Worst Penalty-Killing Teams since 1963
by Hawerchuk on Jan 10, 2010 8:27 PM EST
20 comments
The NHL first started recording power-play and penalty-kill opportunities during the 1963-64 season. With Toronto's partial season called out, the 10 worst teams since then have been:
| Year | Team | PK% |
| 2009-10 | Toronto Maple Leafs | 68.32 |
| 1979-80 | Los Angeles Kings | 67.7 |
| 1982-83 | Los Angeles Kings | 68.24 |
| 1978-79 | Washington Capitals | 70.25 |
| 1984-85 | Vancouver Canucks | 70.53 |
| 1978-79 | Colorado Rockies | 70.62 |
| 1981-82 | Los Angeles Kings | 71.29 |
| 1974-75 | Washington Capitals | 71.34 |
| 1985-86 | Los Angeles Kings | 71.7 |
| 1977-78 | Vancouver Canucks | 71.74 |
There's a lot of repetition there: the very bad Kings teams of the early 1980s; some equally-awful Canucks and Capitals teams; and the Rockies team that was so bad somebody thought it would be a good idea to hire Don Cherry to coach the next season. And almost all of these seasons occurred during a period of high-scoring and talent dilution. What if we look at how team penalty-kills did relative to the league penalty-killing average?
| Year | Team | PCT AVG |
| 2009-10 | Toronto Maple Leafs | -16.1 |
| 1979-80 | Los Angeles Kings | -13.4 |
| 1982-83 | Los Angeles Kings | -11.5 |
| 1974-75 | Washington Capitals | -10.5 |
| 1993-94 | Ottawa Senators | -9.9 |
| 1984-85 | Vancouver Canucks | -9.3 |
| 1978-79 | Washington Capitals | -9.1 |
| 1970-71 | Vancouver Canucks | -9.1 |
| 1977-78 | Vancouver Canucks | -9.0 |
| 1976-77 | Minnesota North Stars | -9.0 |
The list doesn't move around that much - we get a few more bad teams from the talent dilution era, a brutal 2nd-season Senators team...And your 2009-2010 Toronto Maple Leafs.
No matter how you slice it, this year's Leafs take is historically bad on the power-play. Every single player with regular PK time other than Jeff Finger has given up goals at a rate that's worse than the league-average. Mike Komisarek, Nikolai Kulemin, Wayne Primeau and Francois Beauchemin have been particularly bad, allowing goals at double the NHL average, or worse. Komisarek's poor PK work is made even worse because he did not even play against top PP lines at 4-on-5. And let's not forget Vesa Toskala, who has had a humiliating 768 save percentage down a man - that's so bad that it can't all be the fault of the skaters in front of him.
I'm not sure there was any way to predict that the Leafs PK would be so bad. They were awful last year, but they brought in several defensemen who've had success killing penalties in the past, along with a better goaltender. And yet they went a bit in the wrong direction. It's hard to be this bad for any length of time, so expect them to improve to something other than an historic failure in the future. And remember that it could always have been worse: the Minnesota Wild went from having the best penalty-kill in 2008-09 to 28th in the league this season.
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It’s hard to identify one thing to blame for a team’s poor play, but when it gets this bad it’s hard to ignore. Especially when you’re talking about a team that’s leading the league in shots!
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by Bettman's Nightmare on Jan 10, 2010 8:39 PM EST reply actions
And yes, I know they’re 30th in team SV%…
Bettman's Nightmare: A Blog Where Hockey Aficionados Dismantle That Mighty Empire, One Balsillie at a Time
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by Bettman's Nightmare on Jan 10, 2010 8:46 PM EST up reply actions
I hope this finally puts to bed the idea that “hitting hard” is the same as “playing defense.” Toronto famously invested heavily in “truculence” this offseason. But did they really make the team any better?
(I love the fact that the photo is Matt Cooke putting the biscuit in the basket. When Cooke is scoring power play goals on you, you know you’re bad. Hell, this season, when any Penguin scores a power play goal…)
Atta dinnin stick a who!
oddly enough, the Leafs had 0 players in the top 50 for hits in the league at half-season
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by Bettman's Nightmare on Jan 10, 2010 9:49 PM EST up reply actions
And 15th in the league in team hits
Bettman's Nightmare: A Blog Where Hockey Aficionados Dismantle That Mighty Empire, One Balsillie at a Time
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by Bettman's Nightmare on Jan 10, 2010 9:53 PM EST up reply actions
Hits and other real-time stats are tough because the way they are accounted for vary from rink to rink. They’re 8th in road hits, which is probably a better measure than when they are.
But yes, this puts pay to the silly notion held by many hockey fans, and apparently Toronto management, that size, hitting and physicality equals defense. IMHO, those aspects are greatly overrated and the key skills for an effective D-man are smarts, positioning, and good transition passing skills.
Let’s be fair to Don Cherry, here. In 1979, it was a perfectly reasonable idea to hire him as your head coach: he’d won a Jack Adams and been to two Stanley Cup Finals in five seasons in Boston. The only team his Bruins couldn’t beat was Montreal. Heck, I suspect the Leafs might have actually had a winning season in the ’80s had they hired Bowman & Cherry instead of letting them go to Buffalo and Colorado, respectively.
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“Come to the fights and watch a Rockies game break out!”
That was the Rockies’ actual advertising slogan on billboards during Cherry’s year there.
I think they knew what they were getting: a sideshow. Cherry never got along with Sinden, and he fought with Rockies management non-stop. Cherry ripped his players publicly, showed them up on the ice, and even got into a physical altercation during a game with one of his guys who he blamed for colliding with their leading scorer in practice. They still loved him, but he was a nut.
The stars are really aligned for this Leafs team to suck on the penalty kill: they allow more shots than average, they allow more dangerous shots than average, and their goaltending prevents fewer of them than they should. You want a scary stat? The Leafs have allowed 5 goals in 245 seconds of 3-on-5 time, for a GAA of 73 over that period (typical at 3-on-5 is 20).
And let’s not forget Vesa Toskala, who has had a humiliating 768 save percentage down a man – that’s so bad that it can’t all be the fault of the skaters in front of him.
Derek Zona had a piece looking at the average save percentage shorthanded and he pointed to a piece by Tyler Dellow that pegged it at .866. Is that right? If so, adding Tom Awad’s comment, how is it not mostly on Toskala?
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I remember the 84-85 Canuck team. Averaged 5 goals a game against. Lost 13-2 to Philly and 13-0 to Edmonton. Putrid in every sense of the word.
And their PK was better than Toronto’s now. And the Canucks had to face the 84-85 Oilers 8 times a year as well.
As far as I can remember the 77-78 Canucks just didn’t care. They were probably the team that most epitomized the country club atmosphere the Canucks were known for back than. So bad and casual that the team decided to make the jerseys more “agressive” for the next season. We all know how that turned out….
Yikes.
Has the dispersion around the mean changed over time?
One hypothesis is that with video the spread of team PK% might be narrower than it was in the past.
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Doesn’t look like it. The stdev/league average is at a 20-year high. The lowest stdev/average recorded was in 1968-69. Stdev is well-correlated to average squared – in other words, as the PK% improves, the range of performances drops. Part of that is due to low PK% in the early 80s, when talent was diluted.
Holy crap.
The only thing that comforts me is the unlikelihood that our PK stays this bad. Statistically, as Steve from Hockey Analysis says, it’s likely to creep back towards the mean as the season goes on.
You show me a fox that's learned to deal with the Leafs' recent play, and I'll show you a dead fox.
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