We are just a couple of weeks from the draft, the weekend is here, and that means it's a great time to purchase your copy of the 2023 Dobber Hockey Prospects Report! Get updates and forecasts on several prospects from every NHL franchise, as well as an in-depth look-ahead to this year's draft class. Support what we do here (and over on Dobber Prospects) and get all the fantasy hockey prospect information necessary in one fell swoop.

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After Florida fell behind Vegas 2-1 in their Game 3 matchup thanks to power play goals from Mark Stone and Jonathan Marchessault, Matthew Tkachuk tied it up with a little over two minutes left to send everyone to overtime. The goalie had been pulled and he fired home a rebounding point shot. What made the tally remarkable was Tkachuk left the game earlier after taking a big hit from Keegan Kolesar. He missed roughly 18 minutes of game time over the first and second periods, but his return proved massive for them.  

Carter Verhaeghe played the hero as a wrist shot from 50 feet on a nothing play eluded Adin Hill to lift the Panthers to their first-ever franchise Stanley Cup Final win. More importantly for this team, it keeps Florida in the series and are one home win away from turning the Final into a best-of-three. All this after being just 2:15 away from a 3-0 series deficit. We have a series on our hands and more hockey is fine with me.

It was a big goal for Verhaeghe, who'd managed just one assist over the team's last five games but had two points on the evening. A surge from him at this moment could be a difference-maker for him.

Brandon Montour looked to be injured late in the game, leaving for a while but returning in overtime. Keep an eye out for an update on him.

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I try to avoid trade/signing speculation in these pages in general, but especially at this time of year. It's when agents leak information (true or not) to try and improve their client's image, so a lot of the stuff we see from the hockey insiders is just marketing.

The situation with Pierre-Luc Dubois is a bit different. TSN's Pierre LeBrun said on Wednesday night that Dubois's agent informed Winnipeg he won't re-sign with the team, not even a one-year deal to walk him to unrestricted free agency. The team has the option to qualify him, of course, but it seems very clear the situation is heading towards a trade at some point this offseason.

It is tough to get a grasp on PLD's fantasy value. Seems as if he's s safe 25-goal, 60-point guy, but there is a concern as to how power-play reliant he is: nearly half of all his goals (55) came on the power play (26) over the last two years. It isn't a huge problem so long as there's good 5-on-5 scoring as well, but there's not. Dubois has a lower 5-on-5 goal rate over the last two years than Zemgus Girgensons, Barclay Goodrow, Lars Eller, and Matt Nieto.

The crux of his scoring is his shooting percentage; Dubois shot 11.9% at 5-on-5 in Columbus but just 7.9% in Winnipeg. If he can get back around 11% consistently, that changes his outlook a lot. We'll have to see where he lands and assess then, but this is an interesting trade name when considering his recent history and his age.  

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It is the end of the week and my Ramblings earlier this week covered players who took large market shares of their team's shots, and players who performed very well by some playmaking metrics when comparing to their team. All that was at 5-on-5, though. As important as 5-on-5 play is, when it comes to the fantasy game, power play production makes-or-breaks value for a lot of players. All we have to do is look at players like Carter Verhaeghe, Nikolaj Ehlers, Filip Chytil, or Ryan Hartman, what they've done at 5-on-5, the lack of PP production, and the fantasy value left on the table because of it.

To that end, let's review some power play data from this past season. We are looking specifically at 5-on-4 because it's by far the most common power play state (over 5v3 and 4v3) so it gives us the most workable data. I will also mention that while some guys are light years above the rest – looking at you, Edmonton – a lot of very good offensive players can't drive a power play themselves, and systems matter a lot.

With those caveats out of the way, let's look at some 5-on-4 data. We will be using our Frozen Tools, Natural Stat Trick, or Corey Sznajder's tracking data, unless otherwise indicated.

First, we're going to look at dangerous passes. Using the tracking data, we can help differentiate between any old pass on the power play, and ones that set up scoring chances. Now, one pass doesn't make a power play as it often needs to be a chain of events that leads to a goal. Players that make a lot of non-dangerous passes are often setting up the ones that are, and that presents the dilemma of “who is the dangerous passer: the guy making the final, dangerous pass, or the guy(s) making all the passes to set up that one final, dangerous pass”. We are just looking for players who are often the next-to-last link in the power play chain in hopes of finding out what happened last season, and what might happen next season. It doesn’t tell us who is/is not an elite power play goal-driver for their team.

To give an idea of what to expect, we have 83 forwards in our sample (such is the nature of focusing on special teams). The average percentage of passes that lead to scoring chances is 23.7% and one standard deviation above that average is 33.3%. Here are those players that are sitting with at least 33.3% of passes leading to scoring chances:

Alright let's talk about some of the players listed, and others, and what it could mean moving forward.

Teuvo Teravainen

It was a tough year for Teravainen. It was his worst PP production season, other than his 21-game Bubble season, since getting to Carolina, his worst 5-on-5 production since his first season in Carolina, a six-year low in overall points rate, and it felt like the only reason he kept anything resembling a meaningful role were the injuries to Andrei Svechnikov and Max Pacioretty. I wonder how effective Teuvo is in Carolina's offence, given their propensity for firing pucks from the blue line for tips/deflections/rebounds rather than crisp puck movement down low. Despite his playmaking prowess, it is now two straight years of poor production, and it can’t all be blamed on the systems. It is concerning and if the team starts to reload, he may never regain a full-time top PP role without more injuries.

Dylan Cozens

It kind of surprised me to see Cozens so high, given the talent of the forwards on the Buffalo power play. But when looking at the passing distribution, it all went through Rasmus Dahlin. He had 69 tracked passes at 5-on-4 in this sample, and no Buffalo forward had even 30. Dahlin had 17 scoring chance assists overall and Cozens (8) was the only Buffalo forward with more than four. That isn't terribly uncommon – Roman Josi and Erik Karlsson do something similar – but it does highlight that maybe some of Buffalo forwards are more interchangeable on the power play than we thought. That is something to keep in mind on a team with Jack Quinn, JJ Peterka, Casey Mittelstadt, and some really good prospects on the way.

Jamie Benn

It did strike me as curious that the two Dallas forwards that have the highest ratio of scoring chance passes were neither Jason Robertson nor Roope Hintz. Benn and Joe Pavelski led the team in goals/60 at 5-on-4, and also in dangerous pass percentage. (Robertson is still the most important player on the power play.) Regardless, with how well Benn performed at 5-on-4 this year, and how well he played with Wyatt Johnston, he may have gotten a second life on his NHL career; his 5-on-5 offensive tracking metrics were great as well:

Yeah, he might really be back.

Kyle Connor (30%) and Mark Scheifele (3.7%)

Winnipeg's leader in total scoring chance assists on the power play was Connor, and he also led them in scoring chances. Meanwhile, Scheifele actually had the second-lowest rate of scoring chance assists-to-total passes in our sample of 83 forwards. There is a reason Connor had the lowest 5-on-4 goals rate of his career while Scheifele had a three-year high despite the power play declining when compared to 2021-22.

As mentioned in the Ramblings yesterday, Scheifele could very well be moved this summer. We will have to see what the Jets roster looks like at the end of September, but it's not a death-knell for the team's power play if Scheifele and Pierre-Luc Dubois are traded. Connor, along with Nikolaj Ehlers and Josh Morrissey, are capable of picking up some slack.

Drake Batherson (28.6%)

This is where I'm starting to notice a pattern: a lot of the guys with a high rate of passes/scoring chance assists are guys that play the slot/net-front spot. That is where Cozens and Benn both play, and it's where Drake Batherson was situated as well. (With the understanding that players move around on the power play, we are going by power-play shot locations provided by HockeyViz, and for Batherson that means the slot/net-front area.) When we think of why that may be, it makes sense: forwards that play the middle of a 1-3-1 power play setup aren't the guys passing the puck around the edges. It's why neither Leon Draisaitl nor Connor McDavid appear on this list of dangerous power-play passers despite us knowing just how dangerous they are. They will make several passes hoping for that one super-clean look, and I’m going to go out on a limb to say it’s been working for Edmonton. That duo also has the talent to do that, and that vast majority of the NHL does not.

I was one of the people that thought Batherson (or even Tim Stützle) would end up on the short end of the PP ice time distribution in Ottawa. A healthy Josh Norris might change things, but a departing Alex DeBrincat would as well. We will see where things stand once the team starts making moves (or just finds an owner).

Nick Suzuki (27.6%)

As bad as the Montreal power play was, Suzuki led the team's forwards in both PP scoring chances and PP scoring chance assists (an injured roster around him was a big culprit as to why that happened). By the time Rafael Harvey-Pinard and Mike Matheson made their way to the top PP unit, the Habs actually started scoring on the power play as if they were a real NHL team. With Suzuki's passes carrying roughly the same scoring-chance efficiency as Robert Thomas (28%), Jason Robertson (27.9%), and Jesper Bratt (26.2%), he might really be the engine the power play needs to succeed, along with RHP, Matheson, and Cole Caufield.

Seth Jarvis (3.7%)

Not a typo. Jarvis had literally one tracked pass lead to a scoring chance out of 27 passes made. Of 144 forwards in the NHL with at least 160 minutes at 5-on-4 in 2022-23, Jarvis was one of three that failed to register a secondary assist. The other two guys played for Seattle.

I was really impressed with Jarvis in the playoffs, and with his rookie season, but it's clear he's still putting it all together. I got ahead of myself on his second-year breakout that did not come to fruition. The disparate parts of a successful offensive player are all here, but assembling them into consistently-good offensive performance is another matter. Hopefully he has a Martin Necas-like breakout coming soon, and I think he will. He is very, very talented offensively.

Trevor Zegras (15.4%)

Lastly, we'll discuss Zegras, because he ties into the latest Ramblings as well. His scoring chance assist rate at 5-on-5 was excellent during the 2022-23 season, especially when considering the roster around him. On the power play, though, it was Troy Terry (28.6%) who was the dangerous passer. Zegras was more involved – he made way more passes in general – and that helped his PP assist rate lead the Ducks. Again, this is a situation where Terry often played the net-front with Zegras on the periphery, which is why Zegras had higher passing totals but lower efficiency rates. It will be interesting to see how this works out under a new coach because these two seem to have complementary PP skills, and more help around them could really help the power play flourish.