The History of the Powerplay and Penalizing in Hockey

[Svencouver]

I've always lied somewhere between endlessly fascinated and endlessly frustrated by the existence of special teams in Hockey. My team has lost games because of the powerplay, and has won games because of the powerplay. We've been privileged to have had some of the worst penalty killing in the history of the league, and two of the greatest powerplay minds of all time in the Sedin twins. If anyone would have lost as much sleep over the powerplay as I have, it would more than likely be another Canucks fan. As I've looked around at other sports over the years (between bouts of tossing and turning over game management and ill-timed shorthanded backbreakers), I've come to find quite a bit of intrigue on the nature of penalization and how different sports handle it.

Hockey, like in many other regards, is fairly exceptional in regards to penalization. While football, basketball, and baseball have discrete, predictable punishments for infractions that result in some controlled gain of advantage for the rule-abiding team in order to offset the unfair advantage attempted by the rule-breaking (free throws, loss/gain of yardage, outs/bases earned), Hockey eschews such predictability and stability (as it often does) by completely shifting the game into an entirely different state for two minutes. As far as I can tell, there's nothing quite like this in other sports. Soccer, the other sport with similar scarce scoring, has free kicks, but there are both very few direct free kicks per game, and the conversion rate is far, far lower than that of a powerplay.

Messi, himself one of the most prolific free kick scorers of all time, has scored just 65 free kick goals in his career. McDavid scored 21 powerplay goals last year.

Another way to contextualize the relative significance of penalties on the outcome of games would be to consider the proportion of goals/points earned at advantage versus in regular play. With the Oilers scoring 325 goals last year, and 89 scored on the powerplay, roughly 38% of their production during the regular season came on the man advantage. Currently, Joel Embiid gets some of the most FTA and FTM in Basketball, scoring 354 out of his 1187 points on the season at the line, or 29%. Given that this is a team stat comparison versus an individual stat comparison, it seems fair to bring in McDavid's production last season into the picture: 71 out of his 153 points were on the PP - an eye-watering 46%! Fascinatingly - a team or player can have more of their total production come from the chaotic powerplay in Hockey than a basketball player can from completely unobstructed shots 15 out.

Hockey may have, then, the most significant special teams - and penalties - in all major sports. Which begs the question - how did we get to this point? Why the powerplay? Fans consistently lament the presence of 3on3 OT and the shootout for not being representative of the game in its purest, neutral state: so why make the powerplay how infractions are dealt with, and so central to how games in the sport are won?

I'd like to, then, pose a question to people with much more historical knowledge than me: why does the Powerplay exist, how did it come into being, was its nature ever challenged by other standards for dealing with infractions? How has it changed in the rules over the years - and how have rule changes such as the puck over the glass penalty changed the nature of the powerplay? How much can variance in eras, and scoring over time, be attributed to changes in the powerplay (I think, of course, of Sidney Crosby's supernovic 2006-07 Season, which had his career high point total driven by his highest number of powerplay points, even today)? What are some of the all time great powerplay teams in hockey, and who are some of the greatest all time powerplay strategists in the sport? How have scoring schemes and the strategies those teams have come up with over the years changed - especially in the analytic era? Perhaps most critically in our current discourse of all: how is our perception of a players ability - or even greatness - influenced by the powerplay?

There are an almost infinite number of questions or angles to take with a fixture in our game that I think is both strange and taken for granted, and I'd love to start a long-form discussion on the powerplay and it's affects on hockey with you all.

Click to read more...

 

[Svencouver]

There are two other threads I've found on this subforum detailing the topic which would probably be a good place to start:

Evolution of the Power Play

and

The NHL's Power Play Rule Change of the mid-1950s

As far as I can tell, the concept of the "power-play" as a discrete strategy for when given the man advantage isn't something you can take for granted as a necessary fixture of the game. Nik jr has done a really excellent job compiling all of this, and so I'd highly recommend giving it a read. I've taken the liberty of screencapping some of the more interesting bits for your convenience if you'd like to read it here:

I am, in particular, utterly fascinated by the language used in the Lewiston Evening Journal's characterization of the phenomena, which they say "nearly ruined the NHL" - partially because it's not clear what the innovation was or how it was executed on the ice. It seems like what we recognize as a "powerplay" is something that evolved organically over time, and as a strategic invention, had less to push back against than a strict rule fixture from fans that disliked how it changed the game.

Art Ross and Eddie Shore, in congress with the change to the forward passing rule, seem to be key points in developing what we recognize as the powerplay in the modern sport. Scoring exploded with the foward pass - and immediately resulted in the invention of the offside rule in 1930. Following that, it seems the two most significant rule changes for the development of 5 on 4 offense were the codification of icing in 1937, the introduction of the red line in 1943, and the one goal rule in 1956 - which seems to have came at the hands of the Beliveau/Olmstead/Richard/Geoffrion/Harvey dynastic PP.

"In all the years of Detroit's dominance and their almighty power play, there was no suggestion of such a [rule] change," he said. "Now [the] Canadiens have finally built one and you want to introduce a rule to weaken it. Go get a power play of your own."
Selke's fellow general managers shrugged off the rant, saying the vote was much more than 5-1 in favor of changing the rule.
"We tried it out in the [minor-pro] Western Hockey League last winter and everybody liked it," New York Rangers GM Frank Boucher said. "The Canadiens say they were outvoted on the rule 5-1. That's wrong. They were outvoted 19-1. The American [Hockey] league and the WHL and the other five NHL clubs voted for it. Only the Canadiens voted against it and that's why they're saying the rule was aimed at wrecking their power play."
Patrick supported the Bruins vote with a little reasoning.
"If a player draws a minor penalty for doing something illegal which may have saved a goal and while he's off the opposing team scores, there's no reason why he shouldn't be allowed to return immediately," he said. "The opposing team got the goal he may have saved by doing the thing he did which led to the penalty.

Canadiens1958 took a look at the 1938-39 season for some context on the PP and how significant it was to scoring:

Penalty minute data for the 1938-39 season, 48 game schedule. Boston - 251, NYR - 387, Toronto - 372, NYA - 284, Detroit - 242, Canadiens - 292, Chicago - 361. Teams ranged from just over 5 MPG to just over 8 MPG. Factoring out estimated coincidental penalties, fighting majors and end of game short time, there were very few PP opportunities, app 3 per team per game.

Quick count of the Bruins showed app 12 PP goals for the season. Couple incomplete game summaries produce an estimate. Given that the full minor had to be served even if a goal was scored, this projects to under a 10% success rate. Weak by post Red Line standards.

12 PP goals on the season, and an under 10% success rate, is a huge far cry from the modern game, to be sure. Given the reaction to the high-scoring PPs of the late 40s and 50s was to curb scoring on it, would those same rulemakers feel unsettled by the current prolific nature of the PP in league scoring?

 

[Svencouver]

Looking further into Nik jr's biographical research, a neat and totally inexplicable occurrence was the Ranger's "4 man powerplay":

Like, wtf, lmao? Outscoring the opposing team while shorthanded is utterly insane. The 40's NYR "streamlined hockey" comes up fairly regularly in the journalism of the decade, so I imagine it was another fairly significant influence on what seems to be, on the whole, the most influential decade for PP strategy in the NHL.

 

[Overrated]

Well soccer also has penalty kicks and those are quite frequent. Red cards also happen which give a permanent advantage of 10 vs 9.

 

[Svencouver]

I've gone ahead and done some research myself, and have found some pretty interesting information:

In a 1945 edition of the Montreal Gazette, there's an interesting editorial about the importance of a "good power play," a phrase which was only just starting to catch on to refer to 5 on 4 play. Habs head coach at the time, Dick Irvin, downplays the danger of playing shorthanded. I'm not sure how many goals were scored on the PP that year, but it'd only take a decade for teams to be scoring so often on the PP, including that of a habs team Irvin, then coach of the Blackhawks, would have to play against, would necessitate rule changes for.

Prior to those rule changes, others were already being deliberated upon due to unique rules in the WHL. In 1952, the WHL didn't allow for more than one player to be off the ice at a time, incurring a delayed penalty when another call was made with a player already in the box. In other words, two man advantages weren't a part of the game.

The reasoning here is particularly interesting, and I think has some relevance to discourse on game management today. It's unclear to me whether the "mandate" to "call 'em close" is figurative or literal, but regardless; the idea that infractions would be called more honestly and less sensitively to the current context of the game if excessive man advantage weren't incurred for calling it has some merit.

There were other frequent considerations towards penalization at the time:

"Where did basketball go, anyway?" indeed.

Some other points of view in a Tom Melville column in a 1949 Regina Leader-Post. It seems that the 40s were, indeed, a tumultuous time for what hockey "should" be, how it ought to be played, and the direction it should take as new strategies and frequent rule changes fundamentally altered the product. The concept of what we now recognize as dump and chase hockey being essentially deleterious and the invention of Hockey Terrorists is pretty funny.

Lastly, there are some excellent statistical landmarks to consider in the development of the PP and its importance over time:

The year? 1956 - the year of the alluded Montreal Dynasty's rulebending offense. Before the rule change, where teams could score on one powerplay more than once - the Red Wings scored on just 20% of their one man advantages. In both the 80s, and since 2021 - the league average has exceeded said figure.

Here's where it gets really interesting: The Red Wings and Canadiens scored less of their goals on the Powerplay in the year inciting the rule change than the Oilers did last year.

The Bobby Orr Bruins were just obscene. It's pretty amazing, then, that they were still less prolific than last years Oilers. It was newsworthy in 1975 when one quarter of NHL goals came from powerplays: what's the figure now?

 

[sr edler]

Well soccer also has penalty kicks and those are quite frequent. Red cards also happen which give a permanent advantage of 10 vs 9.

Shoutout to Sampdoria mid 90s version Sinisa Mihailovic, that guy was a monster at long-range free-kicks. But yes, the closest football/soccer equivalent to a PP in hockey is the penalty kick, though probably more equivalent to a two-man advantage (5-on-3) since a PP is far from a given scoring chance.

Btw, this site has a soccer sub-board, but I think they're mostly discussing modern hipster football there.

 

[overpass]

I agree this is a very interesting topic!

As pointed out by the thread you reference, the term "power play" as it appears in the 1930s referred to any sustained play with one team attacking with 4 or 5 players. This could take place at any time, but most frequently with a man advantage, or in the third period while the trailing team pressed to tie the game. Often it meant 4 or 5 forwards on the ice, unless a rushing defenceman like Eddie Shore or King Clancy was involved.

In the 1930s and early 1940s, there are some strange anomalies in the NHL's official power play stats. I've posted before saying that I don't think they are accurate, and reading this thread now has inspired me to prove it. See this thread I created in By the Numbers - power play goals scored in Boston home games during the 1939 playoffs were not recorded accurately.
The NHL's pre-WWII power play scoring statistics are incomplete

Understanding that the stats may be incomplete, based on what we have, the Detroit Red Wings may have had the best power play of the 1930s. It included forwards Larry Aurie, Herbie Lewis, and centre-turned-defenceman Ebbie Goodfellow, who was a great skater with a bullet shot. Detroit's power play of 1934-35 scored 32 goals, and this total was reported in papers at the time so I would take it as likely accurate.

After the creation of the red line in 1943, the term "power play" seems to have become relatively standard in referring to a man advantage. It was around this time that Max Bentley became a pioneer in developing the point position. Check the best power play teams in the 1940s and you'll see Max Bentley's name keep popping up. First on the Hawks, then the Leafs, and even as late as 1953-54 on the Rangers, when his brother Doug came out of retirement for part of the season and they manned the points. Hap Day said Max was the greatest ever to play the point on the power play.

In the last decade, the trend in the NHL has been to play 4 forwards on the power play. Did you know this was also the common practice for most of the league's history? It was only about 1980-2010 that it was most common to have 2 defencemen at the point. Prior to 1980, one of the star forwards usually played the point alongside a defenceman. And sometimes two forwards played the point, for example Gordie Howe and Alex Delvecchio did this at times.

 

[MadArcand]

Hockey, like in many other regards, is fairly exceptional in regards to penalization. While football, basketball, and baseball have discrete, predictable punishments for infractions that result in some controlled gain of advantage for the rule-abiding team in order to offset the unfair advantage attempted by the rule-breaking (free throws, loss/gain of yardage, outs/bases earned), Hockey eschews such predictability and stability (as it often does) by completely shifting the game into an entirely different state for two minutes. As far as I can tell, there's nothing quite like this in other sports. Soccer, the other sport with similar scarce scoring, has free kicks, but there are both very few direct free kicks per game, and the conversion rate is far, far lower than that of a powerplay.

Handball has two-minute penalties as well.

 

[sr edler]

Handball has two-minute penalties as well.

A lot of North Americans don't even know this sport exists. It (the sport) was brought up in one of the hockey/basketball inferiority complex threads on the main boards, and some people there confessed to not even knowing about it.

I don't follow bandy anymore, but I think they still have a standard 10-minute penalty? Plus penalty shots and corners where the defending team has to rush from the goal-line.

 

[MadArcand]

A lot of North Americans don't even know this sport exists. It (the sport) was brought up in one of the hockey/basketball inferiority complex threads on the main boards, and some people there confessed to not even knowing about it.

I don't follow bandy anymore, but I think they still have a standard 10-minute penalty? Plus penalty shots and corners where the defending team has to rush from the goal-line.

Also floorball, hockeyball and other derivatives have PPs.

 

[Svencouver]

I agree this is a very interesting topic!

As pointed out by the thread you reference, the term "power play" as it appears in the 1930s referred to any sustained play with one team attacking with 4 or 5 players. This could take place at any time, but most frequently with a man advantage, or in the third period while the trailing team pressed to tie the game. Often it meant 4 or 5 forwards on the ice, unless a rushing defenceman like Eddie Shore or King Clancy was involved.

In the 1930s and early 1940s, there are some strange anomalies in the NHL's official power play stats. I've posted before saying that I don't think they are accurate, and reading this thread now has inspired me to prove it. See this thread I created in By the Numbers - power play goals scored in Boston home games during the 1939 playoffs were not recorded accurately.
The NHL's pre-WWII power play scoring statistics are incomplete

Understanding that the stats may be incomplete, based on what we have, the Detroit Red Wings may have had the best power play of the 1930s. It included forwards Larry Aurie, Herbie Lewis, and centre-turned-defenceman Ebbie Goodfellow, who was a great skater with a bullet shot. Detroit's power play of 1934-35 scored 32 goals, and this total was reported in papers at the time so I would take it as likely accurate.

After the creation of the red line in 1943, the term "power play" seems to have become relatively standard in referring to a man advantage. It was around this time that Max Bentley became a pioneer in developing the point position. Check the best power play teams in the 1940s and you'll see Max Bentley's name keep popping up. First on the Hawks, then the Leafs, and even as late as 1953-54 on the Rangers, when his brother Doug came out of retirement for part of the season and they manned the points. Hap Day said Max was the greatest ever to play the point on the power play.

In the last decade, the trend in the NHL has been to play 4 forwards on the power play. Did you know this was also the common practice for most of the league's history? It was only about 1980-2010 that it was most common to have 2 defencemen at the point. Prior to 1980, one of the star forwards usually played the point alongside a defenceman. And sometimes two forwards played the point, for example Gordie Howe and Alex Delvecchio did this at times.

It's awesome to see you around! The stuff you dug into was really helpful!

The miscounting is really interesting. What I'm really curious about is what fan and player sentiment was like at different points during this period - especially if powerplay scoring was even more central to the game than we thought. I find that there's often a pendulum in opinion between wanting more offense (when the game is overly defensive) and wanting more defense (when the game is overly offensive) that present in multiple sports - Basketball has had a lot of hand wringing about the erosion of defense and how overly impactful the 3 point line is in recent years, as one example.

It's a little tough for me to take for granted that people never had misgivings about the concept of the powerplay to begin with, or at least didn't contest its development in the game. I think part of the reason why that is was because it seems that it happened so gradually and as the result to changes in rules and play at 5 on 5, too. Thus, when tipping points came in how overly game-affecting the powerplay was, the response was to amend the powerplay instead of trying to discard it.

What's interesting about the modern era, to me, is that the powerplay has, once again, become hugely significant to winning games and scoring goals - perhaps now more than ever. Video scouting, advanced metrics, and far more advanced coaching have made the rate of scoring on a single powerplay a science. You can extensively scout the other teams goalie, and their PK scheme, and develop a discrete strategy to target it.

I suppose my main idea is this: in a game of unpredictability and randomness, the powerplay is a rare opportunity for teams to strategize around and practice a more contained and predictable game state. Set plays are hard to pull off in the innumerable potential permutations of a rush through the neutral zone, or after a puck battle, random deflection, or sustained cycle. Compare that to the powerplay - where drawing up set plays and executing them with precision is a much more common occurrence.

As someone who didn't watch them at the time, how does today compare to the 80s? The 80s have similar powerplay scoring figures to now, but I've always gotten the impression that was just an extension of increased 5on5 scoring, too. I guess a reasonable next step would be comparing leaguewide ES scoring to now, and leaguewide save% numbers at both ES and SH compared to now. I wouldn't be surprised if less goals were scored at 5on5 now, and goalies had better all situations save%s, but that's an assumption on my part.

Handball has two-minute penalties as well.

Interesting! It makes sense that sports more similar to hockey have penalties more similar to hockey. I definitely don't know all that much about handball, which is a blind spot for me on the topic, for sure. I also have no idea what happens in the black box of cricket which is just totally alien to me.

 

[Hockey Stathead]

Cool thread idea.

A couple charts that might be interesting (data from Hockey Ref):

 

[The Panther]

Outscoring the opposing team while shorthanded is utterly insane.

Yes, it is. But for fun, consider the following stat (re: a major outlier, the SH goal-scoring of the 1983-84 Edmonton Oilers):

The 1983-84 Oilers' Short-Handed scoring rate:
9.3%

The 2020-21 Ducks' Power-Play scoring rate:
8.9%
The 1997-98 Lightning Power-Play scoring rate:
9.4%

 

[Svencouver]

Cool thread idea.

A couple charts that might be interesting (data from Hockey Ref):

View attachment 812741

View attachment 812743

This is exactly the kind of thing I was looking for! This sort of confirms my suspicions - despite PP opportunities being historically low, the importance and influence of PP scoring on the game, and how much teams score on the PP, has gradually been on the rise while staying reasonably proportional to the number of PP opportunities per game. 2006 is obviously a huge outlier, but its interesting that proportion of PP goals has fallen less than the raw # of PP opportunities after 2006. The 2010s and, so far, the 2020s have managed to stay right around that 18-20% mark despite falling beneath 3 opportunities per game.

Alluding to some of the earlier news articles - how much of the huge fall in penalties called is due to new standards in game management, and how much of it is due to the game itself getting cleaner and more skilled? The fall-off after the lockout is pretty steep, and doesn't seem necessarily organic.

Yes, it is. But for fun, consider the following stat (re: a major outlier, the SH goal-scoring of the 1983-84 Edmonton Oilers):

The 1983-84 Oilers' Short-Handed scoring rate:
9.3%

The 2020-21 Ducks' Power-Play scoring rate:
8.9%
The 1997-98 Lightning Power-Play scoring rate:
9.4%

Who did the Oilers play on their PK that year?

 

[overpass]

It's awesome to see you around! The stuff you dug into was really helpful!

The miscounting is really interesting. What I'm really curious about is what fan and player sentiment was like at different points during this period - especially if powerplay scoring was even more central to the game than we thought. I find that there's often a pendulum in opinion between wanting more offense (when the game is overly defensive) and wanting more defense (when the game is overly offensive) that present in multiple sports - Basketball has had a lot of hand wringing about the erosion of defense and how overly impactful the 3 point line is in recent years, as one example.

It's a little tough for me to take for granted that people never had misgivings about the concept of the powerplay to begin with, or at least didn't contest its development in the game. I think part of the reason why that is was because it seems that it happened so gradually and as the result to changes in rules and play at 5 on 5, too. Thus, when tipping points came in how overly game-affecting the powerplay was, the response was to amend the powerplay instead of trying to discard it.

Oh I see what you're getting at. I'm not old enough to talk about the history with first hand experience but I've done a lot of reading on hockey history. I always keep an eye out for mentions of the power play personnel or tactics, because I think it's been relatively under discussed relative to its impact for much of hockey history.

One reason for this lack may have been that there wasn't a lot of tactical innovation in hockey. here was only one coach, the head coach. Practices were scrimmages, not systems. The power play unit was typically the best offensive defenceman and the best forward on the points, with the best offensive line up front. Maybe most fans and media just took that basic PP structure for granted and it wasn't really worth commenting on.

I will say I think the Leafs must have had the power play in mind when they traded for Max Bentley. They famously already had Syl Apps and Ted Kennedy at centre, so Max became the #3 centre in Toronto - but he also played point on the power play and may have added half his value in that role. But I don't know how much that aspect was discussed.

Camille Henry's power play scoring during his rookie season was reported in the papers. He was nearly a PP specialist, with a record 20 PPG and only 4 EVG.

The Montreal papers in 1965 made note of the team's strong power play performance in the playoffs. They won the Cup thanks to 21 of their 35 goals coming on the powerplay. It's probably fair to say the first Conn Smythe trophy, which went to Jean Beliveau, was mostly because of his power play scoring. This one might be interesting to look at more...I can only imagine what fans would be saying now if a team won the Cup with 60% of their goals scored on the powerplay.

The Islanders dynasty broke all records for power play scoring in the playoffs, and their power play performance was prominently mentioned in Sports Illustrated (RIP) articles on their playoff runs. I would say by this time it was normal to discuss special teams performance when discussing hockey.

 

[Svencouver]

Oh I see what you're getting at. I'm not old enough to talk about the history with first hand experience but I've done a lot of reading on hockey history. I always keep an eye out for mentions of the power play personnel or tactics, because I think it's been relatively under discussed relative to its impact for much of hockey history.

One reason for this lack may have been that there wasn't a lot of tactical innovation in hockey. here was only one coach, the head coach. Practices were scrimmages, not systems. The power play unit was typically the best offensive defenceman and the best forward on the points, with the best offensive line up front. Maybe most fans and media just took that basic PP structure for granted and it wasn't really worth commenting on.

I will say I think the Leafs must have had the power play in mind when they traded for Max Bentley. They famously already had Syl Apps and Ted Kennedy at centre, so Max became the #3 centre in Toronto - but he also played point on the power play and may have added half his value in that role. But I don't know how much that aspect was discussed.

Camille Henry's power play scoring during his rookie season was reported in the papers. He was nearly a PP specialist, with a record 20 PPG and only 4 EVG.

The Montreal papers in 1965 made note of the team's strong power play performance in the playoffs. They won the Cup thanks to 21 of their 35 goals coming on the powerplay. It's probably fair to say the first Conn Smythe trophy, which went to Jean Beliveau, was mostly because of his power play scoring. This one might be interesting to look at more...I can only imagine what fans would be saying now if a team won the Cup with 60% of their goals scored on the powerplay.

The Islanders dynasty broke all records for power play scoring in the playoffs, and their power play performance was prominently mentioned in Sports Illustrated (RIP) articles on their playoff runs. I would say by this time it was normal to discuss special teams performance when discussing hockey.

That's absolutely fascinating, and exactly the kind of thing I'm interested in. I agree - it's almost unthinkable to me, given how much discourse was present throughout every decade of journalism I've read on Hockey about what the game ought to be and whether or not the tactics being employed were skillful or good for the game, that a run like Montreals would be taken for granted. It's one thing to complain about the tactics other teams are employing - it should be even worse when you combine it with the natural and eternal inclination people have to feel that officiating is unfair and shouldn't determine the outcome of games. Scoring 60% of your goals on the PP is far more impactful to winning a championship than some of the individual calls made in a football game - and yet some of those are remembered forever. It really does seem like the gradual and organic development of the formalized, systematic, and strategic power play has a lot to do with it being accepted as a part of hockey. Even still, though, that doesn't explain why strategies like ganging got so much pushback and dominant power play stratagems didn't.