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The Devils should get Zacha more involved on the power play in 2017-18

July 31, 2017, 11:12 AM ET [55 Comments]
Todd Cordell
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Pavel Zacha didn't have a spectacular rookie campaign -- it was pretty good, not great -- but one area he really excelled in was on the power play.

Part of it was shooting percentage driven, but Zacha led the Devils in 5v4 points per 60 and had more points than all but Taylor Hall and Kyle Palmieri.

I'd like to see him more involved next season and be utilized similarly to the way Mike Cammalleri was as a primary shooter.

Despite Zacha's success (and powerful shot), he wasn't fed a lot of looks on the PP last season and that should probably change.

The Devils run a power play that focuses on getting one guy a ton of shots, which is illustrated in the table below.



Mike Cammalleri took 37% of the shot attempts while on the ice at 5v4, which was good for 2nd in the league and more than guys like John Tavares, Evgeni Malkin, Vladimir Tarasenko, and Jack Eichel.

Kyle Palmieri finished 5th and took a larger percentage of the attempts (35%) than the same stars mentioned above.

I don't think Zacha should be taking more than 30% of the attempts -- unless you have someone like Alex Ovechkin or Patrik Laine, I think it can hurt your power play being that predictable -- but he needs to take more than 13%.

As much as I love Beau Bennett, he probably shouldn't have been taking 7% more of the attempts than Zacha, for example. The latter has one of the best, and most powerful, shots on the team and wasn't really given the opportunity to use it.

With a year under his belt and more shots there for the taking with Cammalleri out of the picture, I think Zacha should be more involved next season.

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