If you look at the list of teams that had the best possession numbers in the NHL this season, you won't find the Washington Capitals near the top.
In 5-on-5 Corsi percentage, the metric which counts how many shot attempts a team has vs. how many it allows, the Capitals ranked 24th at 48 percent.
Even more stunning, when you factor in the Capitals' high-danger Corsi percentage (their shot attempts from the area around the net), the Capitals ranked last at 45 percent.
But there they were celebrating, marching (and drinking) around Washington D.C. on Tuesday to celebrate the franchise's first Stanley Cup.
Did the Capitals just eschew analytics altogether, and is their triumph a repudiation of the advanced hockey statistics that exist? Not exactly. The Capitals just took a more refined approach to shot making.
The traditional thinking with Corsi statistics says the more shot attempts you have, the longer you have the puck and the more likely you are to score.
The Capitals didn't buy that logic and instead their focus on offense was not about getting a volume of shot attempts but instead trying to work to get higher-quality attempts. To do that, the Capitals wanted to get the goalie moving.
"Any goalie will tell you, if a goalie has to move two feet, then his save percentage is going to be pretty good. If he has to move four, it's going to go down," Capitals coach Barry Trotz told the Washington Post.
