Early in the season, one of the consistent talking points during Red Wing games was the team's incredibly success on special teams, particularly the Power Play. At one point the team was ranked in the top ten for both power play and penalty kill success. Currently Detroit ranks #1 on the man advantage and #12 when shorthanded. Due to the great importance of special teams in the playoffs, these appear to be encouraging signs as the team heads into the final stretch of the season. However by taking a closer look you find that despite the recent success, the Red Wing's special teams may be what keeps them from playing into May or June.
Today on TSN, Travis Yost wrote a post examining Tampa Bay’s puzzling lack of special team success despite dominating at even strength. In the piece, he argues for the importance of special teams in the playoffs by stating that 66% of the playoff teams who have won at least one-round held a positive special teams shot differential (PP Unblocked Shot Attempts (per 60 min) - PK Unblocked Shot Attempts Against (per 60 min)). Based on raw percentages, Yost shows that the Red Wings have the best special teams goal differential in the league (PP goals – PK goals against). However, when looking at shot differentials, a more predictive measure of success, the Red Wings fall to one of the worst of the projected playoff teams.
To understand the disconnect between the Red Wing's shot generation and their goal totals, I will first take a look at the Power Play. Despite the team's skill, last year was a very poor performance by the Red Wings on the man advantage. The PP was so bad that coach Tom Renney remains a punch line on twitter despite leaving the team. The PP was such a major talking point heading into the season I attributed two separate post breaking down what the Red Wings were attempting to do on the PP, and how teams were able to shut them down. Despite last year's struggles, the team’s PP showed a great deal of improvement at the start of the year and eventually rose to the best unit in the league, just ahead of the feared Washington Capitals and Alex Ovechkin. Despite this impressive performance, recently there have been signs that major problems remained, even prior to Stephen Weiss’ turnovers against Boston.
As Yost discusses, one of the best predictors of PP success is the ability to generate unblocked shot attempts. While some teams try and set up the perfect play, more often than not the best strategy is to listen to the crowd and just fire the puck on net as often as possible. However, outside of a short burst in January and February the Red Wings have not been able to consistently generate shots at a high rate.
The graph shows a ten game rolling average of the Red Wing’s unblocked attempts per 60 compared to the Washington Capitals. As you can see, outside of a single short burst the Red Wings have consistently generate far less shots than Washington and are currently at the lowest level of the season. As a season long average the Red Wings rank only 13th in the same metric, a far cry from their league leading success rate. One of the biggest problems I have observed lately is the team’s failure to carry the puck into the offensive zone, an issue that stems from the breakout, which I addressed in a recent post. In addition to improving zone entries, the Red Wings could drastically improve their in zone numbers by properly utilizing Zidlicky and giving an increased role to Teemu Pulkkinen.
If we change the current PP lineup just slightly, the "1st" unit would allow Datsyuk to be in control of a typical 1-3-1 setup. Kronwall would present a one time opportunity at the point, Nyquist would act as a safety valve or a quick shot option in the slot while Pulkkinen’s one timer would keep teams from cheating toward Datsyuk.
This would still allow the team to run an extremely dangerous "second" unit in which Hank and Zidlicky would both be in position for one time opportunities. Erik Cole would also be available to fit into the Nyquist slot role while Tatar would be free to sneak in for back door opportunities.
There is some flexibility with the units, but by using Zidlicky and Pulkkinen's right handed shots the team would be able to add a dimension they have not possessed since Rafalski retired. This change, and improvement in the zone entries, should allow the team to produce underlying numbers that could sustain the league’s top ranked power play.
Now despite recognizing the problems on the man advantage, recently the penalty kill has become an even larger problem for the Red Wings. Taking the season average, the Red Wings rank 23rd in the league at preventing unblocked shot attempts against per 60 minutes.
As you can see by looking at the Red Wing’s 10 game rolling average compared to Boston, after a very good start to the season the Red Wing’s PK numbers has steadily declined and are at an all time high. Thankfully I also think this issue is correctable and the numbers should improve come playoff time.
One of the reasons for the team’s success early in the season was the incredibly aggressive nature of the forecheck. By pinning teams in their own end and forcing tough passes in the neutral zone the Red Wings prevented teams from setting up in the offensive zone. However as the year has dragged on the team has laid off this extremely tiresome strategy and played more passively in the neutral zone. Hopefully as the team gears up for the playoffs we will see a return of the aggressive forecheck from earlier in the season. It is also worth mentioning that so far this season Datsyuk and Zetterberg have the same amount of shorthanded ice time as Dan Cleary. This is an excellent coaching move by Babcock to preserve his star’s health and energy over the course of a long season. However with the raised stakes of the playoffs and the elimination of back to back games we should eventually see a much larger dose of 13 and 40 on the PK.
While the Red Wings have continued to pile up goals on the Power Play their possession numbers suggest special teams could be a big weakness for this team. Thankfully, I have faith that Mike Babcock and the players can make the small adjustments necessary to lead this team on a long and prosperous playoff run.
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