates, so they saw quite a bit of Ovechkin, while Reddox and to a much lesser extent Penner did the same as Horcoff’s linemates. In the defensive zone, quite often MacTavish would send out Sam Gagner and Shawn Horcoff together; that’s the biggest reason the two are ahead of their linemates by such a degree. Ethan Moreau would also get subbed in from time to time, and especially as penalty-kills expired.

The match-up that Craig MacTavish avoided with complete determination was the Cogliano – Moreau – Pouliot line against Ovechkin. This may have been an in-game adjustment; on their first shift MacTavish sent them out against Ovechkin’s line, and they didn’t look so good. After that, MacTavish generally sent them out as Ovechkin was approaching the end of his shift –- the safest possible time.