Paul MacLean used Chris Neil a fair amount on the power-play this year, especially as the season progressed. On the list of things the team needs to fix, stripping him of his 45:55 on the power-play probably isn't at the top of the list. But, it's still a pretty terrible decision.
The argument, as far as I understand it, is that the team needs someone to screen the goaltender on the man advantage. This is a tactic that's used in every organization, so with respect to systems analysis, I don't think there's much of an objection to what Paul MacLean's doing here.
The deployment of Chris Neil in particular to do this job, though, is basically indefensible. I kind of think best practice approach at every level is the type of stuff that leads to long-term success, and at this point, even wasting a single-second on Chris Neil in power-play situations is basically sending the chances of shots being generated and goals being scored through the sink.
Neil's position on this scatter plot is kind of amazing. When he's on the ice, he's not generating shots (obviously), nor is he generating points (also obviously). He's actually the single-worst point generator of any player (the graph below indicates forwards, but you can expand to all skaters and the point holds) since 2007, as noted below:
Of course, one would argue that effective screening -- where Neil does not generate the shot, nor does he generate a point in the event that he can't deflect a shot in -- can still contribute to a productive power-play. In essence, there's a shot quality -- or creation of shot quality -- argument in here. Hypothetically, this would show up in the on-ice numbers, where other players reap the benefits of work that Chris Neil may or may not have provided during his power-play shift.
Well, here's a spread of every above players on-ice goals for per sixty minutes.
So, there's obviously zero evidence he's directly contributing to any power-play success. One would think that a player who was contributing indirectly to his team's power-play success would see marked improvement here. After all, effective screening of the goaltender and creating general havoc in front
are important. It's just that they are important because they can lead to goal-scoring, which would show up in that little graph there. If it shows up, it's miniscule -- hardly enough to warrant ice-time, anyway.
Of all of the decisions Paul MacLean has to make heading into next year (and there are a lot of them), this is probably the easiest. Finding a player who will stand in front of the crease and make life miserable for opposing goaltenders may take a bit of toying and tinkering, but basically anyone with a pulse is going to be more productive and more of a positive contributor than Chris Neil.
And to avoid stating the obvious: this isn't Chris Neil's fault in any way. He's tapped on the shoulder and takes his shift. It's Paul MacLean's job to, uh, not tap him.
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