Have you ever watched an NHL power play and, in a fit of arrogance and jealousy, thought to yourself, I can do better than that defenceman, all he does is skate back and forth along the blue line, receive a pass, and pass the puck, all in the absence of enemy pressure. It’s true that there are times when it seems the role of the defenceman on the power play could be played by a bubble hockey player, eternally chained to a linear path and cursed with hands of stone controlled like an assembly line robot.
This is obviously not the case. It looks easy when everything is going well, and honestly in those times there probably are some beer league heroes who could make it work on the blue line. The problem is that large portions of the power play are spent trying to get poised control of the puck and get all your players in position. That is when the virtues of a great defenceman like skating, puck-moving, stick-handling, and grace under pressure, come in handy. These are not virtues one sees displayed at the local arena at 11 p.m. on a Tuesday night. That’s why these PP 1 defenceman are being paid the big bucks.
The joys of playing on the power play
If you are above a certain skill threshold, and relative to NHL defencemen alone that threshold may not be that high, and are lucky enough to quarterback a power play, you enjoy a significant bump in productivity. Even if your team sits at the bottom of the league like the rotten vegetables at the bottom of your crisper drawer, even if your team is disastrous on the power play, you will benefit greatly from the power play.
Today we’re looking at the joys of playing on the power play as an NHL defenceman. As one of five players on the ice, assuming that three points are rewarded for each goal, which is by far the norm for power plays, you have a 60% chance of scoring a point when your team scores a goal. The average total PP goals scored in the NHL last year was 51.9, which means there were 155.7 PP points awarded to each team on average. If the first PP unit scored 50% of those goals, each player on the first PP could statistically see 46.7 extra points. For a defenceman that’s already a good season. This obviously subtracts out a lot of other important details like injuries or being removed from the PP, and keep in mind that this is based on averages, but the PP is a huge source of points.
Calen Addison, who spent 12 games with Minnesota and 60 with San Jose (the worst team in the standings last year) spent the most time on the PP among San Jose defencemen. He scored six PP points with San Jose and three with Minnesota for nine total PP points on the year. This doesn’t sound like much, but he also scored only 17 points total so his PP points accounted for nearly 53% of his points. Hang in there Addison the future in San Jose is much brighter, not that it has much of a choice.
Next is Philadelphia, the worst PP team in the league last year with a truly abysmal 12.2% success rate. Cam York spent the most time on the PP and scored six PP points, only 20% of his total 30 points. Egor Zamula spent the third most time on the PP but scored the most PP points at nine, 42.8% of his 21 total points.
Now on the other side of things, the New York Rangers led the standings last year and Adam Fox spent by far the most time on the PP among defencemen, he scored 33 points, 45.2% of his 73 total points.
Last is the Tampa Bay Lightning who led the league in PP% at 28.6%. Victor Hedman led the defenceman in PP ice time and scored 31 points, 40.8% of his 76 total points.
How it plays out in today’s game
You might be asking what the point of this article is, other than for nerdy interest. I started looking into this to see if there were defencemen who were considered very good, but were relying very heavily on their PP time. Were there defencemen who were given a big fat contract based on numbers that were buoyed by their PP points?
Here are the top ten defencemen seasons greater than 20 minutes played a night with more than 35 points on the season over the last 10 years, ranked by ratio of PP points to total points.
| Rank | Name | Season | Power Play Points | Total Points | PPP/TP |
| 1 | Brady Skjei | 2022 | 0 | 39 | 0% |
| 2 | Gustav Forsling | 2022 | 0 | 37 | 0% |
| 3 | Josh Manson | 2018 | 0 | 37 | 0% |
| 4 | Jaccob Slavin | 2024 | 0 | 37 | 0% |
| 5 | Darnell Nurse | 2023 | 1 | 43 | 2.3% |
| 6 | Colton Parayko | 2022 | 1 | 35 | 2.9% |
| 7 | Gustav Forsling | 2024 | 2 | 39 | 5.1% |
| 8 | Ryan McDonagh | 2019 | 3 | 46 | 6.5% |
| 9 | Mattias Ekholm | 2024 | 3 | 45 | 6.7% |
| 10 | MacKenzie Weegar | 2022 | 3 | 44 | 6.8% |
The top ten is not especially telling, but players like Gustav Forsling, Ryan McDonagh, Darnell Nurse, Mattias Ekholm, and Mackenzie Weegar appear often at the top. Ekholm is especially consistent, with three seasons in the top 30.
Here are the bottom ten:
| Rank | Name | Season | Power Play Points | Total Points | PPP/TP |
| 1 | Keith Yandle | 2019 | 39 | 62 | 62.9% |
| 2 | Kevin Shattenkirk | 2016 | 26 | 44 | 59.1% |
| 3 | Mark Streit | 2015 | 30 | 52 | 57.7% |
| 4 | Torey Krug | 2020 | 28 | 49 | 57.1% |
| 5 | Kevin Shattenkirk | 2015 | 25 | 44 | 56.8% |
| 6 | Torey Krug | 2019 | 30 | 53 | 56.6% |
| 7 | Rasmus Ristolainen | 2018 | 23 | 41 | 56.1% |
| 8 | Keith Yandle | 2015 | 29 | 52 | 55.8% |
| 9 | Rasmus Ristolainen | 2017 | 25 | 45 | 55.6% |
| 10 | Neal Pionk | 2020 | 25 | 45 | 55.6% |
Seeing results this damning is really rare when looking at any decent sized data set. Four players: Keith Yandle, Kevin Shattenkirk, Torey Krug, and Rasmus Ristolainen all have two season in the ten worst. Krug and Ristolainen each have another season close to the bottom as well. Krug almost has six seasons in the bottom 100.
Note that this is only among defencemen in seasons where they averaged over 20 minutes of ice time. This is so we can look at the players who do spend significant time 5v5, and therefore have the opportunity to score even strength points but don’t as often. Upping the limit to 22 minutes does make a difference in the top ten but barely at all anywhere else. This also only includes seasons with over 35 points scored in order to look at solid productive seasons and to weed out defenseman with small sample sizes.
Originally when I started looking into the statistics I expected Darnell Nurse to be high on the list of defencemen who relied heavily on the power play for their points. I had it in my head that he was given such a large contract due to a great season heavily propped up by PP points. This was wrong on so many counts as Nurse was extended the summer after a 36-point season where he only scored six PP points and average only 1:09 of PP ice time.
I wouldn’t really call Krug overpaid as he scores 35 to 50 points a season and makes $6.5M, but he does rely heavily on the PP. Ristolainen on the other hand is paid $5.1M and his four 40-point seasons were heavily propped by PP points.
Among the greats
Here are some of the top scoring defencemen of all time as well as some more current stars ranked by percentage of points scored on the power play over their entire career:
| Rank | Name | Power Play Points | Total Points | PPP/TP |
| 1 | Al MacInnis | 722 | 1274 | 56.7% |
| 2 | Brian Leetch | 542 | 1028 | 52.7% |
| 3 | Niklas Lidstrom | 590 | 1142 | 51.7% |
| 4 | Phil Housley | 612 | 1232 | 49.7% |
| 5 | Ray Bourque | 761 | 1579 | 48.2% |
| 6 | Larry Murphy | 547 | 1217 | 44.9% |
| 7 | Quinn Hughes | 149 | 333 | 44.8% |
| 8 | Drew Doughty | 297 | 669 | 44.4% |
| 9 | Paul Coffey | 664 | 1531 | 43.3% |
| 10 | Cale Makar | 144 | 336 | 42.9% |
| 11 | Chris Chelios | 407 | 948 | 42.9% |
| 12 | Denis Potvin | 459 | 1052 | 42.7% |
| 13 | Kris Letang | 273 | 742 | 36.8% |
| 14 | Brent Burns | 319 | 881 | 36.2% |
| 15 | Roman Josi | 244 | 686 | 35.6% |
| 16 | Victor Hedman | 259 | 728 | 35.6% |
| 17 | Erik Karlsson | 290 | 817 | 35.5% |
| 18 | Bobby Orr | 324 | 915 | 35.4% |
| 19 | Scott Stevens | 305 | 908 | 33.6% |
| 20 | Larry Robinson | 309 | 958 | 32.3% |
One thing to note here is the variation among all the greats. This is very surprising given that they were all playing the same game and all spent or spend regular time on the power play. The game has changed tremendously, and they were playing across different eras but as this stat is a ratio of PP points to total points, the number of goals scored in each players era is not really relevant.
Does playing on the power play as a defencemen matter?
When you think about this topic in the big picture, one glaring argument presents itself. Don’t we want our defencemen to be good on the power play? Am I not faulting NHL players for being good at something good? This is absolutely true, the power play is a huge part of the game. A team that was 50% on the power play would probably make the playoffs without ever scoring an even strength goal (not an investigated stat), so it isn’t worth crucifying defencemen just for scoring power play points.
On the other hand, far more time is spent at even strength than at a player advantage and I would rather have defencemen that can play the game well for the majority of the way it is played. If the power play points to total points ratio varied by only 3 percent total among all defencemen this article would be entirely useless but the fact is that there are literally defencemen who are having productive, 40-point seasons without scoring a single power play point. If these defencemen played the PP they would likely be scoring 60 points. There are also defencemen who score over 60% of their points on the power play.
That is a huge difference, and that level of deviation deserves looking at, especially if a defenceman is having power play dependent seasons like this regularly.
Photo by Curtis Comeau/Icon Sportswire
