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The Ottawa Senators maligned power-play has been a hotbed of discussion for the length of the regular season. Some of it's a result of last year's offensive success. You know, high-water mark and all of that.
Ottawa's offense was rhythmic last year, but the power-play did lag behind a bit. For a team that averaged about three goals per game, you'd expect something slightly more impressive than an 18% conversion rate. It was still good enough for eleventh in the league, but still a few points off of true leaders in Nashville, San Jose, Edmonton, and Vancouver.
A bit oddly, this year's team has been more dominant driving possession at even-strength, but struggling mightily to find the back of the net. The Senators were 27th in the league in regular season scoring, a lot of that driven by a middling 15.9% conversion rate on the power-play. There was kind of a weird dynamic in most Ottawa games this year: the Senators would be dominating tempo (and, likely not scoring), draw a penalty, then watch everything go to shit.
The team's regular season goal-scoring woes probably had obvious correlation with the loss of guys like Jason Spezza, Erik Karlsson, Milan Michalek, and so on. Stripping the team of guys who create offense and find the back of the net regularly doomed the offense from the get-go, particularly at evens.
The trickle-down effect to the power-play was noticeable. It remains so. Paul MacLean's spoken about it before, but the team really has trouble pushing pace these days, even with a healthy roster. Erik Karlsson used to be what stirred the pace drink, but his skating is a shell of his former self. For what it's worth, he's still one of the three best entry/possession guys, Kyle Turris and Mika Zibanejad being the other two.
What I find ultimately frustrating about the power-play as opposed to even-strength is that a lot of the mistakes are self-inflicted. The team resorts to a ton of dumb stuff at inopportune times: dump-ins at center-ice has been the most grating of all, and thankfully, the return of Erik Karlsson's kind of mitigated that.
There's another thing that I've regularly pointed out this year when Ottawa's on the man advantage, and that's their almost cult-like obsession with setting up a one-timer to [normally] Kyle Turris / Daniel Alfredsson along the half-wall. If you recall (and I'm sure you do), the team had weird success with this last year and early this season: I kind of recall Alfredsson drilling Boston twice with the same shot, and Kyle Turris doing the same against Florida this season.
The thing about the play is that the entire success of the play is predicated on whether or not a shooter can pick the tiniest hole in the goaltender's cage. The angle is absolutely brutal. They did it a few times (with either absurd accuracy, or luck, or both), and now they treat it like the gold standard. In some ways, hard to blame 'em for going back to the well. Problem is, the well dried up a long time ago.
To give you some kind of examples here, I've put together a pretty simple diagram and included a sampling of screen shots that kind of show a variety in set, and variety in defense against.
Some stills:
The one I referred to earlier -- Kyle Turris' goal against Florida. Look at the angle here. It's insane to ask a shooter to regularly hit that against NHL-caliber goaltending.
What happens when the penalty kill is ramping up the pressure? Alfredsson gets pushed up the half-wall and resorts to this one-timer. The entire kill team -- goaltender included -- are in position to stop the shot. There's nothing here other than hoping for a rebound, and remember, this is setup after a lengthy cycle. It's barely a step above giving the puck away and skating for a change, considering the amount of work put into it.
Another, this one against Buffalo, and reverse-angle to Zibanejad:
I don't think Ottawa's coaching staff has these low percentage shots in mind. I do think that this is more along the lines of what they're trying to set-up: a guy at the point, drawing the defense in, and finding a high-quality chance with space like this:
You can go back through the video and cull countless examples. And, this singular play isn't the only thing that ails this team. There were some pretty great moments though: Ottawa sending out Daugavins-Regin-O'Brien down one goal in the third period against Philadelphia was probably a high-point of the season. Or low-point.
Ottawa's power-play is going to need to be decisively better if they have any hope at beating Pittsburgh in their second-round series. The Penguins put on a clinic last night up a man. The Senators may not have the exact talent to be as precise and as surgical as their adversary, but there's no need to handcuff output with a setup/play that's doing little more than helping Penguins penalty killers shave time off of the clock.
Oh, one more. If you are a masochist and want to see the difference between pre-injury Karlsson and post-injury Karlsson, watch him work on the power-play. He was the fastest skater on the ice prior to the achilles injury. It wasn't close. Now? It's ... not encouraging.
Hopefully a lengthy camp to work on that leg can restore his skating to what it once was. He's still got elite-level skill, but the skating just isn't there.
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