Penalty Killing is not Good Enough

[BlackAdam]

Everyone has been speaking about how bad the powerplay is right now but more concern should be placed on the penalty kill. For the past few years this has been a major concern for the Leafs. At least it's possible to win games with a bad power play but if we're giving up goals game-after-game, we're going to be chasing games. Right now, we're at a success rate of under 80% which is awful.

Remember the last playoff series against Boston. Leafs were like 56% that series. If it performed slightly better, they possibly could have won that series. If I remember, Leafs were up 1-0 in game 6 where they held a 3-2 series lead in the first period but gave up 2 power play goals and ended up losing that game.

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[Sypher04]

Everyone has been speaking about how bad the powerplay is right now but more concern should be placed on the penalty kill. For the past few years this has been a major concern for the Leafs. At least it's possible to win games with a bad power play but if we're giving up goals game-after-game, we're going to be chasing games. Right now, we're at a success rate of under 80% which is awful.

Remember the last playoff series against Boston. Leafs were like 56% that series. If it performed slightly better, they possibly could have won that series.

A little sloppy the last few games, but over the same time the pp has floundered, the PK has actually been pretty great. Like near 90%

 

[Gallagbi]

PK has been pretty great for the most part lately and we just added 3PKers at the deadline in Hutton, Nash and Foligno.

 

[robertmac43]

What? Doesn't our PP have the best % in the last month?

 

[Dave92]

Coaching is not good enough. Idiotic usage of bad players, completely incapable of fixing the PP. Just like they couldn't fix 5v5 in the play ins last year.

 

[The Iceman]

YEAH...switch thread title to PP and carry on.

Wow, it is time for the eye in the sky Paul MacLean to grab the reigns for the PP

 

[SeaOfBlue]

Our PK has been stellar all year, and rarely gave up a goal once they had a goalie who could make a save.

Andersen is one of the worst PK goalies in the league. The rest of our PK is top 10 based on various metrics I am fairly sure. Also, with Campbell in net, we've given up 4 goals against in 12 games. Our rate would be around 85% with Campbell in net, which would be among the best in the league as it should be.

PP is the issue, but let's not forget that for the first half of the season, we were the best PP in the league by a good margin. Now we are one of the worst. Need to start moving our feet again. Teams haven't really had to do anything fancy to stop us because we are not even executing our system properly anymore.

 

[BoredBrandonPridham]

I only agree with OP in the sense that your PK has to at least be inversely good to your PP. With a PP firing at 0% the PK needs to be at least 100% and it hasn’t been that good.

But if we can get our PP better than 0% then it will take some pressure off the PK.

Also why is OP using like 2 seasons ago as an example of our PK performance for this season.

 

[Welsh Maple Leaf]

PK was poor last night but been very good this season.

 

[TMLAM34]

PK is fine. We’re also adding Nash and possibly even Foligno to it. Two very good PKers.

 

[Morbo]

The PK has been good but our goaltending when shorthanded was pretty bad for a decent chunk of the season, so the ranking is a little deceiving. also we also don't get a lot of chances so it takes a while for the number to move anywhere.

good news is we added two top-notch defensive forwards.

not worried about the PK too much.

 

[leaffaninvancouver]

Our PK has been great lately, and it's only going to get better. That powerplay on the other hand...

 

[Twine Tickler]

PK has been good recently. Goal against yesterday was a set play where we got caught napping, and we were missing our best PK'er in Marner. Lost draw, Puck worked down low, and Kerf didn't move with the play. Allowing Lindholm to walk into one from the ladies tee's. Other than that, they've been above average killer's IMO. Marner, Hyman and Micheyev are as effective PK'ers as anyone in the league IMO. We tend to lose battles in front of the net, or when the D go into the corners. But our forwards have been exceptional PK'ers all year IMO