It’s no secret that the Nashville Predators’ power play has been horrible this season. Despite a roster oozing with talent, the Preds are 30th (out of 31) in the National Hockey League, successful just 12.8 percent of the time.
In short, they needed help.
Last Monday, General Manager David Poile swung trades with the Minnesota Wild and Philadelphia Flyers in order to acquire Mikael Granlund and Wayne Simmonds, respectively. Granlund provides a scoring punch and Simmonds has built a career on parking himself in front of the net on the man advantage.
“I think we captured, in both players, a lot of things that we’ve been looking for,” Poile said. “Both players play the power play and both players have been effective on the power play for a long time.”
Despite having the fourth most opportunities (227), Nashville has scored just 29 times on the man advantage all season. The new additions will help that cause in due time. Simmonds had five power play markers for Philadelphia this season and Granlund had two with Minnesota. Add that to the production of Brian Boyle while with the New Jersey Devils and Poile added 13 power play strikes to his club with those three trades.
“Wayne Simmonds brings not only the offensive consistency that he’s had throughout his career — I think he’s got four 20-goal (and two 30-goal) seasons — but he’s a presence on the power play and he really has some good hands around the net. He’s been very effective scoring and helping on the power play for the Philadelphia Flyers.”
While Simmonds might have grabbed most of the headline buzz immediately following the trade deadline, the addition of Granlund shouldn’t be undersold. In the past two seasons, the Oulu, Finland native tallied 69 and 67 points, respectively. This year, on a mediocre Wild club that’s had their share of struggles as well, his 49 points were second on the team before the trade and puts him third on the Predators in that category.
He notched his 50th point of the season with an assist in his Nashville debut.
“There’s no question that we’ve been looking for more secondary scoring in the last little while,” Poile said. “Wherever our coach puts Granlund — whether that’s breaking up our first line or whether it’s enhancing our second line — I am very confident that we’re going to be more of a threat with Granlund in our lineup than we were previously.”
Nashville currently sits atop the Central Division with 83 points but is followed closely by the Winnipeg Jets with 82 while the surging St. Louis Blues and their 78 points peer around the corner like a creepy bully on the playground. If their power play was closer to “middle-of-the-pack” status, Nashville would be running away with the division and might even be challenging the Calgary Flames for top spot in the West.
“It hasn’t been where we want it to be for the majority of the season,” Colton Sissons said. “Our rank in the League tells that story. We talk about it all the time, just sticking together. It’s gonna come, we’re going to get some bounces and we’ll start rolling and hopefully we’ll build some confidence on the power play headed into the playoffs.”
Tyler Dellow of The Athletic wrote a very interesting piece comparing the Chicago Blackhawks (a non-playoff team but with a high PP success rate) and the Nashville Predators (a playoff team but with a low PP success rate). In the post, he breaks down game film and analyzes why the teams are in completely different places. It’s worth the read and perfectly supports what I’ve been saying for months on various radio hits across North America: the ineffectiveness of the power play will cost the Predators a playoff series.
Or will it?
Common sense tells you that, in the playoffs, there are so few opportunities to capitalize on your opponents’ mistakes that it magnifies the importance of special teams. Countless times we’ve seen a heavily favored team get upset by an inferior opponent because of a lazy turnover or because of a weird bounce. Just look at the first round of the 2010 playoffs, for example. Nashville is on the power play and up by a goal with 33 seconds left in Game 5. They have the chance to head back to Music City up 3-2 in a series for the first time in franchise history when Martin Erat elects to make a blind centering pass instead of tying the puck up behind the Chicago net in order to kill clock. Jonathan Toews collects the errant pass attempt and heads down the ice where Patrick Kane eventually scores with 13 seconds left, forcing overtime. Once in the extra session, Marian Hossa jumps out of the penalty box and immediately scores and the Blackhawks go onto win their first Stanley Cup since 1961.
The point is, winners capitalize on chances afforded to them by their opponents and power plays are chances built into every game.
So why should Preds fans have hope that Lord Stanley could still come to Nashville despite their team struggling in such a critical category?
In the last 30 years, four teams have won the Cup despite finishing the regular season with one of the five worst power plays. The 2014 Los Angeles Kings were 27th (of 30), the 1995 New Jersey Devils finished 23rd (of 26) and the 1993 Montreal Canadiens slotted in at 16th (of 21). All three of those teams went onto win the Cup in the playoffs immediately following their less-than-ideal power play production.
Nobody can compare to the 2003 Devils though. They finished dead last (30th of 30), clicking at an embarrassing 11.9 percent. Only 13 different players registered a tally on the man advantage all season long.
NHL Network analyst Mike Rupp was one of those.
“I remember the power play not having success,” Rupp recalled with a smile that could be heard through the phone. “I mean, you still wanted to get a power play but you almost looked at it more from the standpoint of ‘Well, at least we know they’re not going to score in the next two minutes.'”
That’s one way to look at it.
“It was difficult,” he added. “We almost wanted to play them five-on-five because we felt more confident in that.”
To that end, Nashville should too. At full and even strength, the Preds have the 10th best offense in the National Hockey League with 141 goals. In addition, they’ve got the fifth best defense five-on-five, having allowed only 122.
Unless they go on an unbelievable tear in the final 13 games of the season, the Predators will finish 30th or 31st on the power play in 2018-19. Their low 12.8 percent clip is extremely hard to believe given that names like Ryan Johansen, Filip Forsberg, Viktor Arvidsson, Roman Josi, PK Subban, Ryan Ellis and Craig Smith have patrolled the units (when healthy) all season long. Obviously the additions of Simmonds, Granlund and Boyle help that cause going forward but a larger sample size is required before making a final judgment.
As it turns out, all those facts and figures from the regular season have zero baring on winning a Cup. Once the playoffs begin, “the real season” starts and those are the games that truly matter. With that in mind, let’s look at how those historically bad power play units did on their way to hoisting Lord Stanley.
With 16 teams in the field each year, half finished in the middle of the pack, including Rupp’s 2003 Devils who finished seventh.
“I’m sure, at the time, there was different X’s and O’s we were trying do there,” he said about his teams’ turnaround from league-worst to mediocre. “But I think a lot of times when power plays struggle, you always hear about simplifying. That’s why I love having one guy on the power play that’s good at getting pucks through to the net — doesn’t have to be a cannon from up there, doesn’t have to be trying to score a goal from 30 feet out — but just to know that, every time this guy touches the puck, he’s going to try and shoot this thing on net? I think that’s huge when you’re trying to get out of a funk because, if we know that player X is going to shoot it every time he touches it, and we all converge on the net and we all do our responsibilities as far as our layers to the net and taking the goalie’s eyes away, you feel like you’ve got a leg up on the opponent in that aspect.”
Nashville has looked better as of late. They’ve seen consistent zone time and made their opponents work on the penalty kill, something that hadn’t happened throughout much of the season until recently.
“Obviously we’ve scored some goals but, even when we didn’t score, we created more chances and moved the puck quicker,” captain Roman Josi said about the recent outings. “I think winning faceoffs and getting into the zone clean with a good breakout, those things are huge. As soon as you have some zone time and can break down their aggressiveness, you can create a lot more chances.”
Nashville has two goals via the man advantage in their last three games. If they can get that level of production starting April 10, it may not guarantee them anything but it’ll certainly put them in a better position to succeed.
And here’s a little more hope. Did you know that, from 2009 to 2016, not a single Stanley Cup champion finished with a power play in the top half of the League during the regular season? Matter of fact, four finished in the bottom third.
“Listen, it doesn’t have to be clicking at a high percentage, it just has to be timely in the playoffs,” Rupp said. “There’s certainly enough talent on that Preds power play to do some damage. It just has to do timely damage.”
The point of all of this is that it’s not impossible. History shows us that there is hope. Taking advantage of power play opportunities obviously helps but it’s not the end-all, be-all. Regardless of where they finish in the regular season power play rankings, if Nashville can hover around the middle of the pack in the postseason, they can help their cause in their quest to chase Lord Stanley once again.
After all, it’s been done before.
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PHOTO: Michael Gallagher // Penalty Box Radio
