May 13, 2015; New York, NY, USA; Washington Capitals left wing Alex Ovechkin (8) reacts against the New York Rangers during the third period in game seven of the second round of the 2015 Stanley Cup Playoffs at Madison Square Garden. Mandatory Credit: Adam Hunger-USA TODAY Sports

The NHL's Eastern Conference Final begin Saturday afternoon, and for the 10th season running, Alex Ovechkin will not be participating.

For years, Ovechkin has been dogged by criticisms of his play, and particularly that in the postseason, because for as good as he is and basically always has been, he's never been able to guide the Washington Capitals past the second round of the playoffs. And he's only even gotten that far four times; that's only one more trip than the number of times the Caps have missed the playoffs entirely with him on the roster.

But the good news is that people seem to finally be starting to realize, “Hey, maybe literally all those Capitals teams just weren't good enough, and Ovechkin couldn't be superhuman in comparison with his already-superhuman performances in the regular season.”

Joel Ward's quote from just before Wednesday's fateful Game 7 about the horrible randomness of hockey dictating results so often going against what the math says is telling in that it describes Ovechkin's situation precisely: He has been excellent in the playoffs for years, and the Caps have never given him sufficient backup.

In terms of both generating shots and goals, the Capitals have lagged significantly behind Ovechkin and his linemates, which you would expect to some point. If nothing else, Ovechkin is at least a demigod when it comes to putting shots on goal, and this is true, to a lesser extent, of goal-scoring. His teammates are therefore clearly less so.

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What those charts don't tell you explicitly, but what you should know implicitly, is that Ovechkin is also a driver of shooting percentage. In fact, his 9.02 percent on-ice shooting efficiency is more than one-third higher than that of the rest of the team (6.76 percent) when he's off the ice. Interestingly, though, his teammates have actually outpaced him in this regard over the last two seasons, but on samples so small (just 670 total shots, of which Ovechkin was on the ice for 288) that it's tough to draw conclusions.

Part of the reason the “Ovechkin is a losing loser” nonsense has faded this year in particular is that it's become more obvious there isn't much of a supporting cast of forwards around him. There are some great complementary players; Nicklas Backstrom is obviously a strong No. 1 center in this league and Braden Holtby is, as I've talked about before, a borderline-elite netminder. But beyond that, this club has dropped severely in quality from the 2010 era, when everyone fired on all cylinders (except the Semyon Varlamov/Jose Theodore tandem, who were pathetic and cost the team a legitimate shot at the Cup).

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