When it comes to our PP I have been a firm believer for a while that we do have the very good PP D man assets and we do have talented offensive players but they are much better 5v5 or even 4v4 than they are 5v4.
Kane is unreal 5 on 5 because he can beat you with speed and has a great shot.....he is even good on the attack after zone entry when there is kayos.....where he does not shine is when the D is stationary and he has time to think, the falloff is drastic. Dito for Wheels....when he can attack you at pace and he is "on" he is a beast but his talents are not uniquely structured for the PP. I do like Ladd on the PP because he gets in front of the net and screens the goalie however his puck retreival skills on the shoot in are a weakness of Andrews and that hurts. Also most of our guys best shot is the wrister on the fly (Ladd, Wheels, and Kane for sure). Seto and Scheif may be the only two guys I can think of that have that Ovi or Stamkos one timer in their bag and I do mean the light version of it.
We so badly need a guy like Petan to succeed one day because his skill set screams PP beast. I also believe Morrissey and Trouba think the game pretty well and could become a very effective back end for our PP.....same for Scheif at some point I see his skills transitioning well to the PP.
As for our forward group they are who they are.......allot of this comes down to bounces and PP's don't work until the moment they work and once they do then you get on a roll. Right now we are gripping our sticks a bit tight and that happens when you are in a funk. At the end of the season I think we will be a lower middle of the pack PP. We may not be great but we are not nearly as bad as we look right now.
I agree to a point. I however maintain that we are not properly utilizing the assets that we currently have. For instance are 2nd unit is currently made up of 3 pure shooters down low, none of which is a particularly great puck mover so you see that unit run into trouble trying to establish possession. The top unit on the other hand seems to be able to establish possession but is only able to move it around the periphery. We don't have any down low set piece and quite frankly having both Wheeler and Little on the same pp is a bit redundant as you only need on distributor/garbage goal guy.
I maintain that we have the assets to have an average pp, maybe not elite but an average one. The problem is usage. First thing I would do is switch the units around:
Unit one:
Ladd plays his usual role as the net front screen.
Little plays down low and is there for rebounds and distributing the puck.
I switch Wheeler for Seto and have him positioned in around the circle giving Enstrom another one time/shot option.
It also opens up the down low play between Little and Seto.
In essence it goes from really only two dangerous shot options to potentially 4 in the new set up, which in turn will open things up as it isn't as easy for pk's to just defend the points.
Unit two:
Either Wheeler or Scheifele take the half boards as the puck mover.
Kane takes the net scree position and takes the slot on the opposite side.
The goal would be to utilize shots from all three sides.
Adding a puck mover in Scheifele or Wheeler would open these shots up much better than what we have right now.
That's just my two cents though.