Former Penguins power-play savant Todd Reirden looks to jumpstart struggling unit
The raw numbers, to be sure, are not pretty in regards to the Pittsburgh Penguins power play. But believe it or not, the deeper you dig, the worse it looks.
The Penguins 13.5% conversion rate ranks 24th in the league and would have finished dead last compared to the 31 team’s percentages last season.
By the time the Penguins take the ice for Sunday afternoon’s game against the Washington Capitals, they will have gone 23 days since they last scored a 5-on-4 goal. There are streaks of seven-plus games, 20 opportunities and 25 periods of play (counting overtimes) of extra-man futility.
“We certainly expect higher results from our team,” assistant coach Todd Reirden said earlier this week of the power play, “and the standard and that the Pittsburgh Penguins have established.”
With three potential Hall of Famers and a recent 40-goal scorer among those on the Penguins’ top power play unit, the standard is the standard when it comes to production, and that standard is not being met.
But if the basic statistics are ugly for the Penguins power play, the advances metrics are even less kind. No team has a worse percentage of shot attempts (76.84%) while playing at 5-on-4 this season, according to naturalstattrick.com. That helps explain why only one team is allowing more shorthanded shots than the Penguins (22 among their 27 opportunities) and why only two teams have allowed fewer shorthanded goals (two).
Going even deeper into the analytical weeds, the Penguins have the NHL’s worst expected goals for percentage (76.52%) at 5-on-4 this season. Almost unfathomably, the Penguins haven’t even managed to generate three-quarters of the quality scoring chances while playing at 5-on-4 this season – their 73.33% rate is worst in the league. For perspective, only one other team is lower than 83%.
“It’s a work-in-progress, for sure,” Reirden said of the power play.
The Penguins have scored five power-play goals and allowed two shorthanded goals for a “plus-three” for the season with an extra man through 13 games. That the Penguins have a respectable 27 even-strength goals in 12 games has helped keep their heads above water in the standings, but their power play is viewed as crucial if they are to achieve their goals this season.
“We’re just trying to make sure we understand the importance of, especially this time of year, simplifying things,” said Reirden, who specializes in coaching special teams. “Continuing to have a ‘shot’ mentality and puck-recovery being at the top of the list for things we can do to have success as a group.”
The return of Reirden to the staff was seen as a way to help jumpstart a power play that had fallen to the middle of the NHL pack. It literally was smack in the middle of the league (16th among 31 teams) in conversion rate last season after being in the top five during each of the previous three seasons.
During the final three seasons of Reirden’s previous tenure as an assistant with the Penguins from 2010-14, the Penguins finished fifth, second and first in the NHL in power-play rate.
Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang were members of the No. 1 unit then as they are now. This year’s top power-play typically additionally deploys scoring wingers Jake Guentzel and Bryan Rust.
“Power play (is) something obviously I’ve worked with in the past here and we’ve been able to have success with the group of guys that we had years ago,” Reirden said. “Now, it’s about re-establishing that work environment. We’re working on some things that are some bad habits that have come our way and trying to re-emphasize some things that maybe we had some success with years ago or maybe success I have had with maybe prior teams.”
One area that fans harp on that is not without merit is a lack of shots on goal. Arguably the most guilty on the team of passing up shots indicated he’s getting the message.
“It’s a huge problem – we need more shots,” Malkin said earlier this week. “This is huge. If you’re not scoring, you need to shoot. We try to be nice and pass to each other but I think when you can’t score, simple shots (help).”
Chris Adamski is a TribLive reporter who has covered primarily the Pittsburgh Steelers since 2014 following two seasons on the Penn State football beat. A Western Pennsylvania native, he joined the Trib in 2012 after spending a decade covering Pittsburgh sports for other outlets. He can be reached at cadamski@triblive.com.
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