Nashville Predators: Why the power play has failed and how to fix it
Poor Play or Poor Luck for the Nashville Predators
Attempting to figure out why they have been so unsuccessful is a challenging task. The most difficult part is that hockey, more than most sports, is affected by chance/luck. We all have been there as fans. The games where no matter how well our team has played, the breaks just don’t seem to go our way.
As fans, we curse the hockey gods for the team’s lack of “puck luck.” But, luck is hard to quantify. There are myriad amounts of things that change outcomes of a certain play, not only what players can control, but things that are out of their control.
This is why the analytics community has created adjustments for venue, situations, seasons, or even eras in hockey. There is such a thing as home-ice-advantage or higher scoring seasons than others. One could make the case the Nashville Predators have been unlucky this year on the power play.
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There is a statistic known as Expected Goals For (xGF) that largely exists to determine the effects that external things have on scoring a goal. The statistic represents how many goals would be expected based off of the quality and location of a given shot versus what the league average goalie would stop. You can find a more in-depth definition here.
If a player scores more goals than was expected, we assume they had a little extra help or luck when everything is accounted for. Those are things such as screens, playing a below-average goaltender, or even luck such as hitting an opposing player with your shot and it bouncing in past the goalie. If a player or team scores fewer goals than expected, the opposite is assumed – they had worse luck or faced other conditions that prevented them from scoring.
The Predators had 40.57 xGF on the power play this year, according to Corsica. They finished with 33 power play goals (PPG). Only four teams finished with a larger discrepancy between xGF on the power play and actual power play goals scored.
That discrepancy almost solely was the fault of Craig Smith, Roman Josi, Nick Bonino, and Ryan Ellis, who combined for a total -6.74 DeltaxGF (the difference between GF and xGF) on the power play this season. Sometimes the puck doesn’t bounce your way.