No Finish, No Win: A Capitals-Red Wings Statistical Review
An in-depth look at the Red Wings’ 2-1 loss to the Washington Capitals on Tuesday, featuring notes on Caps goalie Charlie Lindgren, Detroit's control of this game, and who won key matchups.
Mandatory Credit: Rick Osentoski-USA TODAY Sports - No Finish, No Win: A Capitals-Red Wings Statistical ReviewMost nights, a 43-shot effort is enough to win a game. Tuesday night against Washington, the Red Wings just needed more.
They needed more traffic down low; they needed a couple more timely saves from goaltender Alex Lyon; most of all, they just needed a win. They didn’t get it. Capitals goaltender Charlie Lindgren made save after clutch save to fleece Detroit, and with it he gave his team a leg up in the playoff race.
So how exactly did Detroit lose this game? Let’s look at what went wrong and right:
The Big Picture
Looking at expected goals doesn’t really say anything that the shot counter can’t tell you in this game. The Red Wings led 3.19-1.72 according to Moneypuck. Those attempts tracked included two high-danger and 10 medium-danger threats, the best of which was a J.T. Compher rebound try late in the first period. Instead of converting, Detroit watched Lindgren absorb most of these chances, and the ones he didn’t — until a last-second Patrick Kane goal broke the shutout — wound up missing the net.
The Red Wings’ lack of conversion might have stemmed from a lack of bodies down low, where multiple rebounds trickled away from Lindgren but didn’t find a Detroit stick. Lindgren gave up 2.789 expected rebound shots, but only Compher’s ended up hitting the net. Looking at the heat map of shot attempts, we can see a whole lot of chances down low, right where you’d expect someone to cash in earlier in the game. Instead, the Red Wings turned their heads skyward as shot after shot missed the mark.
There were a lot of opportunities for such a reaction. They took 67 shot attempts with a 54.92% Corsi. Detroit was in charge of this game for the better part of the game, but it didn’t get the payoff.
Washington, meanwhile, found a way to weasel out some goals late in the second period. After the Red Wings had firmly controlled the first 15 minutes, the Capitals strung together some chances including a long offensive-zone possession that led to Dylan Strome’s opening goal at 17:47.
Individual Impacts
The Capitals can thank — no, should thank — Lindgren for this win. He stopped 2.19 goals above expected, stopping the most shots (42) in his career since he made 44 stops on 49 shots for the Blues back in 2019. This might stand as one of the best performances of his career, and it came at a crucial time when playoff hopes hung in the balance of this game. He would’ve pitched a shutout had Kane not buried a shot with 1.1 seconds on the clock, but the last-second lapse didn’t make the performance feel any less spectacular.
The Red Wings certainly tried to break him. The top line of David Perron, Dylan Larkin and Lucas Raymond generated 24 5-on-5 shot attempts and 0.78 expected goals per Moneypuck. Perron and Raymond were out for Alex Ovechkin’s game-winning goal late in the second period, caused by an errant Perron pass to defenseman Moritz Seider. For the most part, though, this line got all the looks it could ask for and just could not finish them.
The second and third lines also earned around a dozen shot attempts each, but they also gave up a lot of attempts the other way. It was that second line that got scored on by Strome on a shift extended by a Patrick Kane turnover trying to pass out of the defensive zone. For a larger span of the night, this line faced the Capitals’ third line of Max Pacioretty, Hendrix Lapierre and Sonny Milano, and it got diced up. This line never scored, but it set the table for Strome to convert on that long shift. Of the Capitals’ four main line combinations, this was the only one to get a positive expected goals share at 57.7%; the other three fell in the 30s.
Against those attempts, goaltender Alex Lyon turned in an alright night, but it wasn’t in line with some of his spectacular play of late. He finished with a save percentage north of .900, but his goals saved above expected fell at -0.28. He faced 30 low-danger attempts compared to five combined medium- and high-danger attempts, a credit to the defense in front of him for tamping down the shot danger.
This is the statistically informed way of saying Detroit could’ve used some better play from Lyon, but his performance wasn’t damning, either. It was just average for a starter, and Lindgren’s performance at the other end was extraordinary.
On the blue line, all of Detroit’s pairings finished the night with a positive expected goals percentage, the lowest of which was Simon Edvinsson and Jeff Petry’s 52.3% share. Even Ben Chiarot and Moritz Seider — who faced the Capitals’ top line with Alex Ovechkin most of the night — finished with a positive xG% and Corsi %. Again, this is a game that Detroit controlled. But Lindgren made up the difference with superb goaltending.
As frustrating as this reality is, the Red Wings should take a performance like this most nights — maybe not the lack of finishing, but the overall effort. They played well enough to win most games, and the underlying numbers are rather favorable despite the loss.
However, the fact that they lost this game stings even more given their control of it, as does slipping control on their playoff destiny.
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