Power-play scoring has become predictive in team success

A couple of years ago, amidst a surge in scoring across the National Hockey League, I argued teams with weak offences were increasingly being left behind. For a variety of reasons, the grind-it-out teams of the last 20 or 30 years have been left behind, with skill and up-tempo hockey being rewarded in the current environment.

A lot of the focus in this area has been at even strength, where the lion’s share of an NHL game is played. The teams that can fill the back of the net with regularity in the regular season, generally speaking, qualify for the playoffs these days. The teams that struggle to score are usually sitting at home come April.

Here is another wrinkle to consider: even-strength scoring has stabilized at multi-decade highs. What hasn’t stabilized is rate scoring on the power play, which continues to accelerate. This season has seen remarkable production on the man advantage – teams are not only scoring at blistering rates, but expected goals (which measures both shot volume and the quality of those shots) are moving in the same northward direction:

Teams are simply more effective at generating pressure and scoring goals when on the man advantage these days. Some of that trend is owed to the same factors driving scoring at even strength – there is simply so much more offensive talent across lineups, and efforts to heighten scoring (and reduce the broader efficacy of goaltenders, such as equipment size shrinkage) have likely had an effect.

The power play is a unique animal though, and we have certainly seen material strategy and deployment changes over time.

Teams are more willing to deploy four forwards on the five-man power play, something that was considered risky and dangerous just a decade ago. Teams with deep forward pools have the luxury of deploying two quality power-play units, whereas teams with elite top-end performance from their first power-play unit – think the Edmonton Oilers and the Connor McDavid/Leon Draisaitl tandem as the best example – are eager and willing to play them in every possible minute up a man.

But what I find most interesting is how important power-play scoring has become to a team’s broader success. In years past, clubs routinely could get away with carrying a weak power play, so long as they had a core strength in some other game state.

In today’s NHL, a team’s ability to score on the power play is becoming much more predictive of a team’s placement in the standings and their likelihood to qualify for the postseason.

Consider the below table, which shows the Eastern and Western Conference pecking order as it stands this Monday. Teams with high-end power plays occupy the entirety of the top half of the standings, with the only two exceptions being the Vegas Golden Knights and Seattle Kraken – two elite even-strength teams in a weaker Western Conference.

If you have a weak power play you’re almost certainly eyeballing the approaching draft lottery:

It’s easy to affix your attention to teams like Edmonton, Toronto, or Tampa Bay – they are electric up a man, and taking penalties against them feels like a death sentence on most nights. But the reality is they are just the headliners of a larger pool of teams that can punish opponents for a lack of discipline on the ice. (To put this more into context: the league already has 24 double-digit goal scorers on the power play this year, led by Edmonton’s Draisaitl and New York’s Mika Zibanejad).

As for the handful of teams still running out power-play units that score at rates from 10 years ago? It’s a problem – an increasingly challenging problem. If you don’t have the offensive firepower these days, you are paddling upriver.

And no one enjoys paddling upriver.

Data via Natural Stat Trick, NHL.com, Evolving Hockey, Hockey Reference