Why Penguins fans should be scared of the team's bad power play

by JustinM on Jan 4, 2010 3:55 PM EST

5395

Much has been made about the Penguins' poor power play. Fans have been calling for Assistant Coach Mike Yeo's head since last season. It's entirely reasonable for fans to be disenchanted with the former Sudbury Wolf's special teams strategy; after all, a team with the Penguins' talent both up front and on the blue line should never be 30th overall in their rate of power play success.

I happen to sympathize with those fans because I know that the power play is an important part of a team's overall success.

First, I have to explain a bit of number crunching I used to determine just how important power play success rate is to a team. The easiest way to do this accurately is with correlation coefficients (CC). Sorry for the math nerdgasm you're about to endure.

If you want an extremely thorough (and nearly incomprehensible) explanation, hit the link. If you want a look at the specific coefficient I'm using, it's here, but that explanation isn't a ton better. In layman's terms, correlation coefficients range between -1 and 1. A CC of 1 means that the numbers are completely directly proportional (i.e., when one goes up, the other goes up by the same proportion). A CC of -1 means that the numbers are completely indirectly proportional (i.e., when one goes up, the other goes down by the same proportion). A CC of 0 means that the numbers aren’t related whatsoever and are completely random.

At any rate, since the lockout, the points a team earns and the PP% for that team have a coefficient of about 0.53, which can only be described as "strong". Sure, correlation doesn't equal causation, but this is too strong to ignore. How strong? Check out the scatterplot:

via pghsports.wordpress.com (click for bigger image)

The relationship isn't perfect, obviously, but it's certainly there and it's obvious. Aside from teams like--ironically--the 2005-2006 Penguins, who finished with an awful 58 points yet scored on 18.99% of their power plays, bad teams generally don't score on the power play, and good teams generally do (biggest exception there being last season's Columbus team, with 92 points and a ridiculous PP% of 12.73).

This all certainly suggests that a quick way to turn the team around out of this slump would be to improve the power play. Easy, right?

More on this to come, hopefully tomorrow.

The content expressed in fanposts does not necessarily reflect the opinions of the staff here at Pensburgh.com. FanPosts are opinions expressed by fans of various teams throughout the league but may be more Pittsburgh-centric for obvious reasons.

Tweet Comment 15 comments | 0 recs |

Do you like this story?

Comments

That’s some pretty intense work Justin, thanks for sharing. Earlier in the season when the power play was just starting to really go south and the Pens were still winning, it struck me as a sort of anomaly of sorts. Definitely not one I’d argue with, but I had this pensive feeling that it would only be a matter of time before the reality of it caught up with them. I think we’re experiencing that now. No team with a 30th ranked PP is going to do any damage in the playoffs. That’s a fact that likely doesn’t even need any sort of statistical evidence. I would, however, be curious to see how past Stanley Cup winners have done with bad power plays. And perhaps, which winning team in which season had the lowest ranked PP during the regular season.

Time to send out a quick e-mail…

Follow the Penguins on SBN @ Pensburgh.com and twitter.

by FrankD on Jan 4, 2010 5:20 PM EST reply actions

Slow day at work FTW.

I can run those numbers if you’d like. Shouldn’t be too hard. Although, I’m not 100% sure what you mean by “how past SC winners have done with bad power plays”. The Pens last year had the worst PP of any SC winner since the lockout at ~17%. I don’t know how meaningful that is, though, because there have been only 4 winners since then. More seasons would make that more meaningful, but frankly I’m not sure that even 20 or 30 seasons would be enough data to come to any real conclusion there. At least with this, we have 120 team-seasons to work with, which is a little better.

Also, a lot of people seem to like to throw out data from before the lockout as being trivial in the “new” NHL. I’m not sure how true that really is. I could add more seasons pretty easily and do this over again if you’d like.

by JustinM on Jan 4, 2010 7:12 PM EST up reply actions

Guess I don’t really know what I mean by that either. You kinda answered it for me though with the Pens’ PP line from last season. I think that’s what I was going for.

Not to negate your efforts at all (boring day at work or not, it’s still pretty stellar), I wanted to hit up Gabe from the hockey stats blog Behind the Net to see what he had to say about the Pens and the PP. Here’s what he had to say:

Pittsburgh is 9th in the NHL in shots/minute at 5v4 (54.6) and 28th in the league in shot% (9.4%). They’ve played the equivalent of five full games at 5v4 so far. The last two years, they shot 12-14% at 5v4.

Unless you have some reason to think that the Pens have lost the ability to shoot on the PP, you should not be worried. One data point in their favor is that they continue to be top 5 in the league in shooting % at 5v5 – they are a good shooting team.

Justin points out that the correlation between PP% and team points is 0.53. But the correlation between even-strength shot differential in tie games and team points is 0.8.

I agree that doing well on the PP is important to winning, but the Pens have been doing everything else right (outshooting their opponents at evens; getting close to the net; taking a lot of shots on the PP) and that is a better indicator of future PP performance than anything else.

Again, unless you can isolate a specific reason why the Pens have been so bad, I wouldn’t worry. The Wings shooting percentage was 27th in the league in 2007-08 at 5v4. But they did everything else right.

Follow the Penguins on SBN @ Pensburgh.com and twitter.

by FrankD on Jan 5, 2010 12:31 AM EST up reply actions

wow

thanks to both of you for the stats! really interesting to see some stuff we don’t look at every other day.

I love stats and I do collect a lot of data and do some myself.

You have to see it for yourself...

by Bla Razor on Jan 5, 2010 4:11 AM EST up reply actions

Drat. I had a post on this very thing in the pipe. I even had a catchy title.

Should I even bother now? :)

by JustinM on Jan 5, 2010 11:22 AM EST up reply actions

Meh, did it anyway. :)

by JustinM on Jan 5, 2010 12:32 PM EST up reply actions

nah I’m glad ya did. I guess my own curiosity may have cut you off a bit. Sorry about that.

Follow the Penguins on SBN @ Pensburgh.com and twitter.

by FrankD on Jan 5, 2010 1:22 PM EST up reply actions

Well, it wasn’t exactly the same thing. Of course I did find out that someone did pretty much exactly what I was going to do for installment #3, so that might just end up being a FanShot link. It’s got to do with the Penguins and one-goal games.

by JustinM on Jan 5, 2010 1:36 PM EST up reply actions

cool that you’re making and finding such different stats. I think it’s great, so keep it coming… if it’s a FanPost or a FanShot, it doesn’t matter as long as it’s intriguing

You have to see it for yourself...

by Bla Razor on Jan 5, 2010 4:12 PM EST up reply actions

Anemic Power play

About a month ago I wrote a comment about this. The coaches bear the responsibility as much as the players, but some basic points in ANY POWER PLAY (Not just SC Champions). A) With better goaltending, somebody has to be in front of the net, not only to block the goalie vision of a shot, but to atract the attention of the defense. This is not happening consistently, yesterday Mat Cooke, that was supposed to be doing it (I guess) was all over the ice stick handling like Geno????.
B) Malkin has said in the past that he does not particulaly like playing the point.
C) Rupp, Kunitz, Staal, should be there with Crosby and Malkin, causing caos around the net, with their stick on the ice, waiting for a pass to deflect (call Robby Brown to help tell them how’s done)., remember him, Mario made him a millionaire .
D) Whatever happened to the shot pass, deflected behind overagressive goalies.
The oposition is happy to see the Pens pass around the perimeter and concentrate only on Sid, Geno and Gonch.
Also the above is the main reason why the can’t beat Brodeur, he is the best, but is human and can be beaten with deflected shots, blocking his view, or lastly a perfect shot. Tell EJ to run the PP, that was his specialty, and I bet he can still do it from where he sits up their in the Arena.

by Outcast on Jan 4, 2010 7:35 PM EST reply actions

what gets me is that theyre all stationary, hardly any rotation, they just pass to the point a few times, GoGo passes it back to sid who tries a lob pass to Malkin that never works and rinse and repeat. What stood out to me against Tampa was when Pitt was on the advantage and the goalie was using a Dmans stick and the Dman had the forwards stick, THEY WERENT SHOOTING! Now, I only play pickup league hockey now a days and Im also a goalie but whenever the goalie has a players stick you should be shooting that puck at the net constantly. Why must they try for the perfect pass and the perfect lane to shoot on the powerplay.

They really win most games by grinding it out in the corners and getting dirty goals. But when the PP comes they stop shooting and try to be fancy. Part of the problem I believe is that Gonch isnt here right now. You can definately tell a difference when he is in there because he can open up lanes and hell shoot for deflections. GoGo and Malkin do not do it. Maybe it is lack of maturity and experience at playing the point but something needs to start clicking for them.

by Repperson29 on Jan 4, 2010 7:53 PM EST up reply actions

I thought Granato was and has been taking over some PP action? Perhaps it was just for a game or something. If so, not working, how hard would it be to watch he PP’s of teams that have a high success rate and try their plays or system?

by AngelaMc on Jan 4, 2010 9:09 PM EST reply actions

Sarge Cannot be an Excuse

Just because Gonchar is not playing shouldn’t mean the PP doesn’t work. What’s going to happen in two, three, however many years when he retires- then who is going to run it? We need Goligoski and Letang to learn how to run it, which they are. Throw them in the fire and let em learn, sometimes that is the best way.

But it still can’t be excuse. What else are they supposed to though, trade to get someone who is phenomenal on the PP? I think it’s just a trial and error thing until they figure out how to play again.

I did like the few points above from Outcast. You can’t keep going for the fancy plays, just get down and dirty. And as FrankD posted from Gabe, just shoot the puck. We have shooters, in fact that’s probably what everyone on the team is capable of doing, so just start shooting.

by AlexStitch on Jan 5, 2010 2:37 AM EST reply actions