What’s behind Alex Ovechkin’s scoring decline? Cutting off his offensive drop-off

Fifteen goals. That’s all Alex Ovechkin is on track to finish the 2023-2024 season at this pace.

Ovechkin has never finished a season with a paltry fifteen goals. He has never dropped below the 20-goal mark, even in short seasons. And now he has gone thirteen games in a row without a goal for the first time in his career. The five goals he has scored so far aren’t even that impressive; only three were scored with a goalkeeper in the net.

Even if the 38-year-old Ovechkin is still far from his prime, this is a stark, unexpected decline for one of the greatest goal scorers of all time. What’s behind the aging superstar’s decline? Is this harsh reality the new normal? Is there a chance he can turn it around in the second half of the season?

The elephant in the room is his age. Not every player makes it to 38th in the NHL, and if they do, they are often a shadow of their former selves at this point in their careers. Aging curves – described in the work by Luke and Josh Younggren of Evolving Hockey or Cam Laurens, now of the Columbus Blue Jackets – support that. These curves tell us that a player tends to peak in his early twenties and begin to decline in his thirties, with a sharp decline in his late thirties. It’s worth noting that the group of skaters still playing into their late 30s is clearly a lot smaller to work with.

There can be outliers and randomness in the aging curves, and that usually revolves around top talent. Their peak is usually so high that their final trend down can still be above average. That, combined with the fact that power play scoring tends to age better than even production (as now Carolina Hurricanes assistant GM Eric Tulsky points out) should theoretically work in Ovechkin’s favor. So does the fact that volume shooters tend to age better than snipers (e.g from Tulsky and Ryan Stimson’s work both pointed this out). It just wasn’t the case this season.

The power play aspect is particularly glaring, as that’s where Ovechkin tends to do a lot of his damage. On average, about 37 percent of his goals per season came from power play. At best, power play scoring makes up 50 percent of his goal totals. This year, with just one count on the power play, it accounts for a career-low 20 percent of his scores. That’s a drop of more than 10 percent from each of the past two seasons.

Ovechkin has had terrible shooting luck this year, connecting on just 2.6 percent of his shots on the power play while shooting closer to 15 percent overall. That should dropping closer to average and leading to more goals, especially since his shot rate isn’t much lower than last year, when he scored 14 power-play goals. The quality of his shots is even better than last year, with an individual expected goals rate of 2.3 per 60. Based on the quality of his shots, not to mention the shooting talent he has, he is expected to be closer to five goals will come. about the power game.

Via HockeyViz

About 30 percent of the winger’s unblocked attempts missed the net, which is relatively low compared to recent years. But one difference is how many opponents block his shots. Just under 32 percent of his attempts have been blocked this season, which is pretty close to last season. On average (going back to 2007-08, due to data limitations), penalty killers only blocked about 27 percent of his shots.

In years past, penalty killers couldn’t afford to overcommit to Ovechkin, even though he was the team’s biggest threat on the power play. There was too much talent elsewhere on that top unit to keep up with. So the fact that there are now fewer options on the power play probably plays into why penalty killers are even more actively blocking Ovechkin’s shots.

That may also be why penalty killers feel like they can try to cheat more on Ovechkin, or even outright block his shooting lanes. Limiting his ability to get the puck neutralizes the team’s best power play shot. Even better for the opponent if he can gain possession and clear the zone. Forcing someone like Ovechkin, who plays 95 percent of the available power play time, to skate back can lead to fatigue during long shifts.

What also needs to be taken into account is the predictability of their power play formation. Of course, there have been adjustments this season: losing Nicklas Backstrom was one, shifting Evgeny Kuznetsov from the top unit and adding Tom Wilson was another. But a lack of fluid movement and too much stagnation in the formation hurt Washington. That includes the obvious strategy of feeding Ovechkin for his patented one-timer.

Slap shots aren’t used as often in today’s game because it’s quite easy for players to read the lineup, and in Ovechkin’s case that might mean waiting with his stick hanging in the air, ready to rip . With the right pass leading up to it, it can be one of the most difficult shots to stop. That movement before the shot is essential to the danger of a shot. It is difficult for a goalkeeper to react to a goalkeeper being set up by a lateral cross-seam pass. What makes his attempts less dangerous than in years past is where that setup pass often comes from. Whether he is deployed on the first or second unit, he is usually watched from the point by John Carlson or Rasmus Sandin.

Compare that to last year. Of Ovechkin’s 15 power-play goals last season, 11 were one-offs. While six were set up from centralized passes from the point, another five were set up via a lateral pass. So as dangerous as his one-timer is, those shots aren’t as deadly as they could be because of the setup pass. The game is evolving and even some of the best have to adapt.

The only power play goal Ovechkin did The scoring actually started this year with a cross-slot pass from Wilson. Although the first one-timer wasn’t the shot that beat Toronto’s Joseph Woll, the player’s movement in the sequence afterward led to a goal instead of clearing the play or the Capitals trying to repeat the same attempts.

The problem for Ovechkin is that his scoring problems extend beyond just the power play. He has scored just one five-on-five goal this season. Here the low shooting percentage is 1.85 percent, while his career average is around 11. But there are other concerning trends, including career lows (since 2007-08) in shot percentage and expected goals. A higher percentage of his shots missed the net compared to last year, and more were blocked by opponents.

In addition to the individual decline that can be anticipated at this point in his career, the team around him is affecting his start. It’s not unrealistic to think that someone of Ovechkin’s caliber will need more support at the age of 38 to reach his potential. Surrounding him with high caliber passers could be the key to maintaining his success as he is no longer at the heights of recent years. But according to Corey Sznadjer’s tracking, his main centers, Dylan Strome and even Evgeny Kuznetsov, have moved the puck less. Both players have seen downtices in their passing to determine their teammates’ shots and scoring chances, and there isn’t a playmaking winger who can skate over Ovechkin to make up for that on this roster. That could explain why his shot numbers and scoring chances are lower than last year in his isolated minutes with both Strome and Kuznetsov.

What does this mean for Ovechkin’s quest for the all-time goal scoring record?

Some areas of Ovechkin’s game should be closer to average. He may not shoot at five percent all year and could get closer to his career average of 12.8 if he can continue to fire the puck at a high rate. As it stands right now, he is the 10th most frequent shooter in the league in all situations. And he has the fourth-largest gap between his actual goal totals and his expectations, behind only Matthew Tkachuk, Josh Anderson and John Tavares. It all bodes well for a more productive journey ahead. Had he stayed on track with expectations to start the season, he would be looking at a 36-goal season, which would have been an ideal progression toward this next milestone. And that doesn’t even take into account the shooting talent he has clearly shown year after year, including last season.

But even as Ovechkin’s pace picks up, he has lost so much ground in the first third of the season. And there’s no guarantee it will reach the pace he needs to stay on track for the scoring record. The roster support just isn’t there to compensate for the individual decline, and endurance could be an issue down the road. He’s been less physical this season, which may save him from that wear and tear, and his average ice time in all situations has dropped to a career low of 18:22. But an 82-game slate is a grind for anyone, especially an aging star.

Aging is inevitable and no player, not even the greats like Ovechkin, is immune to it. The race for goal number 894 to equal the record is not yet lost, but a start so slow this season makes the next 67 goals all the more intimidating.

– Data collected prior to Sunday’s game against Carolina, via Evolving hockey, HockeyViz, Hockey reference, AllThreeZones And NaturalStatTrick. This story is based on shot-based statistics; here’s one primer on these figures.

(Photo: Ronald Martinez/Getty Images)