Rod Brind'Amour and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad Power Play

[Nikishin al Gaib]

I just ran the PP numbers back to 2013.

If you have a PP that cashes in in the top half of the playoff teams, you have a 63% chance of making it to the Stanley Cup Finals. If you are a bottom half of the field team, its only 37%. If you are in the bottom quartile, you only have a 4% chance of making it.

In Rod's tenure, only once have we ever had a PP that performed better than either team that made the finals, and that was Florida last year. In every other year, both finalists had better PPs than we did.

 

[3CanesInTheBox]

I know it's been mentioned, but Aho's face-off percentage on PPs has to be AWFUL. Is there any way to check specifically for that?

I also don't nor have I ever played hockey. (I begged to after watching the Mighty Ducks movies, but my mom was like "hell NAH" lol), so question: How much are face-off skills just an inherent ability versus something that can be improved? Because I'm really getting worried about Aho at the dots in general.

 

[3CanesInTheBox]

The power play suck no doubt, starting a post about making coaching changes riding a 5 games win streak that includes curb stomping one if the hottest teams in the league and the best team in the league is a ill timed flex.

Also the PP jasmt been bad for 5 years it's been one of the best in the league until this year.

I get your point, but It's never been reliable in the playoffs though.

 

[chaz4hockey]

Combined PP & PK% in playoffs last 3 years (Oilers were all-world LY....can they repeat it?):

 

[robbieberns]

Main problem is that once possession is established in the zone, our guys have concrete skates and stay in the same spot. Any successful power play will guys roaming and swapping spots and pulling killers out of position to establish set plays and move the puck quick to find a free guy in a premium spot to put a puck on net.

What happened to the half wall-goal line-trigger man in the slots link up? Default seems to be half way to QB to half way at a snails pace.

 

[Sigurd]

Since January 1st, our PP has as many goals scored as our Penalty Kill, in more opportunities.

Let that sink in for a second. Not only is it the worst PP in the league, its has a lower conversion % than when we are SH.

We can't keep running this back, right? Eventually the front office has to step in and get Brindy to admit something has to change, right?

 

[AhosDatsyukian]

I know it's been mentioned, but Aho's face-off percentage on PPs has to be AWFUL. Is there any way to check specifically for that?

I also don't nor have I ever played hockey. (I begged to after watching the Mighty Ducks movies, but my mom was like "hell NAH" lol), so question: How much are face-off skills just an inherent ability versus something that can be improved? Because I'm really getting worried about Aho at the dots in general.

Lol, yes pretty easy stats to find and your eye test is way off here. Aho is 63.5% on the PP which is one of the better marks in the league.

NHL Stats

The official source for NHL Stats including skaters, goalies, teams stats and more.

www.nhl.com

He's also 24th in the league (I used 300+ faceoffs as a filter) overall at 55.1% FOW% in all situations.

NHL Stats

The official source for NHL Stats including skaters, goalies, teams stats and more.

www.nhl.com

Aho is great in the dot and has been for several years now after struggling early on in his transition to center. Been a long time but I played center back in the day and I would say it's a mix of inherent ability and something that can be improved. Rod has almost all of the centers that have come in here improving in the dot. But yeah some guys just don't have the reaction time -- but in reality if you're an NHL center you probably have good enough reaction time that elite technique (which can be taught/improved) can get you at least above 50%. But the all time elite guys like Rod, Datsyuk, Bergeron are a mix of insane reaction time and technique.

edit: just to add, where Aho struggles in the dot is on the PK for some reason. Really bad there at 35% this year, but he more often than not comes in for Staal and isn't relied upon for PK faces quite as much. That's quite an outlier this season though, as since 2020-21 when Aho really started to figure it out in the dot he's 49.2% on the PK which is a really solid mark.

 

[LakeLivin]

I just ran the PP numbers back to 2013.

If you have a PP that cashes in in the top half of the playoff teams, you have a 63% chance of making it to the Stanley Cup Finals. If you are a bottom half of the field team, its only 37%. If you are in the bottom quartile, you only have a 4% chance of making it.

In Rod's tenure, only once have we ever had a PP that performed better than either team that made the finals, and that was Florida last year. In every other year, both finalists had better PPs than we did.

I get your drift but just to clarify, the top 8 playoff teams in PP conversion don't each have a 63% chance of making it to the Cup Finals. Rather, of the Cup Finalists going back to 2013, 63% have been in the top half of PP conversion and 37% have been in the bottom half. And only 4% of the teams that made it were in the bottom quartile.

Also, can't lose sight of the old "correlation does not imply causation" issue.

Common sense would indicate that a good power play contributes to Cup success, and your numbers are consistent with that, but you'd need to do a much more complex analysis to get a good feel for just how much it factors in compared to a number of other variables. I'm sure Tulsky's group has that info, how do we get access to it, lol?

 

[Big Daddy Cane]

Hard to blame coaching when they’re willing to change if things aren’t working. It’s not a case of hard headedness. We’ve seen the best player, Aho, on both half walls and IIRC, at the goalline/netfront the year they experimented with Svechnikov/Teravainen up top (19/20?).

They’ll throw spaghetti in desperate times. Last year, Skjei ended up on the 1st PP. I distinctly remember them trying Faulk and Hamilton on the same unit for the very first time in a conference finals game against Boston.

To me, this is a management issue. Here’s where the absence of a superstar is most visible. Someone to take the reins and be the true PPQB. Even just a goal scorer that can overpower a goalie with a one-timer from the half wall could make a difference; they haven’t had that, save for Rantanen in a period of shell shock, in Rod’s tenure. Give him the right ingredients and see what he can cook up.