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How the mighty have fallen. In today's Ramblings, we'll look at two teams that struggled on the power play this past regular season after excelling with the man advantage last year.

Carolina Hurricanes

2024-25 PP Success Rate: 18.7% (25^th)

2023-24 PP Success Rate:  26.9% (2^nd)

The Hurricanes went from having one of the league's best power plays to one of the league's worst. So, what exactly happened?

For starters, frequent personnel changes made it difficult for the team to get into a rhythm. During the 23-24 campaign, Sebastian Aho, Seth Jarvis, Michael Bunting (swapped for Jake Guentzel at the deadline), Andrei Svechnikov and Brent Burns were the core group on PP1.

This year, free agent signing Shayne Gostisbehere was brought into replace Burns on the top unit. That move should be considered a success as Ghost led the Canes in power-play points this season, boasting 27 through 70 appearances.

Now, if that was the only change they made, I think they would have finished with a solid power-play rate, but as you know, the story doesn't end there. In late January, they traded Martin Necas for Mikko Rantanen. When that didn't work out, they flipped Rantanen to Dallas for Logan Stankoven. With all these high-end players getting moved around, Carolina's power play was left in flux. There really wasn't much time for new additions to establish themselves and develop chemistry with teammates. You know who was established and had chemistry with teammates? Martin Necas.

When he was traded, Necas had 22 power-play points in 49 games for Carolina. He didn't just lead the team in that category, he ranked fifth in the league. The Hurricanes had a respectable 21.2% PP success rate with Necas, but that dropped to 14.7% after he was traded. Still, I don't think it's fair to conclude that Carolina's power-play struggles were solely a product of losing Necas.

To some extent, they suffered from bad puck luck this year. Last season, when they had the league's second-best power play, the Hurricanes scored on 17% of the shots they took with the man advantage. That number was all the way down at 12% this season – 13.7% before the Necas trade, and 9.4% after it.

If you look at expected goals on the power play, Carolina actually performed similarly this year and last year. Based on expected goals per 60, they generated slightly more offense after Necas was traded (7.58 xGF/60 before vs. 8.46 after). The only problem is they weren't finishing on those chances, as evidenced by the drop in shooting percentage we discussed earlier. Now, some might say this was a product of losing a player with strong finishing ability in Necas, and replacing him with an inexperienced Jackson Blake (Stankoven mostly skated on PP2 down the stretch). I think there's some merit to that suggestion, but I'd like to highlight two other factors: an injured Svechnikov and a snake-bitten Aho.

On February 1^st, Svechnikov missed a game with an upper-body injury. He returned to the lineup for Carolina's next game but then went on to miss seven games in March – again with an upper-body injury – and two games in April. Why is this important? Well, the date that Svechnikov got injured, February 1^st, roughly lines up with the date Necas got traded, January 24^th. That begs the question, how much of Carolina's PP struggles are attributed to Necas' departure vs. Svechnikov's injury. To better understand the impact of that injury, consider that before February, Svechnikov had nine power-play goals in 52 games, boasting a PP shooting percentage of 26.4%. From February onwards, he managed just one power-play goal over 20 games, scoring on just 10% of his shots with the man advantage. Such a drastic drop in shooting efficiency suggests that he might have been hindered by an injury, which took some wind out of Carolina's PP sails.

Setting aside the Necas splits for a second, Carolina's overall PP shooting percentage this year was still lower than last season. To some extent, that may be explained by poor puck luck for Aho, who shot at a surprisingly low 9.8% with the man advantage this year. To provide some context, his power-play shooting percentages over the previous five seasons read 19.6%, 15.9%, 26%, 17.9%, and 18.1%.

Okay, that was a lot of rambling, but what can we take away from all this? The way I see it, the Necas trade removed a great deal of offensive skill from the Hurricanes' top power play. Although Jackson Blake and Logan Stankoven are promising young players who may one day be able to provide a high degree of offensive ability, they didn't really provide that down the stretch in the regular season. In addition, swapping players midseason means that everyone has to adapt and accommodate, and those growing pains likely dampened Carolina's PP success. The fact that they were still generating chances tells me they can be successful without Necas. That belief gains traction when I see that Svechnikov and Aho fell victim to factors that they'll hopefully be free of next season. In 2025-26, better chemistry, a healthy Svechnikov, and a return to normal shooting efficiency for Aho, should allow the Canes to bounce back with the man advantage.

Advanced Stats via Natural Stat Trick.

New York Rangers

2024-25 PP Success Rate:  17.6% (28^th)

2023-24 PP Success Rate:  26.4% (3^rd)

In a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad season, the Rangers power play was one of many things that didn't go right. Given the talent available for the top unit, it's remarkable they performed so poorly, posting the league's biggest drop in power play percentage between this season and the last.

When you look at the underlying numbers, it's kind of surprising they struggled to the extent that they did. Although there was a drop off in their expected goals and high danger chances compared to last year (from 9.75 xGF/60 to 9.08; from 30.22 HDCF/60 to 26.32), they still ranked top 10 in both those metrics this season. A minor decline in chance creation doesn't explain how their power-play success rate went from third in the league to 28^th in the league after just one season, with no major personnel changes.

The way I see it, New York's power-play struggles are mostly explained by bad luck and a lack of confidence, which snowballed over the course of the campaign. Last year, the Rangers ranked ninth in the league with a 15.7% shooting percentage on the power play. This year, they ranked 29^th, with a PP shooting percentage of 11.5%.

This pattern persists at the individual level as Chris Kreider, Vincent Trocheck, Mika Zibanejad and Adam Fox all finished with more expected goals than actual goals. In other words, they had high-quality looks, but those didn't translate to goals as often as you might expect. Now, in Kreider's case, poor finishing was likely due to injury as he dealt with back problems, vertigo and a hand ailment last season. That would explain why he only scored six power-play goals despite leading the team with 11 individual expected goals (ixG). Last season, when he benefitted from better health, he scored 18 power-play goals and had 17 individual expected goals, leading the team in both metrics.  

Now, if you go back one more year to 2022-23, you'll find that Kreider underperformed his expected goals just as he did this year. However, the Rangers' overall success rate with the man advantage was still solid that year because Zibanejad outperformed his individual expected goals by a wide margin. This season, there wasn't one player to save the overall success rate, and with everyone finishing at a lower rate than usual, the team's output suffered.

Now poor finishing alone might not have been the end of the world, but when combined with fewer shots on net, you have a recipe for disaster. If you score on 15% of 100 shots, you have 15 goals, but if you score on 10% of 70 shots, you only have seven. Some of the decline in shot totals may be explained by fewer PP opportunities as the Rangers went from 3.00 per game last year to 2.56 this season. To account for that, we'll look at shots per 60 minutes instead of total shots. The table below illustrates the drastic drop off in shots and shooting percentage between this season and last season for New York's typical top power play group.

	PP Shots/60		PP Shooting %
	2023-24	2024-25	2023-24	2024-25
Artemi Panarin	17.3	14.4	12.9	13.3
Mika Zibanejad	16.9	15.0	15.1	11.8
Chris Kreider	15.2	14.3	24.6	12.7
Vincent Trocheck	12.8	11.1	18.0	11.9
Adam Fox	8.3	6.9	17.1	4.0

         Stats via NHL.com

Of course, personnel changed following the acquisition of JT Miller as he stepped onto PP1 while either Trocheck or Kreider skated on PP2. There were other tweaks including Zac Jones stepping in for an injured Adam Fox down the stretch, but Miller for Trocheck/Kreider was the most noteworthy change. Miller's arrival didn't really improve the team's power-play metrics, but it did seem to benefit Zibanejad. Prior to the trade, Zbad scored three goals on 32 shots with the man advantage over 50 games. With Miller in the fold, Zbad managed four power-play goals on 27 shots in just 32 games.

Looking ahead to next season, I think the Miller-Zibanejad connection could help the Rangers bounce back on the man advantage. Other factors that will help include a healthy Chris Kreider, better puck luck and a mandate to put more pucks on net. I believe there's a good chance of those things happening, so I'm optimistic New York will bounce back with the man advantage. Of course, there could be other changes afoot with Mike Sullivan replacing Peter Laviolette behind the bench, so keep an eye on those first few games of the season to gauge changes in PP personnel or strategies.

Advanced Stats via Natural Stat Trick.

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Thanks for reading! Hope you have an awesome week ahead :)