The power play unit for the Pittsburgh Penguins hasn't exactly been a model of consistency since the start of the 2008-09 season, finishing 20th in the league a year ago, and currently residing in the 22nd spot through their first 13 games of this season.Take the unit's quarterback, Sergei Gonchar, and arguably the team's best player, Evgeni Malkin, out of the lineup, and it goes from maddening inconsistency to complete disaster.
Since Gonchar went down with a broken wrist against the St. Louis Blues two weeks ago, the Penguins have scored just three goals with the man advantage, clicking at an eight percent success rate, down from the 20 percent mark they had with him.
What's the problem? First, a quick look at some numbers:
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Even though the Penguins have played more games with Gonchar (nine) than they have without him (seven), they've played almost the same number minutes on the power play (perhaps a result of them not scoring as often without him?). Obviously, not only have they scored fewer goals, but they've also generated fewer shots by a significant margin.
Take Malkin out of the lineup, along with Gonchar, and that shots-per-minute number drops from .727 to .610 over the past four games.
That shouldn't be much of a surprise.
So let's take a look at where the shots are being generated from. The blue pluses represent shots when Gonchar is out of the lineup. The red X's outlined in yellow represent shots when Gonchar is in the lineup:
1) The thing that stands out to me is that without Gonchar they aren't generating anywhere near as many shots from the point. Perhaps the most telling stat is the fact that he hasn't played in seven games and he's still tied for the second most power play points on the team -- five.
2) Alex Goligoski has been better than anybody could have expected so far this season, scoring six goals to go with seven assists. But he still needs somebody to work with at the point, and Kris Letang has struggled mightily at times, especially on the power play where he has just two assists despite averaging over four minutes of ice-time per game.
3) The Penguins' power play is 0-for-17 since Malkin went down with a shoulder strain.
While this is a concern, this shouldn't be anything to panic about (yet) because both guys will be back in the lineup eventually. They just need to figure out a way to generate something until that actually happens.
