Follow @james_tanner123 Nope.
Whenever a sports team suffers a disappointing result, people always want to over-react.
The best response to an upset loss suffered by a heavy favorite is to do nothing.
It certainly isn't to trade your best player, your franchise player, the best player in the history of your franchise, the most popular player in your city.
But jokes that are scary because of their possible accuracy aside, Ovechkin's scoring dropped down by 20 goals and he makes almost a ten million dollar cap hit, so it's at least worth asking if he should be moved.
The answer is still no.
The odds are, Ovechkin's goal drop had a little bit to do with T.J Oshie scoring so much - there is only so many pucks and touches to go around. The other reason? You're going to love this.........wait for it.............bad luck!
Oshie scored nine more 5v5 goals that Ovechkin this past season, but Ovechkin still had a 20% higher expected-goal rating. This means that accounting for luck, Ovechkin was still the significantly best goal scorer on the Caps.
Oshie shot over 26% while Ovechkin shot 7%.
We know for a fact that shooters have no control over their shooting percentage.
Check this out:
5v5 shots/scoring chances/ shooting % Ovechkin 193 / 58 / 7.25 Matthews 217 / 101 / 13.82 Crosby 173 / 72 / 15.03 Marchand 153 / 48 / 12.42 Kucherov 140 / 44 / 12.86
This year, Ovechkin played at the level of the four best scorers in the NHL, and he had his second lowest shooting percentage of his career. Additionally, Oshie scored on such a high percentage of his shots that OV was robbed of additional chances.
The smartest thing the Capitals can do is re-sign the guys they can, make some minor moves if necessary and keep their Ovechkin-Kuzenetsov-Backstrom-Holby core intact.
There is nothing to be gained by trading him other than cap room that will be used to get multiple average players as opposed to one great one. If you have a garbage team and one superstar, that's a smart move. If you have the best team in the NHL (and what is Washington supposed to do, try to be more like Ottawa?) you have to ignore the critics and stick with the process and hope the results break in your favor.
The Capitals will be forced to make a few changes due to free-agency, but they shouldn't go out of their way to do something stupid.
And there is no other way to say this: trading Ovechkin would be stupid.
all stats corsica.hockey