In my view they are getting danger chances only after they tire out the PKers with possession. Otherwise there isnt enough rotation and having a RH shot on the right, whether it be Strome or Panarin is making it easy for the Pkers to cheat over to the left.
Besides the little give and go between Buch and Panarin the PP is really designed to flow to the left for shots. The slot is never open because there is no threat on the right.
Caps are a perfect example of a PP with threats on both sides. Kuzy on the RW boards cycle the puck low to Backstrom or high to Carlson. They stretch you out to open Oshie/Wilson in the slot or to open the seam to Ovi. Cheat to much to Ovi and they go back door.
Strome on the right was just dumb, agreed. Wirh Buch on the right, he and Panarin are both open for one timers. Things tend to run through Panarin on the left because he’s the most dangerous scorer on the ice imo. I think everyone else defers to him too much on the PP but I get it to some degree.
Caps have maybe the best PP scorer of all time, so it’s hard to copy their setup and expect similar results. People react to Ovi differently than they would probably anyone else in that position.
they are passing it around the perimeter. Possession should not be the focal point of a PP.
The reason we have possession is because that's what we're set up for. Players are not aligned in proper shooting lanes. Zibs is the only guy that regularly gets set up either in high slot or for a bad angle goal line chance. When the play breaks down, we create opportunities but that's not because our structure/setup. It also feels like we never come in deep enough on the dots to create high% shooting lanes. Everybody and their mother has watched Washington and Tampa do this for the past decade.
Tried and true 1-3-1. Liike ALL of the high skill/good teams are running and finding enormous success with. We run some amalgamation of it but we do not have the personnel in the right areas.
I’m not saying possession is the most important thing, I’m saying the long stretches of possession without converting recently make it hard to get the second unit out, which throws things off for guys like Kakko and Laf.
Imo they’re getting a good amount of chances - they’re 5th in the league in pp high danger chances for and 11th in pp ice time, so it seems to be producing decent chances. Guys are just flubbing them at a crazy rate so far. Mika alone has blown probably a dozen prime pp chances.
I do think it could be improved but I also think they’re having ridiculously bad luck on the pp chances they’ve been producing so far.
