A little less than half way into this shortened season the Washington Capitals have the fifth best power play in the NHL. That’s great! That is where every team wishes they could be. They hope their power play will be top ten, top five and even the best in the league. Overall, at 26.7% the Caps are probably where they want to be.
As most Capitals fans probably know however is that number is a little misleading. The Caps power play at home has been explosive. When on the man advantage this team is scoring a goal almost every other opportunity. In twenty-nine opportunities they have scored thirteen goals.
That gives the Capitals home power play a 44.8% success rate. That is the best in the NHL, the next highest being the Boston Bruins who have a 40.9% home PP. To round out the top five you have the Islanders at 37.5%, the Hurricanes at 36.7% and the Blackhawks at 34.4%. All very good power plays and the Capitals towering over most of them.
The power play on the road is a very different story. Usually when you start to see power plays struggling they are around the 16% range. If you start getting in the 13-12% range your power play, for the lack of a better word just sucks. Right now the Caps road PP is at 9.7%.
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How?
How can you clearly have the best power play in the league when you’re at home and then turn around and have one of the worst on the road? There are people who are a lot better at breaking down X’s and O’s than I am, so I won’t fool you into believing what I have to say when it comes to things like that.
What I can do however is look at the numbers and see what one power play is doing better than the other. And, after looking at said numbers I can tell you this. There isn’t a huge difference in these power plays at all.
When you see one power play scoring a ton of goals you expect to see a ton of shots and scoring chances and high danger attempts and, obviously, the opposite for the one that is doing poorly. That’s not the case for Washington.
The home PP looks like this.
4:03 TOI/PG
2.72 shot attempts
1.62 shots
1.20 scoring chances
.41 high danger attempts
27.66% shooting percentage
Just a note here, shot attempts, shots, scoring chances and high danger attempts are per power play.
Now we can look at the road PP.
4.55 TOI/GP
2.58 shot attempts
1.64 shots
1.06 scoring chances
.41 high danger attempts
5.88% shooting percentage.
The only difference you can see is at home they are getting slightly more scoring chances and shot attempts, but that is not something that can explain a 35% gap.
The only thing to look at is the shooting percentage. We can even break that down a little more if you would like. At home, their shooting percentage on scoring chances is 40.74%. On the road it is also below 10% at 9.09%.
Again, someone better at analyzing games can probably break this down a lot better than I can. Are zone entries better? Do they get more traffic at home? Those would be questions I have. The numbers though are very even. They are not getting that many more chances at home and they aren’t really getting any more high danger chances.
The only thing you can look at numbers wise is shooting percentages. At home, according to the stats, they are just much more clinical and deadly. If that is the only difference I’d expect both of these power plays to even out. At some point the road power play will get clicking and the home power play might hit a bit of a stall.
It’s something to look out for. We’ll see if or when things start to even out.