Washington Capitals: Should Backstrom Or Kuznetsov Center The Ovechkin Line

Center depth is one of the more important things to have if you want to be a serious Stanley Cup contender. If you have good depth at the center position and combine that with a good defense and goaltending you have all the ingredients necessary to win yourself a Cup.

The Washington Capitals easily have that depth at center. If both their top guys are playing to their potential you could easily argue that Washington has two top ten centermen as their top two centers in Nicklas Backstrom and Evgeny Kuznetsov. Combine that with Lars Eller who could probably be a second line center on a lot if not most teams and a strong fourth line centered by Nic Dowd.

We’re going to focus on the top two guys here today. With the top two guys you have a “competition” for the right to play with quite possibly the best goal scorer the league has ever seen. Who should have the edge to play with Alex Ovechkin?

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Do you stick Backstrom with him, pairing one of the best passers of his generation with one of the greatest scorers ever? Or do you stick Ovechkin with his countryman Kuznetsov? I’ve always been more interested in the Backstrom Ovechkin duo myself.

But, according to the numbers who is doing better with “The Great Eight” so far this season? Whoever is doing better should obviously get the spot shouldn’t they? Lets take a look at some of the numbers.

When Backstrom is the center of the top line the Backstrom and Ovechkin numbers don’t look very good. To put it bluntly most of the important numbers are pretty bad. Here are the numbers when Backstrom centers Ovechkin’s line.

I just like the remind everyone, especially those who don’t pay attention to advanced stats what these abbreviations mean. CF is shot attempts, SCF is scoring chances, HD is high danger shot attempts and xGF is expected goals for. You want all those numbers to be over 50%, the higher the better.

CF% – 44.96%

SCF% – 45%

HDCF% – 40%

xGF% – 40.30%

Those numbers definitely surprised me. I wasn’t expecting those numbers to be at or over the 60% mark, but for most of those numbers to be under 45% is something I didn’t see coming.

Those numbers improve dramatically when you put Kuznetsov at center and next to Ovechkin. Here are those stats.

CF% – 53.91%

SCF – 56.16%

HDCF% – 62.07%

xGF% – 61.44%

Those are numbers that a top line should be putting up. Especially when you have a guy like Alex Ovechkin, even if he isn’t scoring goals at quite the pace we’re used to so far this season.

With all that being said in over 67 minutes played together so far this season the duo of Kuznetsov and Ovechkin has just one goal for and 1 against. The Backstrom – Ovechkin combo has 131 minutes played together, so just about double the time but they have 10 goals scored with 6 given up.

So the question remains. When Kuznetsov is center of the Ovechkin line you get better underlying numbers, but less goals. With Backstrom at center you get more goals but worse numbers. Which one do you want?

I always tend to go with the numbers and trust that the high skill players will figure out how to put goals on the board. If you’re playing on the right end of the hockey rink you have more chances to score while limiting your opponent.

It reminds me of a thing some soccer coaches say. It’s their job to set the defensive structure and to help get the ball into the attacking parts of the field. After that it’s up to the players to score goals.

I tend to think hockey is similar. Get a good line to play in the attacking end of the rink more than the defensive end. Even if the goals aren’t coming have faith that those extremely talented players will find ways to score some goals.

But let the debate start, or continue. Who should center the Washington Capitals top line?