NHL Power Plays Are The Best They've Been In 40 Years

A few days ago, good friend Max Bultman of The Athletic wrote about how the Detroit Red Wings are on pace for the best power play in franchise history by a wide margin. At 28.3%, the Wings would better their previous best by nearly three percent. Being the nerd that I am, I pulled up NHL.com to check out the best power plays of all time (power play stats became available starting in 1977-1978) and I realized that three of the top-15 power plays in NHL history are from this season.

Continuing in said nerd fashion, I had to visualize this to understand if this was simply an outlier season or a continuation of a trend.

Plotting this, we can see that the this year’s median power play of 22.08% is the highest median power play since 1985-1986. The last time the Red Wings won the Stanley Cup, the median power play clicked at 17.66%. Only six teams this season have a power play percentage lower than that.

Using shot quality data (available since 2007-2008 on Evolving-Hockey), we can see that the has been a significant uptick in the caliber of chances generated by NHL teams over the last four seasons. This season, the median power play expected goals for per 60 minutes (xGF/60) is 8.58. In 2007-2008, no team had a PP xGF/60 higher than 7.75.

There have been changes in how shot locations are recorded the last couple of years with a shift to automated recording of shot locations for increased precision. With shot location being a highly important variable in the calculation of expected goals, this likely accounts for some of the variance we’ve seen the last couple of years. Beyond this, I think there’s a few tactical things that have also contributed such as teams using more 4 forward power play units, a shift to more 1-3-1 power play formations from the umbrella, and a greater emphasis on playing below the faceoff dots to generate chances from dangerous areas.

If Detroit does manage to sneak in to the playoffs, their power play will likely be the reason why.