Sasha vs. Sasha: Fists of Fury

At Saturday's Caps Convention, during the always-entertaining Kids Panel, the following question was asked (from Rock The Red.net):

Q: If you could fight anyone in the NHL who would you pick?

Ovechkin: [quick to answer] Semin

You know what this means... another installment of Sasha vs. Sasha!


FIGHT!



In their careers, the Sasha's have combined for 2 regular season fights. Ovechkin took on Paul Gaustad of Buffalo in December, 2006 (with 75% of hockeyfights.com users choosing Gaustad the winner) wile Semin had an infamous bout with Mark Staal of the Rangers in January of 2009 (with 48% choosing Staal the winner). And, of course, Ovechkin tried to take on Steve Downie of Tampa Bay last season, with Matt Bradley jumping in before punches were thrown. But in a head-to-head match, who would win?

 

Size: While both Alexes are listed as being 6'2", Ovechkin has a sizable weight advantage (25 lbs) over Semin. Advantage: Ovie

 

Reach: Unlike the NBA, the NHL doesn't list a player's wingspan. But with all the offensive-zone holding and interference penalties Semin gets, he clearly possesses Go-Go-Gadget Arms. Advantage: Semin

 
Footwork: Both players exhibit their tremendous foot-speed and lateral ability on the ice. Advantage: Push
 
Conditioning: Semin spends the off-season relaxing, vacationing and fishing. Ovie spends the off-season doing cardio with the ladies training. Advantage: Ovie
 
Hands: Ovechkin's short, quick release while close to opponents suggests a jabbing style boxer. Semin, on the other hand, has a large wind-up and huge, sweeping release. Ovie would tire Semin down with lots of strikes while Semin would be throwing haymakers. In a hockey fight, where you have maybe 40 seconds worth of true fight time, you simply can't rely on jabs. Advantage: Semin
 
Intangibles: Ovie's willingness to take on an established fighter such as Downie speaks to his toughness. Semin, on the other hand, has shown that he'll go Donkey Kong-mental when tested. And there's nothing scarier than an angry chimp. Advantage: Semin
 
So there you have it! Semin wins 3-2-1 in a battle of the Sashas. Granted, Ovechkin would probably be laughing the whole time, but Semin 'The Siberian Tiger' should score the TKO.

Sasha vs. Sasha

In what will become a running segment during the regular season, today marks the debut of ‘Sasha vs. Sasha’, and in-depth competition between The Alexs, Ovechkin and Semin. Some of the competitive categories will be your standard statistical fare, while some will be up to my discretion (and completely off the wall).

We're calling it 'Sasha vs. Sasha'.

Today, we’ll look at something real: who scored their goals against better defensemen?

Trying to quantify every defenseman in the NHL is a tough task. I chose to go with 'Goals Against On-Ice Per 60 Minutes' DIVIDED BY 'Quality of Competition +1'. This brings negative values of QUALCOMP to a positive baseline that is <1. When GAON/60 is divided by this value, you see an adjustment up if the value is <1. It’s probably not the best way to evaluate a defenseman, but it works. We’ll call it GA60/QUAL. Here’s what I found.

Breaking down the defensemen on the ice for each of the Alexs’ 90 goals scored and using their GA60/QUAL, we come up with an average GA60/QUAL of 2.48 for Ovechkin and 2.71 for Semin (the lower the value, the better the defenseman). Using the standard deviation of the entries and grouping them by frequency, we come up with the following graph:

Clearly, Ovechkin is scoring against better defensemen (his curve shifted slightly to the left of Semin’s) while Semin is taking advantage of less effective defensemen (his curve extending far to the right, even though he scored 10 fewer goals). Obviously, Ovechkin was usually skating against a team's #1 defensive unit while Semin was attacking against unit #2 (and obviously Ovechkin is the 'Superstar' of the two).

But the fact that Semin was able to capitalize against the weaker defensemen in the league is also important, as those are the match-ups a good player/team needs to exploit (especially if your #1 player is seeing tougher defenses). Clearly both players have thier respective roles, with each one producing when called upon.

I'm scoring this one in Ovie's favor though. It's tough to deny the left side of the curve.