Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Combined Power Play and Penalty Kill Percentages Yield Surprising Results

When you add each teams power play percentage to their penalty kill percentage, you get an idea of a team's overall effectiveness in odd man situations.

The league average for power plays is 17.9% and for penalty kill is 82.1%. The two together come to 100% which would be the gauge for whether a team is above or below average compared to others in the league. Sixteen teams are above the 100% level.

In general, you would think the top teams would be the most effective in special team play but that is not necessarily true.

Teams that are in the top half of the ranking that are not currently in the top eight of their conferences include Minnesota (8th-102.4), Ottawa (14th, 100.9), and Calgary (15th, 100.5).

More surprising are the teams that are in the bottom half that are considered to be stronger teams. That list includes Phoenix (28th, 94.3), Nashville (18th, 99.3), and Boston (17th, 99.6).

The true anomalies on the list are Phoenix and Minnesota. The Coyotes are fairly average on the power play (22nd, 16.2%) and near the bottom on the PK (26th, 78.1) but are still in fourth place in the competitive Western Conference.

Minnesota attains its ranking by being in the top ten in both categories: power play (9th, 18.9) and penalty kill (10th, 83.5). Based on this you would expect the Wild to be better than their eleventh place, ten points out of the playoffs position.

Here are the complete rankings...

Team PP PK Total
VAN 24.8 86.5 111.3
DET 22.6 82.9 105.5
T.B. 20.9 83.0 103.9
ANA 22.3 80.9 103.2
S.J. 23.3 79.9 103.2
CHI 24.0 79.1 103.1
L.A. 16.8 85.9 102.7
MIN 18.9 83.5 102.4
MTL 18.5 83.9 102.4
WSH 16.3 86.1 102.4
PIT 15.6 86.2 101.8
BUF 18.5 83.1 101.6
NYR 17.8 83.4 101.2
OTT 16.8 84.1 100.9
CGY 19.0 81.5 100.5
PHI 16.8 83.4 100.2
NHL 17.9 82.1 100
BOS 16.9 82.7 99.6
NSH 14.8 84.5 99.3
NYI 17.2 82.1 99.3
FLA 13.5 85.5 99.0
N.J. 14.9 83.9 98.8
STL 17.4 81.3 98.7
DAL 17.9 80.0 97.9
CAR 15.9 81.0 96.9
ATL 18.5 77.0 95.5
COL 18.9 76.3 95.2
CBJ 13.9 80.7 94.6
PHX 16.2 78.1 94.3
TOR 15.5 77.7 93.2
EDM 12.8 77.1 89.9


More Later...

Buddy Oakes for PredsOntheGlass

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