Recent Power Play Innovations
Since the start of the 2020 season, McDavid and Draisaitl lead the league in regular season points, with 303 and 254 respectively. No surprises there. What might come as more of a shock, though, is that 40% of those points have come on the power play. Likewise, the top 3 scorers in the last two playoffs—Kuch, Makar, and MacKinnon—have scored 46% of their points with the man advantage. For the mathematically-challenged out there, that's almost half.
Now, imagine a consulting firm found its way into an NHL locker room and had the opportunity to speak to the players alone. (The coaches and front-office would have to be drugged and stuffed into a closet or something.) They might present the players with two basic options:
Option #1: Improve every single aspect of being a hockey player to increase returns on 60% of your productivity.
Option #2: Improve a small subset of skills, mostly nonphysical, to increase returns on 40% of your productivity.
Hardos like Jonathan Toews would be salivating too much after the first option to hear the second, and many of the players would reflect that they're not on the power play at all. But the more patient and elite players in the room might stop to think for a moment. Obviously, everyone wants to get better at both, but just because these guys are professional athletes doesn't mean they live in a world of unlimited time and energy. Just like the rest of us, they have to make choices in light of opportunity costs. And the fact of the matter is, the marginal utility of becoming better on the PP might be substantially higher than that of improving overall play, which would require everything from conditioning and positioning, to blocking shots and back-checking.
It's not only that getting better on the PP involves a smaller skillset. It's also that the situation itself is far more advantageous to offense than traditionally realized. In other sports, like basketball and football, the entire advantage of offense is understood as foreknowledge of what is to come. (Football has a wonderful balance of this in that the quarterback, who most understands what is going to happen, is offset by the defense having an extra guy.) In the one situation for which this applies in hockey, though—the power play—teams have historically been content to rely on their additional manpower. It was all about "outworking" and "overwhelming" the other team: beating them to loose pucks, rebounds, things like that. Until recently, the advantage of planning has been overlooked.
Now, I'm not sure if this consulting firm, or some version of it, already exists. But what I can tell you is that the beginning of a revolution is taking place. Certain teams, especially Tampa Bay, Edmonton, and Dallas, are taking the wisdom of marginal utility to heart. It's time we looked at how.
Tampa's Bumper Mania
In my opinion, Tampa ushered in a new era of power plays during their 2021 playoff run. Their conversion rate was certainly impressive—32%—but more than that, I remember watching and thinking: Goodness, these defenders have no idea what's coming. As Alex pointed out in Pavelski's Latest Innovation, this was thanks to "the bumper position," which the creator of this video attributes to Brayden Point. That would be, as we say where I'm from, wrong. Don't let anyone fool you: It's Kuch that stirs the drink here. He does this by excelling at three options: a) one-timer, b) fake one-timer, pass to bumper, or c) get it over to Stamkos.
Alex's article also mentions that other teams have caught onto this trend—see Rangers—and some have even instituted the "reverse bumper," which is cooler than it sounds. Things have progressed so much in this vein that if your team isn't using the bumper concept on their PP, all I can say is—I'm sorry. Yet although most offenses have caught onto this trend, few defenses have a solution for it. In fact, we'll cap this section with a particularly devastating screenshot of the Canadiens agains the Lightning a few weeks ago. Are the Habs really not hip to this yet?
Edmonton's Net-Extender
2500 miles northwest, the Oilers also have a "set package," which centers around McDavid getting the puck with speed on his strong side:
This isn't particularly innovative, but it does utilize the best player in the world, a guy who excels at—well, just about everything, but in this specific instance, speed and stick quickness. However, what I do find revolutionary is a recent side-hustle of Zach Hyman's, under the business auspices of "Hyman Net-Extension Services, Inc." Have a look at the screenshot below:
In channeling his inner post, Hyman effectively makes the net 2 feet wider—which is quite an improvement, wouldn't you say? I mean, this is actually genius. As a strategy, it has all the moxey of Avery turning his back on the play and none of the ineffectiveness. Watch it in real time:
Before ending this section, I'd like to go on record and say that EDM will score a goal on the following brilliant idea:
You might think you didn't see anything there, but watch again. Hyman lets the pass go so that it bounces off the board for a potential open net for McDavid on the other side. It didn't work this time, but once players get the angle and pace down, this should be a dangerous addition to a play that already has a plethora of options. Specifically, the player in the slot will be more open if the far-side defenseman is also worried about a bank pass.
Dallas' Deflection Gauntlet
Finally, we come around to my favorite development of late: Jason Robertson and the Deflection Gauntlet. I imagine this came into being during one lazy, late-summer practice, when some of the guys noticed Robertson shooting pucks at an empty net at the far end of the ice. Aware that he had just inked a deal and wanting to bring him down a notch therefore, they decided to go over and play a little Kevin Garnett on him by standing in front of the net and not letting his shots go in. It turned out that some of these guys were world-class deflection artists, namely Pavelski, who before protective netting was installed in rinks around the continent, could deflect a puck into someone's popcorn container. By and by, these guys realized that instead of tipping pucks wide, they could tip them into the net—and still prevent Robertson from scoring. Nobody cares about assists anyway, right Backstrom? Thus the most intriguing wrinkle of modern power plays was born.
Now, I genuinely can't tell if Robertson is in on the joke, or finds it incredibly frustrating that his guys won't let him score. On certain plays, like the one below, it's pretty clear that he's shooting to pass:
The same probably goes for this one...although you can also kind of imagine Robertson whipping it across ice as fast as possible, hoping that nobody would get a piece of it so he could go back to ringing bars. Unfortunately, "nobody getting a piece of it" might have been physically impossible here. I mean, just look at Pavelski!
Lest you think it's just Hintz and Pavelski playing a prank, here we see the captain getting in on the fun, essentially communicating to the rest of the team that this sort of behavior is now above-board:
Finally, in some instances, ambiguity goes out the window. We need not wonder in the following clip if Robertson is being hazed, because it's too obvious that he is. As he aims to score his first goal in four games —and second in 13—Pavelski alights from nowhere to notch the tally:
For the Robertson fans out there, I'll mention that he did manage to pot one a few minutes later in that game. Not without another deflection, of course, this one providentially off the other team.
Recap
To recap what was an admittedly long, but undoubtedly brilliant article, teams need to be taking advantage of the ability to plan for the power play. Furthermore, it should be mentioned that while this article explored in-zone plays, there's no rule against planning elsewhere. As Adam has already partially highlighted, other innovations are occurring on the rush, such "the slingshot" and what I like to call "the double barrel."
In addition to the Lightning, Oilers, and Stars, we should add honorable mentions for the Maple Leafs and Avalanche, two more clubs who "get it." The Leafs, in particular, are not shy about stealing the intellectual property of others, and I wouldn't be surprised if Matthews and Marner are reading this article within a few hours of its publication—or more likely, asking someone to convert it into a more digestible format. For other teams—or, um, coaches—let this article prompt them to begin creatively improving upon what I would argue is the easiest part of the game to do so.
Until next time,
Josh
