Hey, everyone. Today is normally Dobber’s day for Ramblings but he spent some much-deserved time on Father’s Day with his family and I said I would step in for the day. He’ll be back in these pages tomorrow but you’re stuck with me for today.

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Vegas’s Stanley Cup parade was on Saturday night, and the party went well into Sunday, it appears. Regardless, William Karlsson gave a great speech:

William Karlsson is in rare form pic.twitter.com/TgC5dMvoCD

— Jesse Granger (@JesseGranger_) June 18, 2023

He was a little, let’s say, under the weather, but it’s hard not to watch guys like him, Jonathan Marchessault, and Reilly Smith, and not feel some sort of appreciation for what was accomplished. Whatever anyone thinks about expansion rules or salary cap management or injury reserve ploys or whatever else, the heart of this team is still a group of players that were shipped off by their respective franchises; heck, Karlsson’s selection was part of a cap dump to get rid of David Clarkson’s contract. Since leaving Columbus, Karlsson is tied with David Pastrnak for the fifth-most 5-on-5 playoff goals in the league. So, yeah, let him ramble from the heart a bit. He’s earned it.

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The changes in how the defence position is played continue unabated, not the least of which is the importance of power-play production. Power play opportunities per game were an eight-year high, power-play goals were a 13-year high, and power play efficiency reached its higher mark since 1986. No defenceman that reached at least 55 points in 2022-23 had fewer than 15 PPPs, and no defenceman that reached at least 65 points had fewer than 27. Of the 20 defencemen that cracked the 50-point plateau, just one (Devon Toews, 7) had fewer than 10 PPPs. On Yahoo! Fantasy – which includes plus/minus, shots, and blocks – each of the top-12 defencemen had at least 23 PPPs. So, yes, the power play is ultra-important, and it’s why we’ll review power-play passing efficiency; for our purposes it's just the rate of scoring chances set up as a share of total passes made by a defenceman on the power play.

Efficiency is a big part of power plays these days. Teams do still shoot from the points or look for a booming one-timer, but there is also a lot of small-area passing done, and making sure those passes count matters a lot. More passes can lead to easier goals, so turning perimeter passes into scoring chances should be a priority. In fact, when I was cross-referencing the data from Natural Stat Trick and Corey Sznajder's tracking data, I found that a player's power-play passing efficiency from the previous season had nearly an identical correlation to his points per minute on the power play the next season as the rate of PP goals scored with him on the ice the year prior. In other words, a defenceman's PP passing efficiency from 2021-22 was as important to his 2022-23 power-play production as was how often his team scored on the power play in 2021-22.  

For that reason, I want to look at defencemen with high (or low) passing efficiency in 2022-23. The data will be from the tracking set just referenced, though primary sources will include Frozen Tools. This will be power-play data, but strictly from 5-on-4 situations, and not every power-play strength. Just keep in mind that when we talk about the power play, we’re specifically discussing 5-on-4 situations.

Among the blue liners in the sample, the average percentage of scoring chances generated from all passes made is 16.7%. The super-efficient players are over 24% and the inefficient players are under 9%. Let's start at the top, and here was the top-5 by passing efficiency on the power play:

I think most of those names make sense. Let's talk about some above-average players. 

Vince Dunn

It is not a surprise to see Cale Makar at the top of the list, but to have Vince Dunn nipping at his heels right behind him certainly is. Not that Dunn is a bad player – he's quite good – but when we're talking about super-efficient, high-end power-play defencemen, he's not the second name I think of after Makar, and he's far ahead of third on this list, too.

The weird part is that Justin Schultz had a much higher on-ice PP goal rate this season, and a much higher points rate. There is a lot more to a power play than a single player playing well, especially on a team that doesn't have several elite forwards like Colorado, Toronto, Tampa Bay, Edmonton, Boston, Dallas, or Florida. Schultz did carry the puck more often, so maybe that was part of it, but it doesn't matter a whole lot for right now. Until Seattle accumulates more high-end forwards, and the PPTOI is concentrated on one unit, it will be hard to rely on either Dunn or Schultz for 20 PPPs.

Mikhail Sergachev

One of the more underrated stories of the 2022-23 season was the changing of the guard on the Tampa Bay blue line. Perhaps we can chalk it up to injuries on Victor Hedman's part, but he and Sergachev were separated by one (1) second of PPTOI per game; it was a gap of 115 seconds just a season ago. That led to Sergachev putting up 27 power-play points, tied for 10^th among defencemen, and as many as Erik Karlsson.

Helping Sergachev along was the fact that he not only was one of the most efficient PP passers, but he also had one of the highest rates of PP unit setups off zone entries, meaning he was often the reason the Lightning power play could even set up in the first place. By that measure, his 62.5% dwarfs Hedman's 35.7%. Not only was he setting up the power play, but he was setting up the scoring chances, too. Maybe there is good reason he ended up with more 5-on-4 PP points than Brayden Point despite three fewer games played.

It is worth noting that Sergachev basically took over the top PP role down the stretch, more than doubling Hedman's PPTOI after the Trade Deadline. Again, maybe Hedman was playing hurt and they wanted to manage minutes, but he's going into his age-33 season with a lot of miles on his track record. This really does seem like a changing of the guard.

Kris Letang (21.2%)

There are so many 'what-ifs' surrounding the 2022-23 Penguins that they'd need their own month of Ramblings to cover them. Among them, certainly, was a power play that was very middle-of-the-road despite all of Pittsburgh's power play forwards being healthy pretty much all year. Letang missed time, but still played 64 games.

It is worth noting that with the top guys on the ice, the team scored 8.4 goals per 60 minutes but when Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin had any defenceman but Letang, goals dropped by 16%. Things were much worse with Jeff Petry running things, and Letang's passing efficiency is likely part of it. I wouldn't bet against the power play rebounding, to some degree, in 2023-24, though they might need some fresh ideas on how to run it.

Adam Fox (17.9%)

I bring up Fox for the simple reason that he's one of the players that consistently performs well, but not great, and yet he's third in power-play points among defencemen over the last two seasons. Health and a consistent role help a lot, obviously, but he's been an anchor for them back there.

The curious part is that the Rangers generated 8% more PP shots in 2022-23 than 2021-22 with Fox on the ice and yet shooting percentages (and goals) plummeted. Vincent Trocheck took far more shots in 2022-23 than Ryan Strome took in 2021-22 but had a much lower shooting percentage. He's not the whole reason, but that is a big reason why the New York power play fell off, even with Fox as good as ever. Hopefully, a full year of chemistry helps in 2023-24 (or just using Filip Chytil instead, but I digress).

And now for the bottom of the list:

Drew Doughty

I wonder how many people realize the Los Angeles Kings were third (!) in the NHL in goals per minute on the power play, trailing Edmonton (by a lot) and Dallas (by a little). The reason was that they had two above-average power-play units with the second unit, spearheaded by Sean Durzi, being excellent.

Doughty ran the top unit and had a very good 60-minute points rate on the power play (5.8), exceeding names like Roman Josi (5.7) and Adam Fox (5.0). What I will say is that of the 24 defencemen with at least 200 power-play minutes in 2022-23, Doughty was the only one to get at least 60% of his points from secondary assists. When looking at his lack of passing efficiency, that makes sense; he wasn’t a primary set-up guy. Doughty was also the only defenceman in that sample to not have set up the Kings power play on a zone entry a single time (the power-play average was about 39%). With Brandt Clarke on the way, and Sean Durzi showing well in an offensive role, perhaps the countdown to Doughty's PPTOI crash has begun, much like Hedman's in Tampa Bay.

Calen Addison

The Minnesota power play has been very uneven the last couple of years. While the top unit has generally performed well, Kirill Kaprizov has spent at least 20 of his 492 PP minutes with five different defencemen. As far as actual goal-scoring goes, though, the top PP unit has been best served with either Addison or Jared Spurgeon.

Addison turned 23 in April and has just 80 regular season games to his name. That inexperience may have transferred to the power play where his passing efficiency was poor, and eventually helped cost him the role (and a spot in the lineup). With the team strapped for cap space, Addison has the inside track to the top PP role once again, but the emergence of Brock Faber could be a problem for him to hold onto that role. The 2023-24 season is a big one for Addison, especially if he gets a bridge deal as a pending RFA.

Quinn Hughes (10.5%)

The weird thing about Hughes is that his passes are generally inefficient, but those of his forwards are not, and that balance helped the top PP unit perform well enough again, though much worse than 2021-22. A big reason Hughes was able to rack up so many assists was Andrei Kuzmenko shooting 33% with the man advantage, giving Hughes a few more assists than he otherwise would have. Regardless of Hughes's inefficiency, the team around him is the opposite, and it's fair to wonder if Hughes's ability to just constantly move the puck doesn't open lanes for better passes from his forwards. Power plays are complicated.

I do not think Filip Hronek is any real threat to Quinn's top PPTOI barring a serious injury or catastrophic underperformance. For science, though, it would be interesting to see Hronek run the top PP unit for half a season to see just how much Hughes helps the top unit; it's probably a lot, but it would still be fun to see.  

Noah Dobson (12.5%)

In one of the least-surprising entries on either list, Noah Dobson's passing efficiency struggled on the power play in 2022-23. Among their forwards, Brock Nelson and Mathew Barzal created chances on 18.3% of their passes; in Vancouver, J.T. Miller and Elias Pettersson sat at 23.7% while Mika Zibanejad and Artemi Panarin were at 23.6% for the Rangers. The inefficiency is pervasive, and it's one reason the Islanders finished 31st in goals per minute at 5-on-4.

With Nelson, Barzal, and Nelson on the ice for the power play in 2021-22, the team scored 8.9 goals per 60 minutes. That fell to 7.2 in 2022-23. It wasn't that the power play necessarily got worse – they shot a lot more – but the passing efficiency from Barzal/Nelson fell from 22.7% to the aforementioned 18.3%. I wouldn't get overly hung up on one season, but this top unit has a ceiling, and it's not as an elite power play.