After watching quite a few Caps games from the press box this season, Alex Alexeyev was inserted back into the lineup on March 1st against the Anaheim Ducks after both Dmitry Orlov and Erik Gustafsson were traded leading up to the trade deadline. The newly acquired defenseman Rasmus Sandin couldn’t play against the Ducks due to visa and immigration issues.
Alexeyev was heavily utilized against the Ducks, skating for a total of 25:07 of time on ice, nearly seven minutes more than his season high of 19:19 on January 5th against the Columbus Blue Jackets. Since the March 1st game against the Ducks, Alexeyev has skated 23:07 against the San Jose Sharks and 20:39 against the Los Angeles Kings.
With those increased deployments, it bodes well to take a first look at how Alexeyev has performed in the 15 contests in which he has appeared. The statistics used in this post are courtesy of Natural Stat Trick, Evolving Hockey, and HockeyViz. If you’d like to learn more about the statistical terms used in this post, please check out our NHL Analytics Glossary.
Five-on-five on-ice performance
First up, let’s take a look at how Alexeyev has performed in key performance metrics that measure how well the Capitals have controlled the possession and scoring chances when Alexeyev’s on the ice:
Overall, Alexeyev has struggled in each key performance metric outside of high-danger goals for percentage (HDGF%). This looks rather bad on the surface, but there’s some context to add here in how Alexeyev has been utilized on the ice.The vast majority of Alexeyev’s shift starts are “on the fly”, meaning that his shifts started without a face-off. This is rather normal, but the low frequency of starting a shift where a face-off occurred in the offensive zone means that Head Coach Peter Laviolette isn’t sheltering Alexeyev at all.
Here’s Alexeyev’s shift starts when he’s on the ice for the face-off:
Laviolette is deploying Alexeyev in the defensive zone twice as often as in the offensive zone. This backs up the fact that Alexeyev isn’t being sheltered at all as a rookie defenseman.
Based on how Laviolette has deployed Martin Fehervary in his rookie season (58.36 offensive zone start percentage and 57.14 offensive zone face-off percentage) and Vinny Iorio currently (62.5 offensive zone start percentage and 54.55 offensive zone face-off percentage), we can surmise a couple reasons this is the case.
One, the front office wants to throw Alexeyev into the fire and see how he performs, mainly to judge whether or not they need to acquire another defenseman in the off-season. The other would be that they feel Alexeyev is better defensively than Fehervary was in his rookie season and can be trusted a bit more than Iorio currently.
Rate-Adjusted Plus-Minus
We’ve seen the on-ice metrics for possession and chance generation. Now let’s see how Alexeyev has performed in per sixty minute rates for those metrics in comparison to the league using Rate-Adjusted Plus Minus (RAPM):
It’s no surprise to see Alexeyev’s expected goals for per sixty (xGF/60) or Corsi shot attempts for per sixty (CF/60) fall well below the replacement level of zero here. The interesting piece is that Alexeyev has actually fared rather well in expected goals against per sixty (xGA/60). This lends credence to the fact that Alexeyev is a bit further along defensively than he is offensively.
To add a bit more evidence to that, here’s Alexeyev’s isolated impact chart from HockeyViz:
Alexeyev isn’t exactly setting the world on fire defensively for the Capitals, but he’s still quite a bit ahead in xGA/60 than he is in xGF/60 during even-strength opportunities. He still needs to develop quite a bit more on both ends of the ice, but it’s certainly not a bad thing to have a defensively focused defenseman on this squad.
Alexeyev’s Goals Above Replacement (GAR) value
Speaking of being a bit further along in defensive capability, here’s how Alexeyev’s player value looks using GAR, a metric that allows us to evaluate and value a player’s overall value on the ice in a myriad of situations:
Nearly 90% of Alexeyev’s total GAR of 1.9 is made up of his defensive value. The interesting piece here is that even with the struggles in the on-ice metrics, Alexeyev is still just ever so slightly above replacement level offensively.
Alexeyev is actually generating GAR value at a rather high rate when looking at his GAR per sixty minutes of play (GAR/60). Alexeyev’s GAR/60 of .49 is the second highest among defensemen who have played for the Capitals this season, only trailing Erik Gustafsson’s .606. The next highest defenseman in GAR/60 still on the roster is Trevor van Riemsdyk at .381.
So, although Alexeyev has had rather meager results in on-ice performance, he’s still above a replacement level player. This means he’s rightfully supposed to be an NHL player at this point.
If you extrapolate Alexeyev’s current GAR value and ice time proportionally to the amount of ice time van Riemsdyk has skated this season, Alexeyev would be worth about 9.91 GAR. That would have made him have the highest GAR among defensemen still with the team (he would be trailing Gustafsson, who has 12.5 GAR this season).
Alexeyev’s Future
As I alluded to earlier in the post, it seems like Alexeyev is getting thrown into the fire a bit after being a healthy scratch for nearly a month between his last appearance and the March 1st tilt against the Ducks. Part of that is just the state of the roster after the trade deadline, and the other seems like an effort to evaluate where Alexeyev’s game is currently.
That evaluation is going to be key for General Manager Brian MacLellan, who will need to decide if the Caps should acquire another defenseman this off-season. Alexeyev has solid upside, but has posted some meager results over his 15 game showing so far this season.
If Alexeyev continues to get chances to play every night the rest of the season and shows improvement, it would likely benefit the Caps more to focus their attention on finding another scorer for the forward group, since that’s an area of immediate need for success next season and beyond.
By Justin Trudel