The Current State Of Special Teams In The NHL

Power plays and penalty killing are crucial aspects of literally every NHL games. Is team success on the man advantage or shorthanded as important as it used to be, or a tool overused by the NHL to change the game?

As the old saying goes, “defense wins championships”. One of the keystones to any strong NHL defense is a strong penalty kill. You’d think the strongest teams on the penalty kill would be the upper level of Stanley Cup contenders. However, this correlation may not be as strong as you think.

When it comes to special teams, there are two categories for that in hockey – the power play and the penalty kill. Look at the stats for the most successful power play teams, and eight of the top ten teams are in the playoffs. The league-leading Tampa Bay Lightning in first place. There’s only one real shock in the top ten – the Florida Panthers, who are in second.

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Now, look at the stats for the teams most successful on the penalty kill. Six of the top 10 teams are playoff bound teams. Once again, the league-leading Lightning are in first place, but what follows them is a mixed bag.

There are a few playoff bubble teams, such as the Columbus Blue Jackets and Arizona Coyotes, but there’s also the outlier of an Eastern Conference basement dweller New Jersey Devils in fourth place.  The Buffalo Sabres peek in at number ten.

To make things even more complicated, four of the top ten penalty killing teams also are in the top ten of shorthanded goals scored this season. Maybe the best defense is a good offense? But it still doesn’t explain why teams that struggle with five-on-five defense excel when the odds are turned even more against them.

The Lightning are the only team to appear in the top ten lists of both categories, but they’re in a league all their own. What does it say about killing penalties in today’s NHL when the teams that seem to be the best at it, aren’t succeeding at much else?

The issue lies with the NHL and their current obsession with scoring more goals. Every year the league throws around new ideas to increase scoring, such as bigger nets and smaller goalie equipment because they think that more goal scoring will lead to a more exciting on-ice product.

While this want for more goal scoring may not lead to the bigger nets and smaller goalie equipment if often leads to rule changes. These rule changes are specifically designed to lead to more penalties and more power plays with the hopes that the more you give a team the man advantage, the more they’re going to score.

Brian Campbell, NHL senior executive vice president of hockey operations, explained this philosophy in an interview with NHL.com during the recent general managers meeting.

"That was what we did in ’04-05 after the lockout and the one thing that [former Montreal Canadiens GM] Bob Gainey had said at the time, he was on the Competition Committee, was let’s give the advantage to offense and punish defense."

In the same article, the NHL goes on the offensive against the notion that there are too many power plays and too many power play goals:

"Much of the increased scoring is due to an increase in even-strength goals, which have accounted for 77 percent of the scoring this season, the highest percentage since the 1977-78 season. Power-play goals have accounted for 19.7 percent of the goals, the lowest percentage since 1972-73, when it was 19.1 percent. In 2005-06, power-play goals accounted for 33.5 percent of the scoring, the highest percentage in League history."

The apparent decline in the percentage of power-play goals seems to suggest that the strength of penalty killing has improved over the same time frame, but there’s more to it than meet the eye. These stats measure the amount of power plays goals versus the number of overall goals, including even strength and shorthanded. Because that percentage has gone down doesn’t mean that more power play goals haven’t been scored, just that more goals period have been scored as well.

The article also fails to mention the number of penalties over that time frame, since new rule changes and new safety measures have been implemented. It’s hard to imagine there’s too much variation since it’s not necessarily penalties that have decreased or increased as much as what players get penalized for. For example, the commonplace fighting penalties of yesteryear have been replaced by those over the boards’ puck clearing delay of game penalties of today.

If the NHL wants more goals, they should aspire to get more goals all around, not only on the power play. And wanting more goals should not be a motivation to add rules and justify new penalties to teams. Only the quality of the game and safety of the players should be reasons to change the rules. The declining percentage of power-play goals may suggest that, but the “give the advantage to the offense and punish defense” Campbell advocated suggests otherwise.

Even if the power play goals to overall goals percentage has gone down, there’s no doubt teams put more focus on the power play than penalty kill. To today’s teams, it more important to score an extra goal, than to save an extra goal.