Are there actually less power plays in the playoffs?

[Alexei Yashvalev]

Heard this a lot, not sure about the actual truth of it.

Secondary question, do power plays convert less often in the playoffs?

Click to read more...

 

[hatterson]

Heard this a lot, not sure about the actual truth of it.

Interestingly enough, the opposite is actually true on a league wide level. Here's a chart of PP opportunities per team game in regular season and post season for each year since the 04 lockout. The only years with fewer penalties were 05-06 and 08-09.

Year|PPO/G Reg|PPO/G Post
05-06|5.85|5.80
06-07|4.85|5.14
07-08|4.29|4.40
08-09|4.16|3.94
09-10|3.71|4.19
10-11|3.54|3.95
11-12|3.30|3.74
12-13|3.32|3.35

Granted you're dealing with a small sample size in the post season so a couple penalty heavy games can swing it by a lot. In a given post season there's anywhere from 160 to 180 team games which means that 10 powerplays spread among the entire postseason contributes ~.06 to the per game total.

Also, this is per game, not per minute of ice time. Due to unlimited overtime playoff games are longer on average than regular season games so you'd expect a couple more chances per game even if the rate of calling stuff was the same. I don't have ice time numbers for the post season compiled but I've been thinking of adding it to my scoring spreadsheet this summer. Until that point, I can't say for sure what the per minute numbers look like, but my inkling is that the length of game isn't so much different on average to swing the numbers significantly.

Secondary question, do power plays convert less often in the playoffs?

Same style chart as above, but conversion rate. Same caveat regarding sample size is in effect. 10 powerplay goals over the course of the entire post season means an increase in the area of 1-2%

Year|PP% Reg|PP% Post
05-06|17.69|16.93
06-07|17.57|14.54
07-08|17.73|18.72
08-09|18.95|18.95
09-10|18.22|19.73
10-11|18.03|18.07
11-12|17.31|17.42
12-13|18.22|16.46

On average it doesn't seem that there's a notable difference between conversion rates. Some years are a percent or two higher, some are a percent or two lower, which is perfectly within the margin of error you'd expect from such a small sample size.

 

[MadLuke]

Great post hatterson.

But (mainly for pp conversion), it is possible that playoff team have a better regular season pp conversion average than the league average. (Idem for pp opportunity).

But still, the number are great. Maybe that the long overtimes with 0 penalty give us a false impression.

Also they are a bit less "selfish" arguing penalty and fight some year, less penalty but nothing changed power play wise.

 

[hatterson]

But (mainly for pp conversion), it is possible that playoff team have a better regular season pp conversion average than the league average. (Idem for pp opportunity).

Filtered both charts to include only regular seasons by playoff bound teams.

Year|PPO/G Reg|PPO/G Reg PLYTeams|PPO/G Post
05-06|5.85|5.84|5.80
06-07|4.85|4.88|5.14
07-08|4.29|4.33|4.40
08-09|4.16|4.19|3.94
09-10|3.71|3.66|4.19
10-11|3.54|3.53|3.95
11-12|3.30|3.37|3.74
12-13|3.32|3.34|3.35

Year|PP% Reg|PP% Reg PLY Teams|PP% Post
05-06|17.69|18.74|16.93
06-07|17.57|18.58|14.54
07-08|17.73|18.34|18.72
08-09|18.95|20.02|18.95
09-10|18.22|19.04|19.73
10-11|18.03|19.20|18.07
11-12|17.31|17.79|17.42
12-13|18.22|19.28|16.46

Looks like PP opportunities are pretty close although there's a significant gap in conversion rate. That does make some sense in that teams that score more on the PP have a bit of an advantage (more goals) than teams that don't so you'd expect successful teams to be better on average than non-successful ones. Also, I'm not sure how much you'll tell from the drop from regular season PP% among playoff teams to PP% in the playoffs mainly because 1.) Competition is harder; and 2.) The different is only around 5 goals per year, easily within the variation of random flukes.

 

[TheDevilMadeMe]

Such a simple question with such an interesting answer.

Does this bust the argument that it's better to be able to score at even strength than on the power play because there are fewer power plays in the playoffs?

I would really like to see PP opportunities per 60 minutes, rather than per game, however due to the effects of unlimited OT like you said.

 

[MadLuke]

Such a simple question with such an interesting answer.

Does this bust the argument that it's better to be able to score at even strength than on the power play because there are fewer power plays in the playoffs?

Because of a lower sample size and the possibility of getting out in just 4 games, it would be still safer and more described as "built for playoff" a team that do not rely on special team for success I think.

you still have a game 7 with 0 power play that can happen.

 

[Ishdul]

I would also like to see the spread by round and by game. A popular narrative is always that they want to reinforce the rules at the start of the playoffs but will steadily go towards calling nothing as the postseason endures.

 

[hatterson]

I would also like to see the spread by round and by game. A popular narrative is always that they want to reinforce the rules at the start of the playoffs but will steadily go towards calling nothing as the postseason endures.

I'm afraid that at this time it's out of my ambition to do. I don't have a dedicated database for this so I was just using excel to compile numbers quickly. Going game by game would be much more involved.

If anyone knows of a database I'll gladly write a query to pull the information though

 

[TheDevilMadeMe]

I would also like to see the spread by round and by game. A popular narrative is always that they want to reinforce the rules at the start of the playoffs but will steadily go towards calling nothing as the postseason endures.

Yes, this is a very good point. It would especially skew things since the first round accounts for 8 of 15 playoff series.